Footnotes

1. EARTHENWARE MANUFACTORY

The subscriber has lately, at a very considerable expense erected a Manufactory of Earthen Ware in the Town, which he now carries on, on a very extensive plan, where Merchants & others can be supplied at the shortest notice, & their orders carefully executed. He flatters himself that the quality of his wares is, & will constantly be, equal to any work in Phil. or elsewhere, & that his assiduity to please, & the goodness of his ware, will assure him the patronage of all those who wish to encourage home manufactures. He has also for sale at his house, the upper end, Prince St., a large assortment of CHINA, QUEEN’S WARE & GLASS.
Alexandria Gazette, November 1, 1792

2. Carl Steen, “Pottery, Intercolonial Trade, and Revolution: Domestic Earthenwares and the Development of an American Social Identity,” Historical Archaeology 33, no. 3 (1999): 62–63.
3. Lura Woodside Watkins, Early New England Potters and Their Wares (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 209.
4. New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, March 15, 1773, cited in Susan H. Myers, Handcraft to Industry: Philadelphia Ceramics in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980), p. 105.
5. Maryland Gazette, September 2, 1756, cited in Myers, Handcraft to Industry, p. 105.
6. This work is being undertaken by physicists Dr. Romeo Segnan and Dr. J. P. Auffret of American University.
7. Beth A. Bower, “The Pottery-Making Trade in Colonial Philadelphia: The Growth of an Early Urban Industry,” in Domestic Pottery of the Northeastern United States, 1625–1850, edited by Sarah Peabody Turnbaugh (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1985), pp. 268–71. The first known Philadelphia potter was William Crews of Southwark in Surrey.
8. David R. M. Gaimster, Mark Redknap, and Hans Helmut Wegner, Zer Keramik des Mittelaters und der beginnenden Neuzeit im Rheinland (Oxford, Eng.: BAR International Series 440, 1988), p. 174, as cited in Patricia E. Gibble, “Continuity, Change and Ethnic Identity in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania Red Earthenware” (Ph.D. diss., American University, 2001), p. 183.
9. Elizabeth Cosans, “1974 Franklin Court Report, Volume VI: Catalog and Remarks” (Philadelphia: National Park Service, Independence National Historical Park, 1974), pp. 52–56; H. E. Comstock, The Pottery of the Shenandoah Valley Region (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 1994), pp. 4–8 and fig. 1.3.
10. English slipware technology is illustrated in Michelle Erickson and Robert Hunter, “Dots, Dashes, and Squiggles: Early English Slipware Technology,” in Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2001), pp. 95–114. A discussion of slipware methodology can also be found in Leslie B. Grigsby, English Slip-Decorated Earthenware at Williamsburg (Williamsburg, Va.: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1993), pp. 16–19.
11. Erickson and Hunter, “Early English Slipware Technology,” pp. 95–114.
12. Richard J. Dent et al., Archaeological and Historical Investigation, Metropolitan Detention Center Site (36PH91), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Occasional Publication 2, The Cultural Resource Group, Louis Berger & Associates, Inc., Washington, D.C., for the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, D.C. (1997), I-I.
13. Dent et al., Metropolitan Detention Center, p. i.
14. Dent et al., Metropolitan Detention Center, part III, pp. 35 and 86.
15. Records of the Supreme Executive Council, April 4, 1780, as quoted in Beth A. Bower, “The Pottery-Making Trade in Colonial Philadelphia,” in Domestic Pottery of the Northeastern United States 1625–1850, p. 275.
16. As quoted in Dent et al., Metropolitan Detention Center, part III, p. 37.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., part V, p. 181.
19. Ibid., part IV, p. 53.
20. Ibid., part V, p. 126.
21. Ibid., part V, p. 88.
22. Ibid., part V, p. 126.
23. Ibid., part V, p. 129.
24. Ibid., part V, p. 132.
25. Philadelphia Deed Book D 44 (1783): 347, cited in Dent et al., Metropolitan Detention Center, part V, pp. 126 and 132.
26. Ten sherds were selected for analysis, from excavation Block 2, Unit 6, Stratum B (buried A horizon). These were found in association with kiln furniture.
27. In 2001 the author viewed materials from these Franklin Court features at Independence National Historical Park, courtesy of Robert L. Giannini III, Museum Curator.
28. Cosans, “1974 Franklin Court Report,” part VI, pp. 4–5 and 57–59. In 1962 archaeologists excavated an assemblage of kiln-related materials on the same block, under the granite paving of disused Oriana Street, and surmised that they related to Deborah Franklin’s first husband, potter John Rogers, who left Philadelphia in 1727. As reported in John L. Cotter, Daniel G. Roberts, and Michael Parrington, The Buried Past: An Archaeological History of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 93–94 and 453. Cosans, however, thought it more likely that the Oriana Street deposit, along with that in the wells, related to drainage problems on the block and the extensive filling and grading that took place in 1769 at the site of Franklin’s new house.
29. The author viewed materials from the Chiller Plant site (INDE 4037) in 1999, courtesy of Paul Inashima, while they were undergoing analysis and conservation at the National Park Service’s Denver Service Center in Rockville, Maryland, and again in 2001 at Independence National Historical Park, courtesy of Robert L. Giannini III, Museum Curator.
30. Comstock, Shenandoah Valley, p. 84.
31. Ibid., pp. 106–44, 225–74.
32. Ivor Noël Hume, A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), p. 135.
33. Cosans, “1974 Franklin Court Report,” part VI, p. 52.
34. Documentary research on Piercy and other Alexandria potters was conducted by John K. Pickens, the first chairman of the Alexandria Archaeological Commission, and by C. Malcolm Watkins, Richard Muzzrole, and Betty J. Walters, under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. John K. Pickens, “Early American Craftsmen: Captain Henry Piercy, Patriot and Master Potter” (1979), files of the Alexandria Archaeology Museum and the Pickens Papers (box 57), Alexandria Library, Special Collections; C. Malcolm Watkins, “The Pots and Potteries of Alexandria, Virginia: 1792–1876,” (n.d.), files of the Alexandria Archaeology Museum.
35. Directories of 1791 and 1793, cited in Harrold E. Gillingham, “Pottery, China and Glass Making in Philadelphia,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 54 (1930): 114.
36. Pennsylvania Gazette, December 21, 1774, cited in Gillingham “Pottery, China and Glass Making,” p. 113.
37. The Society of the Cincinnati was organized in 1783 by officers of the Continental Army. George Washington was the society’s first president. Membership in the society passed to the eldest son upon the member’s death.
38. Joseph Fornance, Esq., “The Lonely Grave near Woodstown, N.J.,” Papers of John K. Pickens, in the files of Alexandria Archaeology Museum. Fornance was a great-grandson of Christian Piercy.
39. Gillingham, “Pottery, China and Glass Making,” p. 113. The procession included a flag with the motto “The Potter hath power over his clay” (Romans 9:21) as well as an image of a kiln burning and several men at work, a horse-drawn carriage with a potter’s wheel that could produce cups, bowls, and mugs during the parade, and a group of twenty potters led by Piercy and Gilbert.
40. Virginia Gazette and Alexandria Advertiser, November 1, 1792.
41. Gillingham, “Pottery, China and Glass Making,” p. 114.
42. Alexandria Archaeology discovered the waterworn ceramics beside the Carlyle-Dalton Wharf, 44AX81. The wharf, at the foot of Cameron Street, was built by two of the town’s founders in 1759. The artifacts from the fill consisted of some mid-eighteenth-century ceramics that were not waterworn, and the waterworn ceramics from the third quarter of the seventeenth century.
43. James C. Mackay, “A Brief History of Alexandria, Virginia” (Alexandria, Va.: The Lyceum, Alexandria’s History Museum, 1996), <http://oha.ci.alexandria.va.us/lyceum/ly-
historic.html>; and Donald K. Shomette, “Maritime Alexandria: An Evaluation of Submerged Cultural Resource Potentials at Alexandria, Virginia” (1985), pp. 67–69, files of the Alexandria Archaeology Museum.
44. Samuel Shepherd, The Statutes at Large of Virginia, From October Session 1792, to December Session 1806, Inclusive, in Three Volumes, (New Series,) Being a Continuation of Hening (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1970), p. 149.
45. T. Michael Miller, ed., Pen Portraits of Alexandria, Virginia, 1739–1900 (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1987), p. 60, quoting The Alexandria Gazette Commercial & Political of July 26, 1816.
46. Virginia Gazette and Alexandria Advertiser, November 1, 1792.
47. The following table summarizes ownership and partnerships at Alexandria Potteries that produced earthenware in the Philadelphia style. Stoneware potters John Swann (1813– 1825), who had apprenticed with Lewis Plum, and Tildon Easton (1841–1843) also produced some undecorated, utilitarian earthenware.

Date	Piercy Pottery	Fisher Pottery	Plum Pottery
1792–1809	Owner: Henry Piercy
1795–98		Owner: Thomas Fisher
1797	Partners: Henry Piercy Lewis Plum John Piercy (nephew)	Partners: Thomas Hewes James Miller
1798	Partners: Henry Piercy Thomas Fisher	Partners: Henry Piercy Thomas Fisher
1799	Tenant: Lewis Plum Thomas Hewes
1800	Tenant: Joseph Hibberd		Prince Street Partners: Lewis Plum James Miller Apprentice
1803			Prince Street: Owner: Lewis Plum Apprentice: John Swann
1805	Tenant: Thomas Hewes James Miller
1809	Property offered for sale at Piercy’s death
1811	Property divided into house lots
1814–21			S. Columbus Street: Plum moves to new Pottery on S. Columbus near southwest corner of Wolfe
1822			S. Columbus Street: Owners: Evans and Griggs (after Plum’s death)
1828			Pottery no longer in operation

48. The location of potteries was not regulated in Alexandria at this time but was of concern. A letter to the editor published in the Columbian Mirror & Alexandria Gazette on May 31, 1800, expresses concern about an unknown pot house that apparently underlies the nineteenth-century Alexandria City Hall on Cameron Street between Fairfax and Royal Streets:

Mr. Price:
I Wish to call the attention of the citizens to a subject, which appears to me to require their immediate interposition. A pot-house has lately been erected, nearly in the center of the improved part of the Court House square: it is surrounded on all sides by wooden buildings, some of which are within three or four feet of the blaze of the oven. Connected as it is, and exposed to every wind that may blow, a terrible conflagration must be rightly expected, as long as the evil is permitted to exist.

49. From 1968 to 1969, test excavations were conducted at the Piercy (44AX87) and Fisher (44AX80) potteries. These excavations were conducted by Richard J. Muzzrole, Museum Specialist, the Department of Cultural History of the National Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History), Smithsonian Institution, under the direction of curator C. Malcolm Watkins. This undertaking was part of an effort by the Smithsonian to conduct salvage archaeology in the area of a large urban renewal project in the center of Old Town Alexandria. A large number of Philadelphia-style wares were found in privy deposits, and Watkins and his staff searched documentary evidence, and then the pottery sites, for evidence that the earthenwares were locally produced.
50. Virginia Gazette and Alexandria Advertiser, November 1, 1792.
51. Columbia Mirror and Alexandria Advertiser, June 20, 1795. On March 3, 1796, another ad offered for rent as of April 1, “A brick house in King Street now occupied by Captain Pearcy [sic].”
52. A brick-lined privy behind the shop at 406 King Street (44AX91, feature 4KSW-15), was excavated in 1974 by Richard Muzzrole for the City of Alexandria. All artifacts are in the collection of the Alexandria Archaeology Museum.
53. Although not found at the Alexandria pottery sites, tin-glazed wares were made by potters in the Shenandoah Valley. American Gazette & General Advertiser (Norfolk, Va.) March 17, 1797, 3: 3, cited in Bradford L. Rauschenberg, “American Tin-Glaze: The John Bell Inkstand,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 3, no. 1 (May 1977): 34. A color illustration of the Bell inkstand, dated 1825, appears in Comstock, Shenandoah Valley, p. 109, fig. 4.71.
54. Alexandria City Land and Personal Property Tax Assessments 1796–1800. Microfilm, Alexandria Library, Special Collections.
55. Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial and Political, August 28, 1809:

TO LEASE...A Valuable half acre Lot of Ground, situated on Washington and Duke streets, with a fine corner lot. There is on the
said property three frame buildings, one has been used as a pot house, but could easily be altered into anything else, as it is a large and strong building—the others are dwelling houses.
M’Knight and Stewart

56. Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial and Political, November 1, 1809.
57. Pickens, “Captain Henry Piercy,” p. 22b.
58. Wasters and kiln furniture from the Smithsonian’s 1968 excavation at the Piercy Pottery site are in the collections of the Alexandria Archaeology Museum and the Department of Ceramics and Glass at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
59. Susan H. Myers, “Marketing American Pottery: Maulden Perine in Baltimore,” Winterthur Portfolio 19, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 56.
60. The loopy, slip-trailed lines resemble a figure’s hair, drawn in profile, on a pitcher from Market Square, AX94 MB-C, 67.1783A.
61. Deed research for the 200 block of South St. Asaph Street provided by T. Michael Miller, Research Historian, Office of Historic Alexandria, City of Alexandria, Virginia.
62. Cosans,“1974 Franklin Court Report,” citing Barbara Liggett, “1971 Franklin Court Report.”
63. The site (44AX87) was excavated over a five-day period in February 1999 under the direction of archaeologists Steven J. Shephard and Francine Bromberg of Alexandria Archaeology, a division of the Office of Historic Alexandria, City of Alexandria, Virginia.
64. For example, Erickson and Hunter, “Early English Slipware Technology,” p. 103.
65. Pickens, “Captain Henry Piercy,” p. 13a. The property was advertised in the Columbia Mirror and Alexandria Gazette on June 6, 1796:

TO BE RENTED–A Store and Cellar, and, if required, a Country Room. They are situated in Fairfax Street near Prince Street. Inquire of H. PIERCY

66. The authors examined Philadelphia earthenware from excavations at 6th and Market Streets on Independence Mall, with thanks to National Park Service archaeologist Paul Inashima and conservator Lisa Young of Alexandria Conservation Services, Ltd. The site was excavated by archaeologists Rebecca Yamin and Jed Levin of John Milner Associates.
67. Dent et al., Metropolitan Detention Center, part III, p. 36.
68. Prudence Rice, Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 371.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid., p. 413.
71. Mariangela Bertelle et al., “Firing Techniques of the Impasti from the Protohistoric Site of Concordia Sagittaria (Venice),” Journal of Cultural Heritage 1 (2000): 261–79.
72. R. L. Cohen, “Mössbauer Spectroscopy: Recent Developments,” Science 178 (1972): 828; Gary S. Collins, “Point Defects in Solids Studied by Hyperfine Methods,” Defects in Solids Group, Hyperfine Interactions Laboratory, Department of Physics, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington (1977), <http://defects.physics.wsu.edu/ME-setup.html>; The Danish Mars Project, “Mössbauer Spectroscopy” (University of Copenhagen: The Danish Mars Project at the Niels Bohr Institute for Astronomy, Physics, and Geophysics, 2000), <http://www.fys.ku.dk/mars/moss_long.htm>; Gunther Wertheim, “Mössbauer Effect in Chemistry and Solid-State Physics,” Science 144 (1964): 253.
73. Cohen, “Mössbauer Spectroscopy: Recent Developments,” p. 828.
74. Ibid.
75. Bertelle et al., “Firing Techniques of the Impasti,” pp. 262–77; Rice, Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook, p. 400.
76. Bertelle et al., “Firing Techniques of the Impasti,” p. 262; Charles Weaver, J. M. Wampler, and T. E. Pecuil, “Mössbauer Analysis of Iron in Clay Minerals,” Science 156 (1967): 504.
77. The clay sample from excavations at the site of the National Constitution Center’s future home on Independence Mall was provided by archaeologists Thomas Crist and Peter Glumac of Kise Straw & Kolodner, Inc.