1. W. Sterling Schermerhorn, a native Virginian, is a second great-grandson of the potter John P. Schermerhorn.
2. It has been suggested that John P. Schermerhorn was living in Charles City County in 1810 before making the move to Richmond.
3. Bradford L. Rauschenberg, “‘B. DuVal & Co/Richmond’: A Newly Discovered Pottery,” Journal of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts 4 (May 1978): 56.
4. John Poole Schermerhorn’s will is recorded in Henrico County Will Book 13, reel 60, May 3, 1848, pp. 248–50, Library of Virginia, Richmond. For the appraisal of his inventory, see ibid., March 15, 1850, p. 378.
5. Richard Schermerhorn Jr., Schermerhorn Genealogy and Family Chronicles (New York: Tobias A. Wright, 1914). This is the most comprehensive Schermerhorn family genealogy to date, although it does, unfortunately, largely omit the John P. branch and Lucas J. lines. More information about the Schermerhorn family is available at www.schenectadyhistory.org/ families/schermerhorn/chronicles/index.html; and Early South Carolina Newspaper Database Reports, www.escndatabase.com. For information on the Schermerhorns of Virginia, see http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=SHOW&db=psidiver&recno=1926.
6. Personal communication from W. Sterling Schermerhorn to Kurt C. Russ, October 6, 2003.
7. Barbra Kay Armstrong, comp., Index to the 1800 Census of New York (1984; repr. Baltimore, Md.: Clearfield Co., 1996), p. 30.
8. Twenty-first-century collectors have documented Schermerhorn wares turning up with some frequency in both North Carolina and South Carolina, reflecting the nineteenth-century shipment of these Virginia wares southward. This is not at all unusual, as Rauschenberg and others have noted the frequency with which New York (Crolius), Philadelphia, and Baltimore wares are found in old estates all along the eastern seaboard.
9. Warren F. Broderick and William Bouck, Pottery Works: Potteries of New York State’s Capital District and Upper Hudson Region (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1995), p. 112.
10. The original mortgage from Schermerhorn to Morgan is recorded at Middlesex County, New Jersey Clerk’s Office, Mortgage Book 8, p. 367. This is an abstracted, partial transcription, which also appears in M. Lelyn Branin, The Early Makers of Handcrafted Earthenware and Stoneware in Central and Southern New Jersey (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1988), p. 98. A wonderful map of Middlesex County by J. W. Otley and J. Keily (Camden, N.J.: Published by Lloyd Van Derveer, 1850) displays the kilns, potteries, and well-known potter families in the area. It is reproduced at http://mapmaker.rutgers.edu/middlesex_county/middlesex_1850_wallmap1.jpg.
11. Green’s business was in northeast Philadelphia, near Second Street and Germantown Road (sometimes also listed as Franklin and School Streets). Susan H. Myers, Handcraft to Industry: Philadelphia Ceramics in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology, no. 43 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980), p. 62.
12. Broderick and Bouck, Pottery Works, p. 112.
13. Heinrich Ries and Henry Barnard Kümmel, The Clays and Clay Industry of New Jersey, vol. 6, Geological Survey of New Jersey, Trenton, N.J., Final Report of the State Geologist (Trenton, N.J.: MacCrellish and Quigley, 1904).
14. Alvia Disbrow Martin, At the Headwaters of Cheesequake Creek (Old Bridge Township, N.J.: Madison Township Historical Society, 1979), pp. 116–24.
15. James R. Mitchell, “The Potters of Cheesequake, New Jersey,” in Ceramics in America, edited by Ian Quimby (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press for the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1973), pp. 319–38.
16. In the first quarter of the eighteenth century the Lett family intermarried with Schermerhorn cousins, making it likely that the Schermerhorn family had dealings with the Letts almost a hundred years before the potter moved to the area (if indeed he had not already been living there, or was a frequent visitor to family there).
17. Richard Schermerhorn Jr., Schermerhorn Family Scrapbook, LDS microfilm no. 1022390 (from original typescript), Genealogical Society of Utah, 1977, Salt Lake City.
18. For information regarding John P. Schermerhorn’s capacity as a soldier, establishing him in Richmond earlier than 1814, see Stuart Lee Butler, A Guide to Virginia Militia Units in the War of 1812 (Athens, Ga.: Iberian Publishing Co., 1988), p. 183.
19. In 1806 William Harwood was granted a patent for roofing “Tile and Pan Tile” in Richmond; Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, A Digest of Patents, Issued by the United States, from 1790 to January 1, 1839 (Washington, D.C.: Printed by Peter Force, 1840). An advertisement in the Halifax Compiler (North Carolina), June 19, 1818, p. 1, announces William Harwood’s establishment of the Petersburg Stoneware Manufactory.
20. July 31, 1818, City of Richmond, Va., Records No. 6, Common Council 1816–1819, p. 244, indicating a chamberlain was to pay John P. Schermerhorn $79.75 for the storage of gunpowder.
21. Butler, Guide to Virginia Militia Units in the War of 1812, p. 183.
22. For confirmation of John P. Schermerhorn’s role in the War of 1812 and pushing back to 1813 evidence of his presence in Richmond, see National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA), Record Group 94, Records of the OYce of the Adjutant General, War Department, Muster Rolls of Volunteer Organizations of the War of 1812 from Virginia, Washington, D.C.; and Muster Rolls of the Virginia Militia in the War of 1812 Being a Supplement to the Payrolls (Richmond, Va., 1852), pp. 346, 790. As a point of interest, it appears Schermerhorn’s commanding oYcer, Colonel John Ambler, also owned riverfront property in the vicinity of Rocketts about this time (1815).
23. Enquirer (Richmond), June 25, 1814, p. 3, col. 5, and Virginia Patriot (Richmond), June 25, 1814, p. 2, col. 5. The ads detail the varieties of vessels oVered and their associated prices.
24. Daily Compiler (Richmond), July 9, 1814, p. 3, col. 4.
25. Virginia Argus (Richmond), June 15, 1814, p. 3, col. 3.
26. December 6, 1817, Mutual Assurance Society of Virginia, vol. 55, reel 6, no. 964.
27. Records of 1820 Census of Manufacturing, Virginia, Henrico County, microcopy no. 279, roll 18, item 508, NARA (Washington, D.C.).
28. The 1820 Census of Manufacturers, Henrico County, Virginia, lists “Thomas Amos, stoneware manufactory; Samuel Frayser, Stoneware manufactory &c.; John P.Schermerhorn, Stoneware of all kinds; Samuel Wilson, stoneware of all kinds.”
29. Richmond Commercial Compiler, October 3, 1820, p. 3, col. 3.
30. Richmond Directory, Register and Almanac for 1819 (Richmond, Va.: Published by John Maddox, 1819), pp. 21, 44: “The rates for every dray or cart, shall be as follows, viz: From Rockets’ landing on the north west of Gilly’s creek to Rockets’ warehouse, 20 cents.”
31. George W. Bagby, Canal Reminiscences: Recollections of Travel in the Old Days on the James River and Kanawha Canal (Richmond, Va.: West, Johnston and Co., 1879), reproduced online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/bagby/menu.html; see also Mary Wingfield Scott, Houses of Old Richmond (New York: Bonanza Books, 1941).
32. Henrico County Land Tax Lists, 1818–1823, reel 144, Library of Virginia, Richmond.
33. The purchase of 101 acres by John P. Schermerhorn from Francis Wilson is recorded in Charles City Co., Va., Deed Book 7, Sept. 16, 1830, p. 466.
34. Henrico County Land Tax Lists, 1845–1860, reel 147, Library of Virginia, Richmond.
35. Henrico County Will Book 13, reel 60, March 15, 1850, p. 378, Library of Virginia, Richmond.
36. Compare with a three-gallon jug marked “c. crolius manufacturer new-york” and three loosely defined blue swags illustrated in American Stoneware and Pottery at Absentee Auction Catalogue, sale cat. (Woodstock, Conn.: Arman Absentee Auctions, November 5, 1986), p. 11, no. 25; and an ovoid one-gallon jug with reeded neck and great bold stamp (in semicircular form) filled with blue marked “c. crolius manufacturer manhattan wells new-york” ca. 1794–1838, illustrated in 3 Behrs Antique American Stoneware Catalogue 2 (Carmel, N.Y.: 3 Behrs Antique American Stoneware, 1982), pp. 55–56, fig. 181.
37. Compare with decorative motifs on examples pictured in Mitchell, “The Potters of Cheesequake, New Jersey.”
38. See Robert Hunter and Marshall Goodman, “The Destruction of the Benjamin DuVal Stoneware Manufactory, Richmond, Virginia,” this volume.
39. See Robert Hunter, Kurt C. Russ, and Marshall Goodman, “Eastern Virginia Stoneware,” Antiques 167, no. 4 (April 2005): 124–33.
40. See Mitchell, “Potters of Cheesequake”; Harold F. Guilland, Early American Folk Pottery (Philadelphia: Chilton Book Co., 1971).
41. See Mitchell, “Potters of Cheesequake, New Jersey,” p. 320, figs. 1b, c.
42. A forthcoming article by Kurt C. Russ and Robert Hunter in Ceramics in America (2006) will examine in greater detail other nineteenth-century Richmond-area potters and their role in the expanding regional industry in Henrico and Charles City counties as well as in Petersburg. |