Part 6

Another form of Indian pottery must not be forgotten, for the significance of the pipe in the early history of our country cannot be over-rated. The calumet was a moral, religious, and political influence; on its manufacture and ornamentation the Indian expended all his skill and his best labor; and to its suited and significant use he gave his deepest thought. The use of the pipe was a devotional service—the Great Spirit smoked His pipe, and his followers did likewise in His honor; it was a political signal—no war was declared, no treaty of peace was signed without the accompaniment and symbolical use of the pipe. Lieutenant Timberlake says that the Cherokees made pipes “of the same earth they made their pots with, but beautifully diversified,” and he pathetically records that he was forced to smoke so many pipes of peace with them that he was made very unpleasantly sick thereby. This special tribe of Indians had such fine blue clay, and knew so well how to mix and prepare it, that they made better pipes than their neighbors, and thus pipes became a medium of exchange—Indian money. The strong clay pipes of the English settlers were, as soon as imported, eagerly sought for and quickly purchased by the Indians.

Fine and varied specimens of the pottery vessels and pipes of the various Indian nations may be found in the cabinets of the Smithsonian Institution, in the rooms of the various State historical societies, in the buildings of our colleges and natural history associations, and may be studied to advantage by the student of ceramics. A full or worthy history of the fictile art of the North American Indians has yet to be written.

I doubt if the colonists ever used the Indian pottery, for at an early date they began to manufacture bricks and earthen ware, and having wheels to help them in shaping their pots, could far outdo the Indians. They made laws to protect such manufacture. The General Court of Massachusetts ordered, as early as 1646, that “tyle earth to make sale ware shall be digged before the first of 9 mo and turned over in the last or first before it be wrought.” John Pride, of Salem, was registered as a potter in 1641. He may have helped to establish a pottery in Danvers, then a suburb of Salem, for the manufacture of earthen ware in that town was coeval with the existence of the settlement; and the Danvers pot-works were, I believe, the first to be established in America by any of the colonies. Higginson, writing from Salem in 1629, said, “It is thought here is good clay to make bricks & tyles and earthen pot as may be. At this instant we are setting a bricke kill to worke to make brickes and tyles for the building of our houses.”

William Osborne was the first Danvers potter, and his descendants carried on the business in that immediate vicinity for about two centuries. Mr. Joseph Reed then took charge as the successor of the house of Osborne. At the end of the eighteenth century the production of “Danvers ware” was extensive. Morse’s _Gazetteer_ of 1797 says, “Large quantities of brick and coarse earthen ware are manufactured here.” A resident of the town wrote thus in 1848, “Table-ware of Danvers China brought a high price during the late war.” To call the common red pottery “china” is certainly flattering, but may be pardoned on account of the local pride of the writer.

At the “time of the late war”—the war of 1812—there were no less than twenty-six of these pottery works where now there is only one. The situation of the residence and pot-works of William Osborne is still known, and the manufacture of earthen ware has gone on in the same place without interruption ever since. Simple forms only have been made—often lead-glazed—bean-pots, jugs, pitchers, milk-pans, jars, etc. We must except, of course, the table-ware of war times. This Osborne kiln is situated in what is called Peabody, but in the town of North Danvers there was discovered a few years ago the foundation of an old forgotten kiln, which had been owned by a potter named Porter. There is no finer quality of clay than is still found in large quantities within a quarter of a mile of this old Porter kiln. This clay is, however, carried to Boston and elsewhere instead of being manufactured where it is dug. Potters make good citizens. Staffordshire men say, “working in earth makes men easy-minded,” and a community of potters is always orderly, law-abiding, thrifty, and industrious. A larger and constantly increasing manufacture of Danvers ware should have been encouraged.

An enthusiastic local minstrel sings thus of Danvers pottery and patriots:

“Here plastic clay the potter turned To pitcher, dish, jug, pot, or pan, As in his kiln the ware was burned, So burned the patriot in the man, Into persistent shape, which no Turning could change back to dough. It might be broken, ground to dust, But ne’er made ductile as at first.”

The Quakers kept up with the Puritans in the attempt to establish home manufactures and home industries. Father Pastorius wrote in 1684, “Of brick kilns and tile ovens, we have the necessary number.” Gabriel Thomas found in Pennsylvania, in 1696, both brick kilns and pot-works. He writes thus to encourage emigration from England, and to show the high wages in the new land. “Brick-makers have twenty shillings per thousand for their bricks at the kilns, and potters have sixteenpence for an earthenware pot that may be bought in England for fourpence.”

In New Jersey, at Burlington, Governor Coxe, of “West Jersey,” established in 1690 a pottery of considerable size and pretension. The Virginians kept pace with the Quakers and Puritans. As early as 1649 there were several pot-works in Virginia.

Potteries were also established on Long Island in the eighteenth century. On March 31, 1735, “The widow of Thomas Parmynter offers for sale her farm at Whitestone, opposite Frogs Point. It has twenty acres of clay ground fit for making tobacco pipes. For sale also two negroes, with utensils and other conveniences for carrying on that business.” On July 3, 1738, the same farm, with its “beds of pipe-making clay,” was again sold. On May 13, 1751, this advertisement appeared: “Any persons desirous may be supplied with vases, urns, flower-pots to adorn gardens and tops of houses, or any other ornament made of clay, by Edward Annely at Whitestone, he having set up the potter’s business by means of a German family that he bought (?), who are supposed by their work to be the most ingenious that arrived in America. He has clay capable of making eight different kinds of ware.” This was evidently quite a pretentious start in the pottery manufacture, and with the assistance of the ingenious family of German potters, and the advantages of convenient beds of clay, Edward Annely should have succeeded; but no record remains to indicate either his success or failure.

Upon the old farm of John Lefferts, in Flatbush, Long Island, there exists a large pond called by the apparently incongruous name of Steenbakkery. This pond was formed by the removal of clay for use in a steenbakkery or pottery upon the place, and from the size of the excavation vast numbers of bricks and coarse stone-ware must have been made. The ruins of the racks for the bricks remained standing within the memory of persons now living. This pond having, of course, no outlet through its clay bottom, has in our present age of sanitary drainage been ordered to be filled in. In New York City, near “Fresh Water Pond,” back of the City Hall, a German potter named Remmey established works, but his descendants were crowded out by the growing city, and removed to South Amboy.

In 1748 the State of Massachusetts offered bounties to encourage the manufacture of earthen ware, and many new pot-works were established. “Mangness” for the use of potters was offered for sale in the newspapers, and the would-be purchaser was to inquire of the printer, who in colonial days seemed literally to have a finger in every pie. One of the oldest of these colonial potteries was started previous to the year 1765, by a man whose descendants of the same name still conduct the pottery works known as the factory of A. H. Hews & Co., in North Cambridge, Mass. The record of this family firm is so remarkable for America that it should be told at some length. Not only has the company continued in the same business in an uninterrupted line of the same firm name, but it possesses a record of a century and a third of unspotted integrity in business dealings. It has passed through times of foreign and civil wars, through business crises and depressions, in an even career of honor and fair-dealing, and now has earned a deserved and independent position, having the largest manufactory of flower-pots in the world—making many millions yearly—as well as a large and varied line of art pottery. When Abraham Hews was pottering around in his little pottery in Weston, in 1765, making milk-pans and bean-pots, and jugs and teapots, and exchanging them for general merchandise, in which New England rum and molasses took no inferior part, he little foresaw the vast business enterprise that would be carried out by his great-grandson in 1891. The clay used by him in Weston was brought from Watertown, and later from Cambridge, and the firm did not move their works to Cambridge until 1870. Abraham Hews, second, lived to be eighty-eight years old (being postmaster for fifty-one years), and his son lived to be eighty-one years old, dying in 1891—the good old Puritan stock showing in long life as well as in honest life. Thus does a chain of only three lives reach to ante-Revolutionary times, and an ante-Revolutionary pottery.

In the _Norwich Gazette_ of September 15, 1796, we find this advertisement of a pottery: “C. Potts & Son inform the Public that they have lately established a Manufactory of Earthen ware at the shop formerly improved by Mr. Charles Lathrop, where all kinds of said Ware is made and sold either in large or small quantities, and warranted good.” This pottery was on Bean Hill. It is referred to in Miss Caulkin’s “History of Norwich,” Dr. Peters’s “History of Connecticut,” and in Morse’s _Gazetteer_.

At the commencement of the Revolutionary war a man named Upton came from Nantucket to East Greenwich, R. I., and there manufactured earthen ware. The pottery when made was baked in a kiln which stood at the corner of King and Marlboro Streets. He made pans, bowls, plates, cups, and saucers of common red clay, a little finer than that now used in the manufacture of flower-pots. As little porcelain was imported from Europe during the War, people used willingly, and even eagerly, the coarse plates, and drank their “Liberty Tea” from the coarse cups and saucers. The clay came from Goold’s Mount, now owned by Mr. Henry Waterman, of Quidneset. After the war was ended Potter Upton went back to his safety-assured home on Nantucket, and the Greenwich pottery was closed.

In 1793 there was a flourishing pottery in Quasset, Windham County, Conn., and the pottery carts of Thomas Bugbee, the proprietor, were well known throughout the county. He made inkstands, bean-pots, jugs, jars, and many other common shapes, and the demand for milk-pans alone always kept his kiln running all summer. There was at this time another similar pottery in Stonington, owned by Adam States, who made gray jugs and pots and jars with salt-glaze. Another firm at Norwalk manufactured red ware with a lead glaze. There is a specimen in the Trumbull-Prime collection. Mr. Prime says they manufactured mugs, teapots, jars, and milk-pans at this Norwalk pottery. In 1794 a Mr. Fenton, of New Haven, set up in Lynn Street, Boston, a pottery where “all manner of stone vessels were made after the manner of imported Liverpool ware and sold at a lower rate.” The clay for this manufacture was brought from Perth Amboy, N. J.

An article in the _American Museum_ in 1791, on the existing state of American manufactures, said, “Coarse tiles and bricks of an excellent quality, potters’ wares, all in quantities beyond the home consumption, a few ordinary vessels of stone mixed with clay, some mustard and snuff bottles, a few flasks or flagons, a small quantity of sheet glass, and of vessels for family use, generally of inferior kinds, are now made.” Dr. Dwight, in 1822, gave among his list of Connecticut factories and manufactures, “potteries twelve,” “value of earthen and stone-ware $30,940;” and for Massachusetts, “earthen ware, $18,700.”

Though nothing but coarse earthen ware was made in America in these colonial days, the new land played no unimportant part in the first steps toward porcelain manufacture in England in the middle of the eighteenth century. It was the custom, when English vessels had discharged their freights in southern American ports, for them to take samples of the alluvial deposits of North and South Carolina, of Georgia and Florida, to carry back to England for English potters and chemists to experiment upon. The Bow china-works began to manufacture porcelain about the year 1744. In that year a sample of china-clay being brought from America, a patent was taken out by Thomas Frye, of West Ham, Essex, and Edward Heylyn, of Bow, for the production of porcelain, of which one of the ingredients was “an earth, the product of the Cherokee nation in America, called by the natives ‘_unaker_.’” When this patent was renewed in 1794, no mention was made of “unaker.”

In Plymouth a shrewd old Quaker, William Cookworthy, also had his eye upon the American china-clay. He wrote to Mr. Hingston on May 30, 1745, saying that kaolin and petuntse had been discovered in America, and that he had seen specimens said to have been manufactured from the American materials. One letter of his on the subject runs thus: “I had lately with me the person who hath discovered the china-earth. He had with him several samples of the china ware of their making which I think were equal to the Asiatic. ’Twas found on the back of Virginia, where he was in quest of mines, and having read Du Halde, he discovered both the petuntse and the kaolin. ’Twas this latter earth which he says is essential to the success of the manufacture. He is going for a cargo of it, having bought from the Indians the whole country where it rises. They can import it for £13 per ton, and by that means afford their china as cheap as common stone-ware. The man is a Quaker by profession, but seems to be as thorough a Deist as I ever met with.” In 1768 Cookworthy established the Plymouth china-works, but no further mention is made of the deistical Quaker and his promised cargo of china-earth.

In 1655 a box of “porcelain-earth from the internal parts of the Cherokee nation, four hundred miles from hence (Charleston) on mountains scarcely accessible,” was consigned to another English potter, Richard Champion, who founded the Bristol china-works. This box of clay was sent by Champion’s brother-in-law, Mr. Caleb Lloyd, of Charleston, to be forwarded to the Worcester china-works to be used there in experiments. At the same time another box was sent to Champion for a relative of his, the Earl of Hyndford, who desired Champion to open it and make experiments with it, or to give it to Mr. Goldney, “who is a very curious gentleman.” The curious Mr. Goldney declined using the clay, and Champion experimented unsuccessfully “on the principle of Chinese porcelain,” and then decided to use clay from Cornwall, which was “not so fine as the Cherokee; however, there can be no chance of introducing the latter as a manufacture when it can be so easily procured from Cornwall.”

In 1766 the English Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce gave a gold medal to Mr. Samuel Bowen, with the inscription that it was given to him “for his useful observations in china and industrious application of them in Georgia.” It was doubtless the industrious Mr. Bowen’s china that was referred to in Felix Farley’s _Bristol Journal_, in the issue of November 24, 1764. “This week some pieces of porcelain manufactured in Georgia was imported; the materials appear to be good, but the workmanship is far from being admired.” Though this china venture was of enough importance to be-medal its projector, all traces of its location, progress, and fate have been lost.

Other and more pretentious pot-works were brought into life by the Massachusetts bounties. In the _Boston Evening Post_ of October 30, 1769, we read, “Wanted immediately at the new Factory in New Boston, four Boys for Apprentices to learn the Art of making Tortoise-shell Cream and Green Colour Plates, Dishes, Coffee and Tea Pots, Cups and Saucers and other Articles in the Potter’s Business, equal to any imported from England. Any Persons inclined to Bind out such Lads to the aforesaid Business is desired to apply immediately at the said Factory or at Leigh’s Intelligence Office.”

It is very evident, from many advertisements at about this date, that a strenuous and well-directed effort was made to establish and maintain pot-works in Boston. Thus on May 12, 1769, there appeared in the _Boston Evening Post_ this notice: “Wanted Samples of different clays and fine White Sand. Any Person or Persons that will send about 5 lbs. of Clay and a Pint of fine white Sand to Leigh’s Intelligence Office, in Merchants’ Row, Boston, if it is the sort wanted the Proprietors will have advantage of Proposals made to them to supply a quantity.” Good wages, too, for the times, were offered to workmen, practised potters. “Twenty Dollars per Month with Victuals Drink Washing and Lodging given to any persons Skill’d in Making Glazing and Burning common Earthen ware who can be well recommended. Enquire of the Printer.”

All this applying and experimenting and establishing, and the fact that a Quaker named Bartlam, an unsuccessful English master-potter, had started a pottery in Camden, S. C., in the very heart of the clay supply—all this seriously alarmed that far-seeing and shrewd business man, Josiah Wedgwood. He had once before lost his foreman, Mr. Podmore, who left him with the intention of establishing pot-works in America. Mr. Chaffers, a Liverpool manufacturer, had caught the intending emigrant during his pre-embarking stay in Liverpool, and finding that Podmore showed so much intelligence and practical knowledge of the business, had made him sufficiently liberal offers to induce him to remain in England. English potters had also emigrated in large numbers.

Wedgwood wrote thus at that time to his patron, Sir W. Meredith: “Permit me, Sir, to mention a circumstance of a more public nature, which greatly alarms us in this neighborhood. The bulk of our particular manufactures are, you know, exported to foreign markets, for our home consumption is very trifling in comparison to what is sent abroad; and the principal of these markets are the Continent and Islands of North America. To the continent we send an amazing quantity of white stone-ware and some of the finer kinds, but for the islands we cannot make anything too rich and costly. This trade to our colonies we are apprehensive of losing in a few years, as they set on foot some pot-works there already, and are at this time amongst us hiring a number of our hands for establishing new pot-works in South Carolina, having got one of our insolvent master-potters there to conduct them. They have every material there, equal if not superior to our own, for carrying on that manufacture; and as the necessaries of life and consequently the prices of labour amongst us are daily advancing, it is highly probable that more will follow them and join their brother artists and manufacturers of all classes who are from all quarters taking a rapid flight indeed the same way.”

Wedgwood did not intend to be left out or left behind in the “flight” into the benefits and resources of the New World; Pensacola clay was brought to him in 1766; and in 1767, from Ayoree (or Hyoree as he spelt it), other clays were fetched, and the canny potter at once attempted to secure a patent right to the exclusive use of them. A man named Griffiths, who had owned in South Carolina a one-third share in three thousand acres of land, where he had “attempted the manufacture of maple-sugar after the manner of the Indians,” now became Wedgwood’s agent in America, under heavy bonds. Griffiths, the owner of the ill-situated maple grove and sugar factory, went to the Cherokee country and sent home clay to Wedgwood to experiment upon. The growing and free use of the Cornish clays, however, rendered the importation of American clays as superfluous as it was expensive and inconvenient; and the interference of the Revolutionary war destroyed all fear of American competition in the manufacture of pottery. The vicinity near Camden, S. C. (where the Bartlam pottery had been established), was particularly devastated, many fierce battles being fought around it.

In 1784, Richard Champion, who was always an enthusiastic lover of America, and who had unsuccessfully experimented in England with the Cherokee clays, left Bristol and came to live on a plantation named Rockybranch, near Camden. Wedgwood must have felt many apprehensions and fears when Champion took this step, for he knew well the energy and determination of the emigrant to America, who had in previous years completely routed him in a long-contested and bitter lawsuit over the use of certain English clays in the manufacture of china. Wedgwood knew, too, Champion’s ability and capacity as a potter, and without doubt dreaded lest the man who had done such good work at Bristol should do more and better still when in the land of the Cherokee clay, at Camden. His fears (if they existed) were destined never to be realized, for Champion became a planter, filled several public offices in the State, died in 1793, on the seventh anniversary of the day he left England, and was buried near Camden.

In the year 1770 china-works were in operation in Philadelphia. They were established by Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris. On December 20, 1769, an advertisement was printed in a Philadelphia newspaper, which read thus: “New China Works. Notwithstanding the various difficulties and disadvantages which usually attend the introduction of any important manufacture into a new country, the proprietors of the China Works now erecting in Southwark have the pleasure to acquaint the public that they have proved to a certainty that the clays of America are as productive of good Porcelain as any heretofore manufactured at the famous factory in Bow, near London.” Later Messrs. Bonnin and Morris advertised for “broken flint-glass and whole flint-stone,” and also for “shank-bones” to be delivered at the china factory in Southwark. In April, 1772, they advertised for “several apprentices to the painting branch,” and encouragement was offered to “china painters either in blue or enamel,” which latter notice shows that their china products were decorated. They also offered a reward for the production of _zaffre_, a compound of cobalt.