Pottery-Making Families of Randolph County / Early Pottery Shops of Randolph County

Pottery-Making Families of Randolph County, also, Early Pottery Shops of Randolph County. . Pottery-Making Families of Randolph County. During the 1830s, pottery-making families moved directly from the Carolinas and Georgia. Most came from the Edgefield District of western South Carolina, which boasted an important pottery-making center. Well-known Edgefield potters who were in the 1840 U.S. Census for Randolph County, Alabama, included Matthew Duncan, John, Holland and Robert Leopard and James Prothro. Other prominent potters of the antebellum period were Cyrus Cogburn, Job Falkner, Cicero D. Hudson, Elijah McPherson, Greenberry Morton, Joseph Rushton, James Pinckney Shepherd, Milton J. Ussery, and Robert Ussery. During this period, enslaved African-American potters also worked in Randolph County. After the Civil War, John Barnes, John Lehman, and Zachariah T. Ussery were important potters. Many other local families became involved in pottery making including members of the Belcher, Boggs, Boyd, Brown, Foster, Gladney, Mapp, Meacham, Muldrew, Oliver, Phillips, Pittman, Pound, Swet, Spears, Taylor, Weathers, Williams and Yates families. (Continued), Early Pottery Shops of Randolph County. Pottery-making families were among the first settlers to come to this portion of east central Alabama after the acquisition of the Creek Indian lands in 1832. The earliest of these pottery shops were located here in Bacon Level and in nearby Cedric and Hickory Flat (Chambers County). These local potters produced the stoneware storage jars, jugs, churns and other pottery essentials for life on the frontier of early nineteenth-century Alabama. Their wares were coated with alkaline glaze made from wood ashes or lime which produced a green glassy finish that made the pottery both durable and suitable for food storage. The alkaline glaze was the predominant southern stoneware glaze and was brought to Randolph County by potters who emigrated from North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina. Potters from Randolph County who moved west with the American frontier established potteries in Elmore, DeKalb, Perry and Shelby counties in Alabama as well as in Mississippi and Texas. (Continued)