Miranda Goodby
"Our Home in the West": Staffordshire Potters and Their Emigration to the America in the 1840's

In 1845 a series of polemical verses titled “The Pioneers Song" appeared in a union newspaper, The Potters’ Examiner and Workman’s Advocate, published in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. They called for British potters to forsake the tyranny of their homeland and emigrate to America:

Whether inspired by the poem or not, hundreds of British potters emigrated to the United States in the early nineteenth century. This is not an exhaustive study but rather an examination, through their own words, of those potters who left during the first sustained period of emigration in the 1840s, looking at the state of the Staffordshire pottery industry at the time, the hardships endured by the workers there, and the reasons that prompted them to leave their homes for a new country. It is also an attempt to show what their opinions of America were and how they sought to establish themselves and their families. It makes use predominantly of one full and detailed—if biased—source, the Staffordshire weekly newspaper, The Potters’ Examiner and Workman’s Advocate.2

In the early years of the American colonies, pottery making was not high on the list of desirable immigrant skills or crafts. It was a specialized trade requiring skilled workers and access to raw materials of clay, fuel, and lead for glazing. Necessary ceramics could be supplied from Britain, including European wares shipped through British ports. In addition, the British government prohibited the establishment of certain manufacturing trades or industries in the colonies in order to protect English interests.

Nonetheless, as America became more settled and the population pushed westward, there was an increasing demand for pottery, along with the discovery of new deposits of raw materials, some suitable for making coarse kitchen and dairy wares, others—white-firing clays—for making the more highly regarded stonewares, creamwares, and even porcelains. It be­came harder to enforce the restrictive regulations against competition. Demand for certain products encouraged the development of trade skills and the establishment of workshops on a large and small scale. By the end of the eighteenth century, numerous potters from Britain and the European continent worked along the eastern seaboard. Their products reflected both the raw materials available in various regions and consumer demand.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, pottery production in Britain was expanding massively. By 1762 about one hundred and fifty factories existed in north Staffordshire alone with employment at around seven thousand;3 by 1800 employees numbered fifteen to twenty thousand.4
There was job security for all who had the necessary skills. Indeed, skilled labor was so scarce that a system of annual hiring was instituted, enabling employers to contract potters for a period of twelve months, from Martinmas to Martinmas. Em­ployers could be sure they had skilled workers for the year ahead.

This was not a climate in which pottery workers were likely to consider emigration. Opportunities for master potters were limited in the North American colonies where the market was still small and pottery workers would have to be imported. In addition, there was no infrastructure to provide the necessary fuel, clay, or other essential materials for fine wares. Manufacturers in north Staffordshire benefited from the local availability of skilled labor, as well as from a close-knit society that provided financial support and social and political connections. As America expanded, however, it became potentially more attractive to British potters.

Since the middle of the eighteenth century, it was known that fine clays were available in America. The first patent for Bow porcelain mentioned the use of “unaker,” or white clay from Carolina also known as “Cherokee clay.”5 William Cookworthy, who took out a patent for hard-paste porcelain in 1768, was also interested in clay from Carolina,6 and Josiah Wedgwood paid Thomas Griffiths to search Carolina for suitable clays for his creamware factory.7

None of these mid-eighteenth-century ventures took root commercially. The difficulties of negotiating for access rights, transport problems, and costs meant supplies were intermittent, and potters turned to English clays instead. However, one Staffordshire master potter was sufficiently in­trigued by the possibilities of “Cherokee clay” to move to South Carolina, establish a factory, and encourage workers to join him. This was John Bartlam, who, according to a 1783 pamphlet written by Josiah Wedgwood:

This pamphlet, partnered with other lurid tales of American life, was designed to emphasize the risks involved in going to work abroad. According to Wedgwood, emigration would lead to almost certain poverty and despair, probably culminating in an early death: “Like plants removed into a soil unnatural to them, they dwindled away and died.”9

Proclaiming that Britain was “a land truly flowing with milk and honey” Wedgwood addressed himself to those contemplating emigration:

Wedgwood concluded by pointing out Parliamentary acts decreeing that “a manufacturer or artificer,” such as a potter, would be committing a criminal act, liable to a fine of £500 or twelve months imprisonment, if he left “His Majesty’s dominions” in order to “use, exercise or teach any of the said trades” to foreigners and did not return to Britain after being given notice to do so. Such persons would be excluded from taking any legacy devised to them, prevented from administering to anyone’s estates, and would forfeit all lands, goods, and chattels. In addition, they would be regarded as “an alien and out of His Majesty’s protection.” Wedgwood ended his address by offering a bounty of fifty guineas for every person “apprehended by you who shall be convicted of endeavouring to entice or to hire any of our potters into foreign service.”11 The two acts of Parliament mentioned in Wedgwood’s pamphlet were sufficiently draconian on their own, without Wedgwood’s additional fifty guineas and ominous warnings, to explain why relatively few potters were immigrating to America at the end of the eighteenth century.

The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a period of intense political upheaval. Continental wars spread from Europe to the Americas, while the insurrection of the colonists, which brought Wedgwood’s nephew Thomas Byerley unexpectedly home from America, further dissuaded Englishmen from immigrating to the United States for some time.12 Once the relationship between the new nation and Britain was stabilized, the sympathy of America for the regicides of France and the Napoleonic Wars discouraged many potential immigrants from abandoning England for un­known conditions, a situation which was reinforced with the War of 1812.

It was not just fear that kept the Staffordshire potters at home. In the early nineteenth century, the British pottery industry continued to grow and, despite some setbacks, it was a prosperous time for potters, both masters and workmen.13 In 1824 the Combination Acts were repealed.14 For the first time, potters were able to organize into unions and negotiate collectively for improved hiring practices, working conditions, and wages.

Although operating from a strong negotiating position, the diversity of skills among the potters made it difficult for workers to band together; each trade had its own concerns. However, there were a number of grievances in common: annual hiring abuses, payments “good from oven,” and the allowance and truck systems.

Annual hiring was a long-established system whereby, in the autumn, employees were hired for the coming year. Although employees were bound to the employer for twelve months, the latter was not obliged to find work for his laborers for more than one day per week. Despite this, potters could not give notice and work elsewhere without written authorization from their contracted employer. At slack times, the employer could lay off his workforce for as long as he wanted, knowing that they would be available as soon as conditions improved.

At the annual hiring, the rates of pay for piecework were also fixed for the year.15 This meant that only those rates in place at Martinmas were agreed upon; any prices for making wares or patterns introduced during the remainder of the year could be imposed by the manufacturer without negotiation. This was frequently a way to effect a wholesale reduction in prices paid for work and, therefore, in wages.

Another major grievance was paying “good from oven.” In this instance, workers were only paid for what was deemed good, saleable ware—not at the point when the ware left their hands as is the present system but after it had been fired in the biscuit oven. For example, a thrower or plate maker might do his work well, yet if the firing failed and his work was ruined, he was not paid. Since the manufacturer established what was “good from oven,” the system was open to abuse. Employees alleged that employers, having refused to pay them for work done, were then selling their wares as seconds or even thirds.16

A third indignity was the allowance system. Another way of cutting wages, the workman “allowed” his employer one, two, or three pence in the shilling. The term itself was misleading, for it was the employer who settled the rate, and the deduction was compulsory.

Some manufacturers had an additional way of cheating their employees: the truck system. Rather than paying their employees in cash, they paid them in goods. However, poor quality or useless goods—lengths of cloth or cheap jewelry—could not take the place of cash to pay the rent or buy food and fuel. Of all the ways to lower wages, this practice raised the most indignation among the workers.

It was not surprising that once unions had been legalized a series of strikes erupted specifically to rectify these problems. In the main, they were successful, but in 1836 the National Union of Operative Potters overreached itself, and after a twenty-week stoppage of work, union members were forced by starvation to return. As a result, they were in debt, demoralized, and unwilling for a number of years to “turn-out” against the employers. The strike was followed by a serious downturn in trade in the 1840s. Unemployment was on the rise, as were former hiring and wage abuses, including the now illegal truck system. A new union—the United Branches of Operative Potters—was formed in 1843. As an alternative to direct, aggressive action against employers, the new union proposed emigration to remove surplus labor from the market and give the remaining workers a better bargaining position.

In May 1844 the union’s Central Committee formed The Potters’ Joint Stock Emigration Society and Savings Fund.17 They decided to raise a levy of one pound per man for the purchase of 12,000 acres of land in one of America’s western states.18 This acreage would be divided into allotments of twenty acres, with five acres of each to be fenced, planted, and provided with a house before the immigrants’ arrival. Union members, and their families, would receive an allotment of land by lottery and have all their emigration expenses paid to settle them in a new life, not as potters, but as farmers.

This was the era of the “Hungry Forties” in Britain. Trade and the economy were bad. In the same year that the Emigration Society was founded, machinery was introduced by the pottery employers. The plight of the hand-loom weavers of the neighboring county of Lancashire was making national headlines. Replaced by mechanically operated looms, these workers, who only a few years earlier had been the highest paid workers in the massive textile industry, were now starving by the hundreds. In 1844 The Potter’s Examiner and Workman’s Advocate reported that the manufacturer C. J. Mason of Fenton had openly installed a “jigger,” or plate-making machine, capable of turning out sixty to one hundred dozen saucers a day. The machine did not require a skilled plate maker but could be operated by a woman. The article went on to say that factories in northeast England already had cup-making machines. Operated by two women, they were as productive as “six middling workmen”; so that one woman could produce sixty dozen cups for two shillings, whereas a man’s wages for making the same number without machinery would range from fifteen to seventeen shillings.19 The fear aroused by the introduction of this new technology was another argument in favor of the union’s emigration scheme.

The skilled men who, as throwers and flat ware and hollow ware pressers, made up a great part of the potters’ union rallied to support the Central Committee in opposing the introduction of machinery, while The Examiner wholeheartedly promoted the cause of emigration.20 The editor, William Evans, filled the paper with articles and editorials recommending emi­gration, with poetry and dramatic sketches eulogizing “Our Home in the West,” and, more practically, with advertisements aimed at emigrants.21

The tone of the newspaper was utterly different than that of Wedgwood’s pamphlet written sixty years earlier. Wedgwood had stressed the dangers of overseas travel, the unfamiliar qualities of a foreign country, the uncertain prospects in a new land, and the alienation and homesickness that the emigrant would experience. Under Evans’ editorship, there was an almost religious fervor in depicting America as a promised land, an earthly paradise, and emigration itself as a means of salvation for the working potter.

Although the Potters’ Emigration Society intended to send people overseas to become farmers, it could see that many might choose to emigrate, with or without the support of the society, to become potters. “And why not?” asked The Examiner:

The Examiner was perfectly correct. In the 1840s emigration was in the air and, without waiting for the Potters’ Emigration Society to begin its operations, many potters were emigrating independently. Few were possessed of sufficient funds to consider setting up as master potters; most would seek employment in the growing American industry.

Enoch Bradshaw was a union member who, with five colleagues—William Mountford, Thomas Cartwright, George Garner, John Howson, and a Mr. Stacey—set out for America in June 1844.23 Bradshaw gave some idea of the spirit that moved the small group in a letter published by The Examiner shortly before departing:

Bradshaw had been an ovenman living and working in Hanley. A member of the Ovenmen’s branch of the Union of Operative Potters, he was presented by his fellow members with five pounds on his departure for America, a significant gift considering the sum was equal to more than a skilled man’s monthly wage.25 His departure had been precipitated by dismissal from his job because of union affiliation and, presumably, for being an active correspondent to The Examiner.26 From the first, one of the aims of the emigration society was to help prevent starvation and provide asylum for those union members blacklisted by their employers:

Bradshaw’s letter was one of a number, written by intending or actual emigrants, printed by The Examiner to support the society. The letters were drawn from a wide variety of sources—from Staffordshire men who had emigrated independently to become farmers or potters, as well as from members of other emigration societies. Although the letters had been carefully selected by The Examiner’s editor to support the union’s argument in favor of emigration, they are illuminating for other reasons. They depicted the urgency of the emigrants, not only to give an account of their new way of life but also to encourage their friends and relatives to join them.

The letters fall into two main groups: those from emigrants who had become farmers and those who had found journeyman’s work as potters at established workshops, or who had set up in business for themselves. The latter are some of the most interesting since they reveal the difficulties and triumphs attendant on establishing their industry in a new country.

In the United States, many Staffordshire potters settled near the Mississippi River. The towns of Alton, Chester, and Nauvoo, Illinois, were popular in the early 1840s as were St. Louis, Missouri, and the surrounding district.28 Some settled farther east at East Liverpool and Zanesville, Ohio. The existence of pottery making and the presence of other Staffordshire people in the Alton and St. Louis areas of the Mississippi attracted other immigrants.

Two letters from brothers Walter and Thomas Croxton, who were working as potters at Alton in the early 1840s, offer interesting information about their business:29

The next edition of The Examiner printed a second letter from the brothers.

Although the Alton potters’ surname is not given in the two letters, they were mentioned by a number of Staffordshire men writing home including Benjamin Berrisford. Thomas Gotham settled at St. Louis in 1842 and wrote home about the pottery being made nearby:

Another member of the Croxton family, Elijah, was potting across the river at St. Louis:

Although many families emigrated together, very often the husband would go ahead to establish himself and send money home to his family for their journey. In 1845 John and Elisha Poole emigrated from Cobridge, Stoke-on-Trent, to Missouri. Both quickly gained employment at a country pottery and wrote home with accounts of how they found America and their plans:

Months later Elisha Poole added, “I say if a Potter cannot make his fortune here, he does not deserve the name of a Potter.”

It is also possible, through the letters published in The Examiner, to follow the careers of Enoch Bradshaw and his five companions once they arrived in America. Bradshaw’s departure may have been precipitated by his employers finding disfavor with his union activities, but two of his companions, George Garner and John Howson, had contemplated their departure for some time. Howson was the third of his family to emigrate, joining his brothers, Bernard, who was already working in East Liverpool, Ohio, and Thomas, then working in Louisville, Kentucky. Bernard Howson had written to John from East Liverpool in September 1843:47

John Howson, in Stoke-on-Trent, also received a letter from a Rockingham ware potter at Utica, New York, a Mr. Walker, who was operating a small-scale workshop:

Walker also wrote to George Garner who was contemplating emigration, again showing how well his business was doing and how he was thriving:

Knowing of Walker’s arrangement with John Howson, Garner decided against going to Utica. Instead he, Enoch Bradshaw, and Thomas Cart­wright traveled to East Liverpool, Ohio. He wrote to a correspondent giving an account of how they had fared:

Trade did spread, and by 1846 Garner was back in East Liverpool working for himself.58 Cartwright had returned to East Liverpool by March 1845, where he worked for Benjamin Harker.59

John Howson went, with his companions Mountford and Stacey, to join his correspondent Mr. Walker of Utica, New York. Despite Walker’s promises to him of finding a successful Rockingham ware pottery on his arrival, Howson was disappointed. Eighteen months after arriving in America, he wrote to his friends in Stoke-on-Trent:

Although he scarcely mentions potting in his letter, John Howson was in partnership with his brother Bernard, who had joined him from East Liverpool to make yellow and Rockingham wares. The partnership, How­son and Brother, was not a success and was dissolved in December 1846. The firm continued as Howson & Hallam until about 1850,62 and then as Howson and Son until John Howson’s death in 1863. His temperance did not last; a letter written in 1851 by Sarah Tunnicliffe, wife of another English pottery owner in Zanesville, said Howson “is drunk nearly all the time and it seems to be general opinion is going to ruin very fast.”63

Both of John Howson’s partners—his brother Bernard and John Hallam—went to work at the Tunnicliffe’s Pottery in Zanesville before the latter left for Kewanee, Illinois, in 1853.64 According to Robert Adams, a descendant of the Howson family, Bernard Howson moved to Mineral, Ohio, where he started another pottery.

Mountford and Stacey went to Utica with Howson, but Mountford soon moved on, eventually settling in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he wrote to his parents:

Mountford’s letter crossed in the post with one from his father, which he answered within a week:

Despite the promising letters and articles published in The Examiner, the union’s own scheme to send potters to Wisconsin and to found an agricultural settlement was not a success. Fewer than one hundred families emigrated under the scheme, which was under funded and badly advised. The scheme was fatally wounded when it was discovered that the land purchased did not belong to the Potters’ Emigration Society. It was, in fact, Indian land that had not been surveyed for settlement.72 After six years, the society was effectively dead, and its demise brought down the United Branches of Operative Potters, which, under William Evans’ guidance, had devoted much of its funds to the scheme.

Nonetheless, potters, especially those skilled workers who had managed to accumulate a small amount of capital, continued to emigrate. The majority did not aspire to produce china or even white earthenwares. Whatever their background, almost without exception, they made what the local materials dictated.

The adaptability of the immigrant master potters, most of whom had been raised in the Staffordshire tradition, to local conditions in a foreign country must be admired. The majority of emigrating potters, however, were not master potters. These journeyman potters sought employment at established production centers, such as East Liverpool, Ohio, where by 1850 English-born potters composed over seventy percent of the workforce.73

Some of the unfavorable conditions left behind in England were also found in America. In 1845 Thomas Cartwright, and many others, were paid partly in cash and partly in goods due to the lack of ready money, and during the 1840s and 1850s there were several disputes and turn outs or strikes over paying in truck.74 Annual hiring and payment “good from oven” were not applied, however, in the United States, although they remained part of the Staffordshire hiring practice until the twentieth century.75

It was economic necessity that drove most potters and their families to emigrate. The 1840s saw the first major wave, but potters continued to travel to America throughout the century. The rate of emigration fluctuated, reflecting both the state of the English economy and the time of year. One hopeful mother wrote:

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, American factories were actively seeking workers from Stoke-on-Trent, especially as those factories introduced white wares. In 1879 during a strike at East Liverpool, manufacturers sent for workers from Staffordshire, and more than thirty emigrated to be joined later by their families.77

By this date immigrant potters were finding that in the United States working conditions were comparable to those they were leaving, as well as having higher pay and a better standard of living. There was an established industry to take them in with the same division of labor and familiar types of ware: common earthenware, white granite, and china. In addition, travel was much easier and faster; railways and steamships had replaced canal boats and sailing ships.

What is clear from the letters published in The Examiner between 1843 and 1847 was the reliance of pioneers on a network of family and neighborly ties to establish themselves in their new country, at least initially. The letters also reflected the immigrants’ mood. Whether they went to work in existing factories, or had hopes of setting up their own workshop, they were without exception happy that they had left the British class system behind. The main theme of the letters was the high standard of living that the immigrants found in America. Cash payments might be in short supply, and manufactured goods expensive in remote areas, but food was cheap and plentiful. These positive aspects of American life were constantly stressed by The Examiner, giving an almost evangelical tone to the argument for emigration. Even though the distance and costs involved meant that many immigrants would never see their English homes again, most urged their relations not to fear the ocean but to have the courage to join them. Perhaps, most significantly, the published letters reveal the authentic, but rarely heard, voices of a number of ordinary working men and women who were bold enough to seek their “Home in the West.”