The Cultural History of Marlborough, Virginia Part 23

[172] WHIFFEN, op. cit. (footnote 169), p. 4.

CONCLUSION

It may be a.s.sumed that the Potomac Creek courthouse, which was built of brick, resembled the courthouses of Hanover, King William, and Charles City, and that its architecture, symbolizing the authority of Virginia's government, reflected the official style expressed in the government buildings at Williamsburg. All the successive Stafford courthouses from 1722 on probably were built on the old foundations; if so, the Stafford building was the earliest T-form courthouse yet known in Virginia. Its similarity to the three structures built in the 1730's shows that an accepted form had developed, possibly, as Whiffen suggests, deriving from a prototype in Williamsburg.

The courthouse bears no resemblance, either in its shape or the absence of a bas.e.m.e.nt, to the Structure B foundation at Marlborough. The site, reached more easily than Marlborough from any direction, dictated the removal to it of the courthouse in 1722, thus contributing to the demise of Marlborough as a town. The last structure, especially, was historically important because of the meetings of the Ohio Company held in it. It is of particular interest to the story of Marlborough because John Mercer was, for most of its existence, the senior justice of the Stafford court.

ARTIFACTS

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 63.--TIDEWATER-TYPE POTTERY: a, milk pan (ill.

11); b, base of bowl (ill. 14); c, pan-rim sherds; d, base of ale mug (ill. 12).]

XV

_Ceramics_

Most of the ceramic artifacts found at Marlborough can be dated within John Mercer's period of occupancy (1726-1768). A meager scattering of late 18th- and early 19th-century whitewares and stonewares reflects the John Francis Mercer and Cooke ownerships (1768-1819).

COa.r.s.e EARTHENWARE

TIDEWATER TYPE.--Mercer's purchase in 1725 of 12 3s. 6d. worth of earthenware from William Rogers (p. 16, footnote 54) probably was made for trading purposes, judging from the sizable cost. Rogers operated a stoneware and earthenware pottery in Yorktown, which evidently was continued for a considerable time after his death in 1739.[173] An abundance of waster sherds (unglazed, underfired, overfired, or misshapen fragments cast aside by the potter), supposedly from Rogers'

output, has been found as street ballast and fill in Yorktown and its environs. Microscopic and stylistic comparison with these sherds relates numerous Marlborough sherds to them in varying degrees. For purposes of tentative identification, the ware will be designated "Tidewater type."

Some of the ware may have been produced in Rogers' shop, while other articles resembling the Yorktown products may have been made of similar clay and fired under conditions comparable to those at Yorktown.

A Marlborough milk pan (USNM 59.1961, ill. 11, and USNM 59.1580) has a salmon-colored body and a l.u.s.trous mahogany glaze with fine manganese streaking. Another milk pan (USNM 59.2039, ill. 2, fig. 63a) has a buff body and a glaze of uneven thickness that ranges in color from thin brown with black flecking to a glutinous dark brown approaching black.

The most typical glaze color, influenced by the underlying predominant pinkish-buff body, is a light mahogany with black specks or blotches. It occurs at Marlborough on a small sherd (USNM 60.201). A variant glaze occurring on pottery found in Yorktown appears here in a yellowish-buff sherd flecked with black (USNM 60.154). The flecking is only in part applied with manganese; it is also the effect of ocherous and ferruginous particles which protrude through the surface of the body, a.s.suming a dark color. Occasionally the manganese is spread liberally, so that the natural body color shows through only as flecks in a reverse effect (USNM 59.1855); now and then the vessel is uniformly black (USNM 60.141).

Tidewater-type forms found at Marlborough include milk pans 15 inches in diameter and about 4-1/4 inches deep (in 1729 Mercer bought "2 milk pans" for 5d. and 5 "gallon basons" for 4s. 7d.), a black-glazed jar cover with indicated diameter of 6-1/2 inches (USNM 59.2013), and fragments of other pans and bowls of indeterminate sizes. A portion of an ale mug has a tooled base and black glaze (USNM 59.2043, fig. 63d, ill. 12). Its diameter is 3-5/8 inches.

MOLDED-RIM TYPE.--This is a type of redware with a light-red body and transparent, ginger-brown lead glaze. It is characterized by a rolled rim and a tooled platform or channel above the junction of rim and side.

A small number of pan and bowl rims was found at Marlborough. The ware is usually a.s.sociated with early 18th-century materials from such sites as Jamestown, Kecoughtan, Williamsburg, and Rosewell. It may have originated in England.

NORTH DEVON GRAVEL-TEMPERED WARE.--The coa.r.s.e kitchenware made in Bideford and Barnstaple and in the surrounding English villages of North Devon is represented by only two sherds. This ware is characterized by a dull, reddish-pink body, usually dark-gray at the core, and by a gross waterworn gravel temper. It occurs in contexts as early as 1650 at Jamestown and as late as 1740-1760 at Williamsburg. One of the Marlborough sherds is part of a large pan. It is glazed with a characteristic amber lead glaze (USNM 60.202). The other sherd is a portion of an unglazed handle, probably from a potlid (USNM 59.1679, ill. 15).[174]

SLIP-LINED REDWARE.--Numerous 18th-century sites from Philadelphia to Williamsburg have yielded a series of bowls and porringers characterized by interior linings of slip that is streaked and mottled with manganese.

These are glazed on both surfaces, the outer surface and a border above the slip on the inner surface usually ginger-brown in color. Comparative examples are a bowl from the Russell site at Lewes, Delaware, dating from the first half of the 18th century, and several pieces from pre-Revolutionary contexts at Williamsburg. A deposit excavated by H.

Geiger Omwake near the south end of the Lewes and Rehoboth Ca.n.a.l in Delaware included sherds from a context dated late 17th- to mid-18th centuries.[175] Several fragments of bowls occur in the Marlborough material (USNM 59.1613, 59.1856, fig. 64g).

ENGLISH YELLOWWARE.--The few sherds of so-called combed ware occurring at Marlborough, although only the base fragments connect, all seem to have come from a single cup or posset pot having a buff body and characteristically decorated with spiraled bands of dark-brown slip that were created by combing through an outer coating of white slip, revealing an underlayer of red slip. The vessel was glazed with a clear lead glaze (USNM 59.1700, fig. 64c, ill. 16). Comparative dated examples of this ware include a posset pot dated 1735.[176] A chamber pot bearing the same kind of striping was excavated by the National Park Service at Fort Frederica, Georgia (1736-ca. 1750). A piece similar to that from Marlborough was found in the Rosewell deposit, and another in the Lewis Morris house site, Morrisania, New York.[177] Although this type of ware was introduced in England about 1680, its princ.i.p.al use in America seems to have occurred largely between 1725 and 1775.

Archeological evidence is corroborated by newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nts. In 1733 the _Boston Gazette_ advertised "yellow ware Hollow and Flat by the Crate" and again in 1737 "yellow and Brown Earthenware." In 1763 the _Gazette_ mentioned "Crates of Yellow Liverpool Ware," Liverpool being the chief place of export for pottery made in Staffordshire, the princ.i.p.al source for the combed wares.[178]

BUCKLEY WARE.--I. Noel Hume has identified a cla.s.s of high-fired, black-glazed earthenware found in many 18th-century sites in Virginia.

He has done so by reference to _The Buckley Potteries_, by K. J.

Barton,[179] and to waster sherds in his possession from the Buckley kiln sites in Flintshire, North Wales. The ware probably was made in other potteries of the region also. This durable pottery, more like stoneware than earthenware, is represented by a large number of jar and pan fragments. Two body types occur, each characterized by a mixture of red and buff clay. In the more usual type the red clay dominates, with laminations and striations of buff clay running through it in the manner of a coa.r.s.e sort of agateware. The other is usually grayish buff with red streaks, although sometimes the body is almost entirely buff, still showing signs of lamination. The glaze is treacly black, often applied unevenly and sometimes pitted with air bubbles. The body surfaces have conspicuous turning ridges. Rims are usually heavy and flat, sometimes as wide as 1-1/2 inches. A variant of the ware is represented in a milk pan with a dominantly red body which has a clear-amber, rather than black, glaze. (USNM 59.1887, ills. 17, 18, and 19 and fig. 65).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ill.u.s.tration 10.--Milk pan. Salmon-red earthenware.

l.u.s.trous black lead glaze. Tidewater type. One-fourth. (USNM 59.1961.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ill.u.s.tration 11.--Milk pan. Salmon-red earthenware.

Dull-brown glaze. Tidewater type. See figure 63a. One-fourth. (USNM 59.2039.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ill.u.s.tration 12.--Ale mug. Salmon-red earthenware.

l.u.s.trous black lead glaze. Tidewater type. See figure 63d. One-half.

(USNM 59.2043.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ill.u.s.tration 13.--Cover of jar (profile). Salmon-red earthenware. Brownish-black lead glaze. Tidewater type. Same size. (USNM 59.2013.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ill.u.s.tration 14.--Base of bowl. Salmon-red earthenware.

Light reddish-brown glaze speckled with black. Virginia type. One-half.

See figure 63b. (USNM 59.2025.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ill.u.s.tration 15.--Handle of pot lid or oven door. North Devon gravel-tempered ware. One-half. (USNM 59.1679.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ill.u.s.tration 16.--Buff-earthenware cup with combed decoration in brown slip. Lead glaze. (Conjectural reconstruction.) One-fourth. See figure 64c. (USNM 59.1700.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ill.u.s.tration 17.--High-fired earthenware pan rim. Buff paste laminated with red. Red slip on exterior. Black glaze inside. Type made in Buckley, Flintshire, North Wales. One-half.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 64.--MISCELLANEOUS COMMON EARTHENWARE TYPES, probably all imported from England: a, "molded-rim" types of redware; b, handle of large redware storage jar, probably English; c, base of brown-striped Staffordshire yellowware cup; d, sherd of black-glazed ware; e and f, two slip-decorated sherds; g, redware crimped-edge baking pan, coated with slip; and h, slip-lined manganese-streaked sherds.]

MISCELLANEOUS.--Several unique specimens and groups of sherds are represented:

1. A large, outstanding, horizontal, loop handle survives from a storage jar with a rich red body. Two thumb-impressed reinforcements, splayed at each end, secure the handle to the body wall. The top of the handle has four finger impressions for gripping; the lead glaze appears in a finely speckled ginger color (USNM 59.2049, fig. 64b).

2. A single fragment remains from a slip-decorated bowl or open vessel.

The body is hard and dark red, the glaze dark olive-brown. The fragment is glazed and slipped on both sides (USNM 59.1614, fig. 64e). Other small sherds of a similar ware are redder in color and without slip.

Another, with lighter red body and olive-amber glaze, is slip decorated (USNM 60.161, fig. 64f).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ill.u.s.tration 19.--Rim and base profiles of high-fired-earthenware jars. Buff paste, laminated with red. Black glaze. Buckley type, Flintshire, North Wales. One-half. (USNM 59.2032, 59.1611, and 59.1782.)]

3. A unique sherd has a gray-buff body and shiny black glaze on both surfaces (USNM 59.1815).

4. A group of pale-red unglazed fragments is from the bottom of a water cooler. A sherd which preserves parts of the base and lower body wall has a hole in which a spigot could be inserted (USNM 59.2061, ill. 20).

5. Fragments of a flowerpot have a body similar to the foregoing, but are lined with slip under a lead glaze. A rim fragment has an ear handle with thumb-impressed indentations attached to it (USNM 60.203, ill. 21).

6. Two sherds of a redware pie plate, notched on the edge and lined with overglazed slip decorated with brown manganese dots, imitate Staffordshire yellowware, but are probably of American origin (USNM 59.1612, fig. 64g).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ill.u.s.tration 18.--High-fired-earthenware jar rim. Red paste, laminated with buff. Black glaze. Buckley type. One-half. (USNM 59.2067.)]