1. Lynne Dakin Hastings, Hampton National Historic Site (Historic Hampton, Inc. in cooperation with the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1986), p. 3.
2. Estate Inventory of Charles Ridgely of Hampton, 1829, Maryland Hall of Records, Annapolis; copy in the archives of the Hampton National Historic Site. See also Lynne Dakin Hastings, “The Best Table in America”: Furnishing the Dining Room at Hampton (1810–1829), Historic Furnishings Report (National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1994), pp. 172–80.
3. Letter from Rosalie Stier Calvert to her father, H. J. Steir, dated March 13, 1819. Margaret Law Callcott, Mistress of Riversdale: The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, 1795–1821 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 343–44.
4. Susan Gray Detweiler, George Washington’s Chinaware (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982), p. 112.
5. Ibid.
6. For unknown reasons, two orders for figures were placed on the same day to two different London agents, Messrs. Thomas Eden and Co., and Oxley, Hancock and Co. The order to Thomas Eden and Co. reads: “Fashionable Ornamental Decoration to set of a Dining or Supper Table, that will accommodate 20 People with a Slides of the Images . . . ,” as quoted in Diana Edwards, Taste and Table: A Century of Ceramics in Early Maryland (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), p. 13.
7. Ridgely Papers, ms 692, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore.
8. These items sold for thirty-five dollars on October 1, 1829, at the sale following the death of General Ridgely. Also listed for sale were thirty-seven pieces of Liverpool ware, probably transfer-printed creamware. Archives, Hampton National Historic Site.
9. Edward Lloyd IV and George Washington both owned a number of biscuit porcelain figures made at Niderviller and Angoulême; these could have been described erroneously as plaster of paris or alabaster.
10. The order to Edward Lloyd’s London agents specified that the plateau images not exceed one hundred guineas. (A guinea was equal to one pound and one shilling, or twenty-one shillings.) The 1796 inventory of Edward Lloyd IV listed the value of the plateau and “29 Alabaster Images” at seventy-five pounds. See Diana Edwards, “Gods and Goddesses: A Brief Note about a Set of Niderviller Figures in a Maryland Family,” French Porcelain Society Journal 2 (2005): 115–19. In the 1790s prices were still being quoted in either sterling or dollars, but a pound traded at approximately $4.50; www.globalfinancialdata.com/index.
11. David G. McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), p. 347.
12. The quantities listed in various inventories are unreliable because upon the death of each master the contents of the house were divided among family members; some pieces were subsequently returned. Moreover, Hampton was entailed to the eldest son of each generation and many items were assumed to be part of those transfers.
13. Callcott, Mistress of Riversdale, pp. 138, 142, 157–58, 343–44.
14. Probate Court Records, District of Columbia Record Group 21, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
15. mfh5476.h851f9, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. Howard, one of George Washington’s officers during the Revolution and hero of Cowpens (1781), also served as governor of Maryland (1788–1791) and as a United States senator; in 1816 he was an unsuccessful candidate for vice president. Two of his sons married two of Ridgely’s daughters. The total value of Howard’s real estate at the time of his death was more than one million dollars.
16. Diana Edwards, “English Aristocrats in Maryland Society,” American Ceramic Circle Journal 7 (1989): 91.
17. Hastings, “Best Table in America,” p. 146.
18. John Eager Howard Estate Sale (1828), ms 2450, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore.
19. The focus of this article does not include John and Eliza’s children, as by their generation the purchases of household furnishings declined with the family fortunes.
20. Lynne Dakin Hastings, introduction to Charles E. Peterson, Notes on Hampton Mansion, 2nd ed., rev. (College Park, Md.: National Trust for Historic Preservation Library Collection of the University of Maryland Libraries, 2000), p. xiv.
21. Wendy A. Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 1800–1840 (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), p. 27.
22. Hastings, “Best Table in America,” p. xiv. |