1. David Buten and Jane Perkins Claney, Eighteenth Century Wedgwood: A Guide for Collectors and Connoisseurs (New York: Methuen, Inc., 1980), p. 17ff.
2. For further information on the early Philadelphia fineware potters, see Susan H. Myers, Handcraft to Industry, Philadelphia Ceramics in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980). The Commonwealth, November 12, 1806. A more detailed account of early fineware potters working on the banks of the Ohio River and elsewhere in the Midwest will appear in a forthcoming book, tentatively titled The Western World of Jabez Vodrey, A Pioneer American Potter by the authors of this article.
3. Small enough to be tucked into a jacket pocket, The Navigator, a guide for boatmen and settlers published intermittently from 1801 to 1824, contained maps of the primary midwestern rivers, together with specific instructions on how to avoid sandbars, rocks, and other hazards when negotiating every bend. Landings at new and old communities along the shore were described and occasionally manufactories and stores, and their proprietors, were commented upon.
4. Edwin AtLee Barber, Tin Enamelled Pottery (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1907), p. 5.
5. Heinrich Ries, The Clays and Clay Industries of New Jersey, vol. 6, part 3, of Final Report of the State Geologist, Geological Survey of New Jersey (Trenton, N.J.: 1904), p. 296.
6. The Pittsburgh Gazette, 11 January 1820. The term would persist in the invoices of American potteries into the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
7. George Dangerfield, The Era of Good Feelings (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1952), p. 176.
8. Courtesy of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
9. Catherine Elizabeth Reiser, Pittsburgh’s Commercial Development 1800–1850 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1951), pp. 33–34. Richard C. Wade, The Urban Frontier (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 14.
10. Statutes, 14th Congress, Chapter 107, p. 310.
11. George L. Miller, “A Revised Set of CC Index Values for Classification and Economic Scaling of English Ceramics from 1787 to 1880,” Historical Archaeology 25, no. 1 (1991): 3.
12 . For further information on the causes and effects of the Panic of 1819, especially in the Western Country, see Thomas H. Greer, “Economic and Social Effects of the Depression of 1819 in the Old Northwest,” Indiana Magazine of History 44, no. 3 (September 1948): 230.
13. An impressive book by R. T. Haines Halsey, Pictures of Early New York on Dark Blue Staffordshire Pottery (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1899), provides historical descriptions of the print images and illustrates many of these early dishes in vivid color.
14. Occasionally a source states that 1819 is the year Louisville’s first pottery came into being. This may be due to an extremely early book, H. McMurtrie, M.D., Sketches of Louisville & Environs, published by S. Penn of Louisville in 1819, in which it was stated that there was one pottery in the town “at this time.”
15. From evidence presented in litigation between Jacob Lewis and Louisville merchants, Southard & Starr, between 1826 and 1828, particularly cases 1444 and 3349, Old Circuit Court, Common Law, Jefferson County, Kentucky State Archives, Frankfort.
16. Probably the celebrated whiteware manufactory of David E. Seixas, which, according to Edwin AtLee Barber, closed in 1822. Edwin AtLee Barber,The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States and Marks of American Potters, combined ed. (New York: Feingold and Lewis, 1976), p. 115. Information on Lewis’s attempts to have clays tested in 1823, 1825, and 1828 is found in “A brief view of efforts made to get a Fine Ware pottery established in Louisville, Kentucky,” appended to Memorial of Certain Citizens of Louisville, Kentucky, 23rd Congress, 1st sess., document 366.
17. Originally reported in a publication known either as the American or Pittsburgh Pottery and Glassware Reporter; reprinted in part in The Brick, Pottery and Glass Journal (August 1879), but more completely in The Potters Gazette 8, no. 40 (August 21, 1879).
18. Journal and ledgers of Jabez Vodrey in the possession of his descendants in East Liverpool, Ohio (hereinafter referred to as “Vodrey diary”), November 11, 1849.
19. The Potters Gazette.
20. “First Geological Survey of Pennsylvania,” in Annual Report of the Pennsylvania State College (1897), p. 50. Also, Wilbur Stout states, “The coal formations of eastern and southwestern Ohio supplied the settlers with buff-burning clays for stoneware, yellow ware, and rockingham.” Ohio Geological Survey, Bulletin No. 26 (1923), p. 9.
21. The Potters Gazette.
22. Ibid.
23. From 23rd Congress, “A brief view of efforts made”
24. Ibid.
25. Laws of Kentucky, chap. 193.
26. Anne Royall, Mrs. Royall’s Southern Tour, or Second Series of the Black Book, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: 1831), pp. 205, 206.
27. Ibid., p. 211.
28. Ibid., pp. 212, 213. In manuscripts of this time, England is often considered part of Europe.
29. From 23rd Congress, Memorial of Certain Citizens
30. Benjamin Tucker to John F. Anderson, 4 December 1830, and to Jacob Lewis, 22 January 1831. Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
31. Courtesy of several individuals, including J. Jefferson Miller II and Susan H. Myers.
32. Document in possession of Jabez Vodrey’s descendants.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid. No marked ware and no such books have yet been found.
35. Ibid.
36. Vodrey diary.
37. Ibid.
38. Louisville Directory for 1844–45, p. 55.
39. From 23rd Congress, “A brief view of efforts made”
40. Old Circuit Court of Common Law, Jefferson County, Kentucky, bk. 30, pp. 162, 371, Kentucky State Archives, Frankfort.
41. Document in possession of Jabez Vodrey’s descendants.
42. Information on the Indiana Pottery Co., including its petition to the United States Congress, in Frank Stefano, Jr., “James Clews, Nineteenth-Century Potter, Part II: The American Experience, Antiques (March 1974): 553–555.
43. “Henry Clews the Financier Spent His Boyhood in Troy,” Evansville (Ind.) Courier, 10 February 1907. Courtesy of Frank Stefano, Jr.
44. “James Clews, Nineteenth-Century Potter”
45. Plat maps and documents in the archives of the Filson Club, Louisville, Kentucky.
46. Vital statistics, copied from the Lewis-Shallcross family bible by a descendant, in the possession of the Filson Club. Lewis’s eldest daughter, Mary Zane Lewis (1806–?), married steamboat captain John Shallcross (1799–1866) on December 3, 1822. Their eldest daughter, Mary Ellen (1824–1844), married William Pope Speed on January 30, 1843, and died during or shortly after the birth of James Breckinridge Speed on January 4, 1844. |