Potters of the Gathering, Part 2

Why choose Potters of the Gathering for our exhibit title?  This is a great question and one which, as several of my colleagues pointed out to me recently, I completely neglected to explain in my post!

Leonard Arrington identified "The Gathering" as one of seven ideals that leaders of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints developed to guide their community during the organization's first 15-20 years.  According to Arrington, the ideals were:

1. Gathering souls from Babylon to Zion, through active mission programs.

2. Establishing nucleated villages.

3. Consecrating private property to the Church and having it returned in stewardship for the community.

4. The redemption and beautification of the earth.

5. Frugality and economic independence from Babylon.

6. Group unity and cooperation

7. Equality among members

As Arrington explained, these were ideals that infused government policy, economic development, public discourse, and individual social action.  Like all ideals, people engaged with them in many different ways, but all of the ideals touched the potters and clay workers during their lives.

In terms of our exhibit, The Gathering was among the most important ideal.  Many of the potters came to Utah in response to calls to serve missions settling news town and "building up home industry."  Their experiences were very different within that context, but the principle of the gathering tied many of them together.

My academic interest is in the material practice of the gathering and how individuals experienced and contributed to it in their communities.  The idea of The Gathering also has powerful theological meanings in Latter-day Saint communities, both historically and today. While the principle of the gathering lost its literal and material meanings by the end of the nineteenth century, the Saints kept their personal, theological, and doctrinal connections to Israel.  I am not a scholar of theology, so I'll refer interested readers to Elder Russell M. Nelson's speech The Gathering of Scattered Israel from the 2006 General Conference in Salt Lake City.

My co-workers and collaborators here also chuckle that this exhibit will be the largest gathering of Utah-made pots ever assembled.  I appreciate the double entendre!

Maps- Where did potters live and work?

Utah's immigrant potters left several different countries of origin.  Many left from Denmark and the United Kingdom, particularly Staffordshire and the English Midlands.  Other European-born potters came from Germany and Norway.  Potters also migrated from other parts of the United States, including from New York, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri:

Individual potters could settle wherever they wished, but many chose to take on missions to settle specific towns and regions.  The leaders of the Latter-day Saints sought to settle a chunk of the Rocky Mountain and Great Basin regions of the United States which they called Deseret. Brigham Young and his advisors led "the gathering" of people to the headquarters at Salt Lake City and then organized them into settlement companies sent throughout the region.

This pattern of settlement, guided/directed and open/undirected, led to potters distributed through the area.  Each blue dot in the map below indicates a pottery.  Overlapping dots represent multiple potteries in a single town.  Keep in mind that some of these dots are interpretative arguments- we don't always know who partnered together and who worked independently.  

Latter-day Saints established some potteries outside of Utah's modern borders:

Potteries within the modern political boundaries of Utah:

We are building a "map" of the potter's marks.  The upcoming museum exhibit will present all that we know about the different potter's marks:

Object of the Week, 4/1/09

This week's remarkable object is a potter's rib from the Eardley's Deseret Pottery site.  A number of different potters were involved in this company, including the three Eardley brothers: James, John, and Bedson.  At times, John Cartwright and Jonah Croxall also worked at this site in Salt Lake City, but during that time the pottery had a different name.

In the 1970s, a Utah State Liquor store was built on the site.  For whatever reason, an archaeological survey was not conducted before construction.  Lucky for modern scholars, Nancy Richards walked by one day.  Ms. Richards was a curator for State Parks and she happened to be researching Utah's nineteenth century potteries.  She was shocked by what she saw in the backdirt and as I have heard the story, she called up to the University of Utah for help.  A group of archaeology students came down and they all spent some time frantically putting fragments of things in boxes.  That collection, which has never been exhibited to the public before, will be a large part of the collection on exhibit.

A potter uses a rib as a carpenter uses a profile gauge.  The rib's shape matches that of the preferred shape of a particular pottery vessel or object.  While the wet shape spins upon the wheel, the potter holds the rib up against the vessel to be certain that it has the desired shape and size.  The rib helps the potter to throw things "freehand" but stay close to a particular size and shape. 

One of these potters wrote on this rib:

The rib is inscribed: "Flower saucer / James Eardley / Bedson Eardley" and on the side, the date "June 18, 1864".  The last number is a bit messy and one could argue that it says nine and not four, but I think it is a four.

This is very cool.

I really like this object because it shows the kind of evidence that can only be taken from objects.  On June 8th, 1864, the Deseret News carried this announcement: "John, James, and Bedson Eardley dissolve their partnership; James and Bedson reform the Deseret Pottery; John forms ‘Sixth Ward Pottery’ with Amos Fielding as agent" (p. 292).

Ten days before this rib was made, three three Eardley brothers broke up the Desert Pottery and one of them set out on his own.  A few years after this, John accepted a mission in St. George and worked there for the rest of his life, along with kilns he operated in Beaver and Panguitch.  

I don't know if the brothers divisions were friendly or strained when they split up in 1864, but the fact that James and Bedson marked this rib with their names implies that this flowerpot design was shared between them, but was not John's.  It also implies that James and Bedson agreed upon this design when developing new products for the new incarnation of the Deseret Pottery.  I believe that also hints that consumers in Salt Lake City cared about the design of their flower pots and that people entering the Deseret Pottery noticed the different designs by James, John, and Bedson, and further distinguished them from other partners in the pottery or other clayworks in the city.

You'll just have to come see this little gem for yourself.

The Davenports in Utah

Davenport family histories say that Thomas, Sarah, and their children arrived in Salt Lake City on October 8th, 1852. They left for the Iron Mission pretty quickly after reaching Utah, since they arrived in Parowan on November 4, 1852.

The Davenports took a bit of time to get their house and shop set up, but they fired a kiln of pottery in November of 1853. Almost all of it failed. The same happened at the second firing in 1856 and the kiln was nearly a total loss. The third try was in the spring of 1857 and about 1/3 of the kiln was good. By 1858, they fired with complete success (according to family history, based on a summary written in Thomas's diary). Some time during this period, Thomas also changed the source of his raw material. A traveler told him about a better clay source, which he adopted for his work.

This is what fascinates me about the Davenports' lives-- how did they figure that out? How did he learn about the clays? How did he figure out how to build and operate a kiln? To make glaze from scratch?

Thomas and Sarah traveled to Salt Lake City in late October of 1856 and received their Church endowments the following month. They returned to Parowan in the spring of 1857. I have often wondered if he met with other potters in Salt Lake City during that trip to talk about his technical problems and visit their facilities. A number of English-born immigrant potters had current operations in Salt Lake, including Alfred Cordon, who had been in charge of the Church-supported Deseret Pottery factory between 1851 and its closing in 1853. Alfred Cordon was also one of the bishops in charge of answering inquiries from newly arrived immigrants about the remote settlements (Deseret News 18-Sept-1852, p. 1). I don't yet know where Alfred Cordon was in 1857, however, so we'll see what I can learn.

Thomas may also have interacted with the Danish immigrant potters. Niels Jensen and his three apprentices, Jacob Hansen, Frederick Hansen, and Frederick Petersen, had arrived in Salt Lake City and begun making pottery in the fall of 1852. The potters at Jensen's shop experienced more practical success than the English immigrants who had attempted to set up their factory based upon a the industrial pattern from Stoke-on-Trent. Of course, Thomas and Sarah may also have spent time with Horace Roberts and his family in Provo. Like the Jensen's, the Roberts family had been operating their pot shop since 1852.

Thomas and Sarah took this trip for sacred business related to their Church duties. During their travels, they passed back over the landscape between Parowan and Salt Lake City. I also find it useful to think of them traveling over a technoscape, where they passed nodes of information about potting. I am trying to figure out what role that played in the evolution of Thomas's technical prowess.

Besides working at their pottery, Thomas, Sarah, and their children were active in Parowan's community. They were subscribers to help build the Rock Church, 1867-1870. The family history claims that he was the director of the Parowan branch of the United Order, 1875-1876. The UO was a religious-inspired plan to create utopian communities. The Parowan UO didn't last past one year, however, but Thomas also served the community as alderman, city councilor, and treasurer.

In the 1860s, Thomas and his son William worked with others to try and open a coal vein, which would have been very useful for the pottery, but the deposit didn't work out.

I'm going to be researching descriptions of the family house and property and I'll try to post information about that as soon as I can.

The Davenports in England

Over the next few days, I thought I would post some of the information I have gathered about the Davenports. I'll start at their beginnings-- births, marriage, and starting their family in England.

Thomas Davenport
born: April 1, 1815; parish of Brampton, County of Derby, England.
fifth child of Robert Davenport and Ann Jarvis Davenport

Sarah Burrows (Davenport)
born July 24th, 1811; parish Eckington, Derby, England.
fourth child of John Burrows and Charlotte Barber Burrows.

According to family histories, Thomas and Sarah married in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, in 1836. Their children were baptized at St. Thomas in New Brampton. According to online records at Genuki, Thomas and Sarah lived in Brampton Moor and Thomas was listed as "potter" and "working potter". The 1841 census lists them living in New Brampton, not Brampton Moor, and also lists Thomas as a "Pottery M" which some modern Davenport family researchers take to mean "pottery molder" but I think may just be "pottery maker".

According to the family history, these are the key events recorded in the records of the Latter-day Saints:
Thomas was baptized April 21, 1847 and Sarah two weeks later, June 8, 1847.
Thomas was ordained a teacher shortly after baptism and then ordained a priest on September 26th of that same year. The family history gives two dates when Thomas was ordained an elder: March 20th and April 27, 1848.

The Latter-day Saints changed branch designations through time as the membership expanded and contracted. March 20th, 1848, while Thomas was made an elder, he was also appointed as president of the Bolsover branch in Derbyshire. March 6, 1848, he became branch treasurer. In June of 1848, the Holdover and Warley branches were combined into a single unit and Thomas was appointed president of the newly combined branch. Through the rest of 1848, he was mentioned regularly in the records in relation to his missionary efforts both traveling and hosting visiting members. The family history says that the official Church records make no reference to his daily work.

Thomas and Sarah's children born in England before 1849:

William Davenport, b. May 28, 1837, bap. June 6, 1837, Brampton, Derby, England.
Thomas Davenport, b. April 7 1839, bap. May 5, 1839, Brampton, Derby, England.
Died February 16, 1840; buried St. Thomas Church, Brampton, Derby, England.
John Davenport, b. December 17, 1844, bap. January 1, 1845, Brampton, Derby, England.
Sarah Ann Davenport, b. February 14, 1847, bap. March 21, 1847, Brampton, Derby, England.

I'm working with a curator at the Chesterfield Museum, trying to learn more about where Thomas worked making pottery, what his jobs may have been, and if Sarah worked in a pot shop.

In my next post, I'll list the Davenport's immigration information.

Society for Historical Archaeology Annual Meeting

I've just returned from the 2009 Annual Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology.  This year we met in Toronto, Canada, an historic and vibrant city.  The research reports and presentations that I heard inspired me, particularly those that explained other major efforts at community-based archaeological research.  I talked at length about the developing plans and partnerships in Utah, particularly about the Davenport dig and museum exhibit.  I'm already looking forward to the 2010 meeting next year-- not only because it is in Florida in January, rather than northern latitudes!

While on the plane, I had uninterrupted time to read.  As a result, I "checked-off" one of the items that had been high on my priority list.  I read Nancy J. Andersen's essay about Horace Ephraim Roberts, his family, and his pottery-making activities in Illinois, Iowa, and Utah.  Horace built the first operative pottery in the state, probably to the embarrassment of the Staffordshire potters that tried to get a factory operating in Salt Lake City.  Horace built his pottery in Provo and began selling ware in 1852, before anyone else was really successful at the business.  The other thing that makes Horace Ephraim Roberts among the most important potters in the history of Utah is that he was the head of what became the most significant "craft dynasty" in the region.  Horace married Harriet McEvers and they had many children who, along with Horace's male relatives and their children, became potters.  All in all, the Roberts family operated pottery shops in Provo, Logan, Mona, Vernal (near Naples), and Panguitch.  Horace married two other women, Mary Jane Bigelow and Jane Eliza Graves, but neither of the two children born from those marriages (by Jane Eliza) went into the pottery business.

Perhaps we'll get to do some survey at the site of Utah's first operative pottery this spring, before we get down to business at the Davenport site in Parowan!

Gearing up for 2009!

Greetings!

This is the new official blog for the Utah Pottery Project's archaeological researchers.  My name is Timothy Scarlett and I am the project director.  I'm an Associate Professor in the Industrial Heritage and Archaeology program in the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University.  

The Utah Pottery Project is an informal confederation of scholars and researchers interested in the lives, works, and histories of Utah's 19th-century immigrant potters.  The pottery makers, including master potters and clay workers, mostly came to Utah as part of the immigration stream organized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (often nicknamed "LDS" or "the Mormons"). I maintain a web site dedicated to the research project here:

http://www.ss.mtu.edu/faculty/scarlett/research/upp/upphome.htm

My colleagues, students, and I are preparing for a major archaeological excavation this summer.  We'll be digging at the site of the Davenport family pottery shop in Parowan, Utah.  Once the dig is underway, we'll be making daily posts about our discoveries, trials, and tribulations.  During the lead up to the excavation and associated public programing, I'll post details here as our plans evolve.  There is already some information online at the website above and on Facebook, where you can 'friend' if you search for "Utah PotteryProject".

During the summer of 2005, Christopher Merritt and I did a small dig at the site of the Frederick Petersen Pottery in Salt Lake City, Utah.  You can read the archive of that excavation blog here:

http://www.ss.mtu.edu/faculty/Scarlett/Research/UPP/Digging2005.htm

I am thrilled to have this blog up and running.  I'm also very excited for this summer's research and the discoveries we'll make!

Best regards,

Timothy James Scarlett