close to a thickly populated area; ' 7 in 17th-centur 

 America we find a parallel in the pottery of Will 

 Vincent, located at the harbor's edge in Gloucesl 

 Massachusetts, where it was easy for him to ship his 

 wares along the coast. 4S The 18th-century potteries of 

 Charlestown, Massachusetts, which also had wide 

 markets, were clustered along the harbor shore amid a 

 welter of wharves and warehouses. 4 ' 1 It is conceivable, 

 therefore, that the Yorktown waterfront may have 

 been similarly exposed to the dangers of a potter's 

 kiln, since Rogers transported his wares by water. 



More logical from the standpoint of safety, however, 

 would be the pair of lots on the western edge of the 

 town where Rogers apparently dwelt after they were 

 granted to him in 1711. Although it is not con- 

 clusive, his inventory, which includes the lists of 

 earthenwares and stonewares mentioned above, ap- 

 pears to have been taken in a sequence beginning with 

 the house and followed by one outbuilding after an- 

 other. Presumably these were located close together. 

 Tilings pertaining to the kitchen and perhaps to the 

 quarters follow the contents of the house (in which 

 the "work room" is mentioned), then the distilling 

 apparatus followed by the brewing equipment. 

 Next come the pottery items, then a miscellany of 

 laundry, garden, and cooking gear, and finally 

 stable fixtures and a horse. It is not until the end of 

 the inventory that the boats and their rigging and 

 equipment, doubtless located at the waterside, are 

 mentioned. These speculations are offered for what 

 they are worth in suggesting possibilities for future 

 archeological discovery of the kiln site. 



The question of William Rogers' own role in the 

 pottery enterprise perhaps will never be solved con- 

 clusively, although, as Mr. Noel Hume points out, 

 there is no evidence that he himself was a potter. His 

 beginnings almost surely were humble ones, humble 

 enough for a potter. We know that his brother 

 George was a maker of horse collars — a worthy occu- 

 pation, but not one to be equated with the role of an 

 18th-century gentleman — in Braintree, Essex County. 

 England. There were many potters in Essex in the 



" C. Malcolm Watkins, "North Devon Pottery and Its Ex- 

 port to America in the 17th Century" (paper 13 in Contributions 

 from the Museum of History and Technology: Papers 12-18, U.S. 

 National Museum Bulletin 225, by various authors; Washing- 

 ton: Smithsonian Institution, 1963), pp. 28-29. 



48 Lura Woodside Watkins, New England Potters and Their 

 Wares (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 16. 



« Ibid., p. 24. 



17th and early 18th centuries, and one wondei 

 William Rogers was trained by one of them. But the 

 ex Records do not reveal a William Rogers whose 

 dates or circumstances fit ours. We do find that a 

 Gem ' ;ers died at Braintree in 1 750. GO 



Whati h ive been William's early training, 



it is appai new the art of brewing and that 



he engaged in ii town. To be sure, nearly 



every farmer and yei in the colonies knew how to 



brew. Furthermore, commercial brewing was prob- 

 ably accepted as an honorable industry by the Crown 

 authorities, since the colonial demand foi beers and 

 ales must have always been in excess of the exportable 

 supply. It is possible, we may speculate, that Rogers 

 was trained as a potter but practiced brewing and 

 preferred to be known publicly as a brewer. In any 

 case, he was essentially a businessman whose estab- 

 lishment made ale as well as pottery for public con- 

 sumption, and it is clear that by 1725 he was conduct- 

 ing a potter's business on a considerable scale. To 

 have done so he must have employed potters and 

 apprentices, yet in cursory searches of the York 

 County records, we have been unable to discover any 

 reference either to potteries or potters, reinforcing 

 the suspicion that every effort — including Gooch's 

 apologetic references — was being made to conduct the 

 pottery in a clandestine manner. 



Thus, the only thing we know witli certainty is that 

 William Rogers was a very successful entrepreneur 

 who carried on more than one kind of business. We 

 also can deduce from what is disclosed in the records 

 that he ascended high in the social scale in Virginia 

 and that the rate of this ascent was. not surprisingly, 

 in proportion to the increase of his wealth. Whether 

 or not he was a trained potter, one thing is certain: he 

 was not a "poor potter." 



As to the role of his son-in-law and successor, 

 Thomas Reynolds, we know with certainty that 

 Reynolds was not a potter. For at least live years 

 and perhaps longer, however, he evidently ran the 

 pottery, which means that there were trained hands 

 to produce stonewares and earthenwares. Who they 

 were or where they came from are not revealed in the 

 records. If, however, we can prove that the wares 

 about to be discussed were made by them, it becomes 

 clear that they were a remarkably competent lot, 



5" The Register of Burials in the Pniish of Braintree in the County 

 of Essex from Michaelmas- . . 1740 (MS in Essex Counts- 

 Record Office, Chelmsford, England), p. 40. 



PAPER 54: THE POOR POTTER OF YORKTOWN 



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