1. Jill Beute Koverman, “Searching for Messages in Clay: What Do We Really Know about the Poetic Potter, Dave?” in I made this jar . . . : The Life and Works of the Enslaved African- American Potter, Dave, edited by Jill Beute Koverman, exh. cat. (Columbia: McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, 1998), pp. 22–25.
2. Ibid., p. 23 n. 10.
3. Ibid., p. 23 n. 12.
4. “A Map of the District of Edgefield, made in conformity to the Resolutions of the Legislature in December 1816, by Thomas Anderson, Dep. Surveyor,” South Carolina Department of Archives and History, mb5-6. The original manuscript of this map shows “Landrum’s Pottery” approximately one mile northeast of the Edgefield courthouse. When the map was published in 1817 the notation was changed to indicate a “Pottery” at “Landrumsville.” This map also shows Reverend John Landrum’s pottery.
5. The comment is believed to be a reference to alkaline-glazed stoneware. Robert Mills, Statistics of South Carolina (Charleston, S.C.: Hurlbut and Lloyd, 1826), pp. 523–24. Mills further describes the site: “There is another village of sixteen or seventeen houses, and as many families, within a mile and a half of Edgefield court-house, called the Pottery, or Pottersville, but which should be called Landrumville, from its ingenious and scientific founder, Dr. Abner Landrum.”
6. Koverman, “Searching for Messages in Clay,” p. 23 n. 10.
7. Ibid., p. 23 n. 14.
8. Joe L. Holcomb and Fred E. Holcomb, “South Carolina Potters and Their Wares: The Landrums of Pottersville,” South Carolina Antiquities 18, nos. 1–2 (1986): 53.
9. “Old Pottersville and Dr. Landrum,” Edgefield Advertiser, May 11, 1859; South Carolina Library, Columbia, South Carolina.
10. Koverman, “Searching for Messages in Clay,” p. 24 n. 16.
11. 1840 Federal Census, Edgefield County, p. 83; South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina.
12. Thomas Anderson’s 1816 map of Edgefield District (South Carolina Department of Archives and History, mb 5-6) shows “Rev. Jn. Landrum’s Pottery” located approximately twelve miles southwest of the Edgefield courthouse, on Big Horse Creek.
13. Edgefield County Probate Records, Box 56, Package 2312, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Microfilm Roll ed32.
14. Ibid.
15. Joe L. Holcomb and Fred E. Holcomb, “Archaeological Findings Related to Dave at Edgefield Pottery Sites,” in I made this jar . . . , pp. 73–81.
16. Carl Steen, “An Archeological Survey of Production Sites in the Old Edgefield District of South Carolina,” unpublished report, Diachronic Research Foundation, Columbia, S.C., December 1994, p. 81.
17. Koverman, “Searching for Messages in Clay,” p. 24.
18. Ibid.
19. Joe L. Holcomb and Fred E. Holcomb, “South Carolina Potters and Their Wares: The History of Pottery Manufacture in Edgefield District’s Big Horse Creek Section, Part I (ca. 1810–1925),” South Carolina Antiquities 21, nos. 1–2 (1989): 26.
20. “Notes made on trip to Seigler’s Pottery, near Eureka, S.C., October 4, 1930,” Charleston Museum Archives, Edgefield Pottery file, Charleston, S.C. The Seigler Pottery, located near Lewis Miles’s Stoney Bluff pottery site, was active from about 1875 to 1898.
The date of Dave’s alleged train accident is not known. It could not have happened in the Edgefield village area if it occurred while Dave was working for Drake (1828–1832) because the South Carolina Railroad, starting in Charleston, did not begin service until about 1833, and it bypassed Edgefield when it extended its line to Hamburg (North Augusta). See Cinda K. Baldwin, Great and Noble Jar: Traditional Stoneware of South Carolina (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1993), p. 46. Perhaps the incident occurred later, or while Dave was working for Lewis Miles, since the Charleston-Augusta railroad passed within a few miles of Miles’s pottery (see Isaac Boler, “Map of Edgefield County, S.C.,” 1871, obtained from the Old Edgefield District Genealogical Society). To date, however, no report of his accident has been found in the local newspaper, which probably would have mentioned it.
21. Fletcher continued:
Old Dave used to sit around the place dozing and one day a goat came up and when Dave’s head would drop over and jerk back the goat thought Dave was bantering him and that goat just backed oV and rammed him, knocking him oV his seat. Dave always said that somebody hit him with a plank, and never would believe that a goat did it.
“Notes collected on trip to various potteries. Miss L.M.B. & E.B.C. June 24–26 1930,” Charleston Museum Archives, Edgefield Pottery file, Charleston, S.C. “Miss L.M.B.” is Laura M. Bragg, director of the Charleston Museum at that time.
22. 1870 Federal Census, Population Schedule, South Carolina, Edgefield County, National Archives m593-1495, p. 433. The other listed members of the household were: Caroline, age 28 (presumed to be Mark’s wife); Brister, 10; Pierce, 8; Emma, 6; David, 4; and an infant, 1 month. It is not known whether any of these individuals were related to Dave.
There are two original handwritten versions of this census; one was made for the federal government, the other for the state of South Carolina. On the federal copy, the occupations of both David Drake and Mark Jones appear to be written as “Turner,” although the “u” in David Drake’s occupation seems to have been altered to form an “a.” This is not clarified by the state copy, where overwriting on David Drake’s occupation results in an unintelligible word and Mark Jones’s occupation is clearly but inaccurately written as “Farmer.” The census also has a column which indicates that they could neither read nor write, which is in error because we know that Dave could do both. Census of Shaw’s Creek Township, Edgefield County, July 11, 1870; South Carolina Department of Archives and History.
23. 1880 Federal Census, Population Schedule, South Carolina, Edgefield County, Shaw’s Creek Township, t9-1228.
24. Howard A. Smith, Index of Southern Potters (Mayoden, N.C.: Old America Company, 1986), pp. 84, 161. Two black potters, Mark and Brewster Jones, are listed later on as working at the Seigler Pottery, located thirteen miles from Edgefield. Brewster is perhaps Mark Jones’s son, listed in the 1870 Federal Census as Brister. See also “Notes made on trip to Seigler’s Pottery,” Charleston Museum Archives.
25. Printed in capital letters on the base of a jug dated September 6, 1859: “dady.gibs / maum hannah / stephens / by tim.” The significance of this inscription is unknown. This jug is in a private collection.
26. Three vessels signed by or attributed to Dave on which are inscribed only the month and year are known: January 1850 (signed “Lm”); June 1855 (signed “Lm”); and October 1855 (signed “Dave” and “Lm”).
27. Holcomb and Holcomb, “South Carolina Potters and Their Wares,” pp. 52, 57.
28. Holcomb and Holcomb, “Archaeological Findings Related to Dave at Edgefield Pottery Sites,” pp. 76–79.
29. Holcomb and Holcomb, “South Carolina Potters and Their Wares,” p. 26.
30. The only known exceptions are two vessels—a jug and a jar with a poem—both dated December 6, 1858, and two jars with poems signed by Dave and Baddler (another Edgefield slave) and dated May 13, 1859.
31. A storage jar signed “Dave / Lm” and dated March 31, 1858, has two horizontal loop handles, as opposed to the lug handles typically found on Dave storage jars.
32. Holcomb and Holcomb, “South Carolina Potters and Their Wares,” p. 12. See also note 5 above.
33. John A. Burrison, “Alkaline Glaze Stoneware: A Deep South Pottery Tradition,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 39, no. 4 (December 1975): 382.
34. As Charles Zug explains: “[P]erhaps the simplest form of the alkaline glaze was a mixture of equal parts of clay and wood ashes. The former provided the necessary silica and alumina, while the latter provided additional silica and alumina as well as calcium, sodium, and potassium oxides—the alkaline substances that serve to flux the compound. Pine ash, for example, contains, 24.39 percent silica, 9.71 percent alumina, 39.73 percent lime, 3.77 percent sodium oxide, 8.98 percent potash, and additional oxides of iron, manganese, magnesium, and phosphorous. As this analysis reveals, lime is the principal flux.” Charles G. Zug III, Turners and Burners: The Folk Potters of North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), p. 179.
In “Alkaline Glazes and Groundhog Kilns: Southern Pottery Traditions,” Antiques (April 1977): 768, Georgeanna H. Greer describes how green hues were achieved:
The green hues of the glaze were determined primarily by the amount of iron present in the glaze solution and the conditions under which it was fired. In a clear-burning firing 1 to 3 percent iron will produce a creamy tan to straw color, while 5 percent or more will produce brown to black colors. The more common smoky or reducing firings, which chemically rob the iron compounds of oxygen, produce colors in the green range, from a pale blue-green through grassy and olive colors to deep blackish green, again depending upon the amount of iron in the glaze mixture. Streaks of pale sky blue mixed with white and blotches of deep blood red which appear on some of the pottery are also produced by iron under special conditions.
35. Daisy Wade Bridges, Ash Glaze Traditions in Ancient China and the American South (Robbins, N.C.: Southern Folk Pottery Collectors Society, 1997), p. 17.
36. Ibid., pp. 13, 14.
37. For an extensive review of the history and diVerent possibilities, see Baldwin, Great and Noble Jar, pp. 18, 19. See also Bridges, Ash Glaze Traditions, pp. 5–10; Burrison, “Alkaline Glaze Stoneware,” pp. 386–88; Zug, Turners and Burners, pp. 70–74.
38. Dave’s contemporaries in Edgefield—Thomas Chandler, for example—produced wares with a celadon glaze.
39. Orville Vernon Burton, In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), p. 46. This is an excellent, comprehensive study of the social, political, economic, religious, and cultural conditions of whites and slaves in Edgefield, South Carolina, during this period.
40. Janet Duitsman Cornelius, “When I Can Read My Title Clear,” in Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), p. 37. Anti-literacy laws existed in South Carolina as early as 1740, when the state was under British rule:
XLV And whereas, the having of slaves taught to write, or suffering them to be employed in writing, may be attended with great inconveniences; Be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, That all and every person and persons whatsoever, who shall hereafter teach, or cause any slave or slaves to be taught, to write, or shall use or employ any slave as a scribe in any manner or writing whatsoever, hereafter taught to write, every such person and persons, shall, for every such offence, forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds current money.
The 1834 act, legislated nearly one hundred years later, was far more punishing, however, and added corporal punishment for the slaves themselves:
No. 2639. AN ACT to amend the Laws in relation to Slaves and Free Persons of Color
Be it enacted, by the honorable the Senate and House of Representatives, now met and sitting in General Assembly, and by the authority of the same, If any person shall hereafter teach any slave to read or write, or shall aid or assist in teaching any slave to read or write, such person, if a free white person, upon conviction thereof, shall, for each and every offence against this Act, be fined not exceeding one hundred dollars, and imprisoned not more than six months; or if a free person of color, shall be whipped, not exceeding fifty lashes, and fined not exceeding fifty dollars, at the discretion of the court of magistrates and freeholders before which such free person of color is tried; and if a slave, to be whipped at the discretion of the court, not exceeding fifty lashes; to informer to be entitled to one half of the fine, and to be a competent witness. And if any free person of color or slave shall keep any school, or other place of instruction, for teaching any slave or free person of color to read or write, such free person of color or slave shall be liable to the same fine, imprisonment and corporal punishment, as are by this Act imposed and inflicted on free persons of color and slaves for teaching slaves to read or write.
Slavery, Race and the American Legal System 1700–1872, Garland Series 7, edited by Paul Finkelman (New York: Garland, 1988), p. 468. See also John Belton O’Neall, Negro Law of South Carolina, Collected and Digested by John Belton O’Neall (Columbia, S.C.: Printed by John G. Bowman, 1848), p. 23.
Fourteen years later, the State Agricultural Society of South Carolina directed that a review of the 1834 act be submitted to the governor and legislature for consideration in the November 1848 session:
Sec. 42 This Act grew out of a feverish state of excitement produced by the impudent meddling of persons out of the slave States, with their peculiar institutions. That has, however, subsided, and I trust we are now prepared to act the part of wise, humane and fearless masters, and that this law, and all of kindred character, will be repealed. When we reflect, as Christians, how can we justify it, that a slave is not to be permitted to read the Bible? It is in vain to say there is danger in it. The best slaves in the State are those who can and do read the Scriptures. Again, who is it that teach your slaves to read? It generally is done by the children of the owners. Who would tolerate an indictment against his son or daughter for teaching a favorite slave to read? Such laws look to me as rather cowardly. It seems as if we were afraid of our slaves. Such a feeling is unworthy of a Carolina master.
See also Slavery, Race, and the American Legal System 1700–1872, p. 413 (Act. no. 670, xlv).
41. See Burton, In My Father’s House.
42. Cornelius, “When I Can Read My Title Clear,” p. 64.
43. Ibid.
44. An unsigned jar from 1834 attributed to Dave has “Concatination” inscribed on it; another, from 1836, bears the word “catination.” “Concatenate” and “catenate” both refer to a linking together, in a series or chain. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed., s.v. “Concatenate,” “Catenate.” If these words were written as an intended allusion to slavery, it was a very daring act. It is not difficult to believe that it was. The 1834 vessel was recently auctioned at Sotheby’s New York (sale cat., May 19, 2005, lot 149).
45. Edgefield Advertiser, April 1, 1863, p. 3.
46. Cornelius, “When I Can Read My Title Clear,” p. 37.
47. Baldwin, Great and Noble Jar, p. 67. See also Smith, Index of Southern Potters, pp. 95, 106.
48. Dr. Landrum died on April 3, 1859. His obituary, published in the Edgefield Advertiser on April 13, 1859, reads in part: “The Bulletin well says of him: ‘Mr. Landrum was much respected, and regarded as one of our most useful and enterprising citizens during his public life, notwithstanding bitter partisans were arrayed against him on account of his Union sentiments. He lived, respected by all who knew him; and he died, leaving a record of a well spent life, without a blot or tarnish to mar his good name.’”
49. Cornelius, “When I Can Read My Title Clear,” pp. 62, 65, 66.
50. Baldwin, Great and Noble Jar, pp. 50, 75; Edgefield Advertiser, December 23, 1846.
51. Stephen Ferrell and T. M. Ferrell, Early Decorated Stoneware of the Edgefield District, South Carolina (Greenville, S.C.: Greenville Museum of Art, 1976), p. 9.
52. Edgefield Advertiser, December 23, 1846.
53. Steen, “An Archaeological Survey,” p. 80.
54. Baldwin, Great and Noble Jar, p. 75.
55. John A. Burrison, “Dave the Potter and His Place in American Ceramics History,” in Pottery, Poetry, Politics Surrounding the Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave, symposium, McKissick Museum of the University of South Carolina and the South Carolina Humanities Council, April 25, 1998 (Columbia, S.C.: McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, 1998), p. 26; Edgefield Advertiser, April 13, 1859.
56. “Information given by Mr. G. U. Flesher 7/8/30, Long hand notes taken by Miss Bragg and typed by EAB,” Edgefield pottery file, Charleston Museum, Charleston, S.C.
57. “Pottery, Poetry, Politics Surrounding the Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave,” symposium handout, McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, April 25, 1998, Session 2, Question and Answer, p. 64 (first “Q” on page, from A. Goldberg).
58. Burton, In My Father’s House, pp. 202, 393 nn. 1, 2, and 399 n. 54.
59. Jill Beute Koverman, “Dave’s Verse as Social Response,” in I made this jar . . . , pp. 90–92.
60. For analyses of interpretations of the poems, see Aaron De Groft, “Eloquent Vessels/ Poetics of Power: The Heroic Stoneware of ‘Dave the Potter,’” Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 4 (winter 1988): 249–60; and James A. Miller, “Dave the Potter and the Origins of African-American Pottery,” in I made this jar . . . , pp. 53–60. |