Part I: Documentary Record
C. Malcolm Watkins
In his annual reports on manufactures to the Lords of the Board of Trade during the 1730s, Virginia's royal governor, William Gooch, mentioned several times an anonymous "poor potter" of Yorktown. At face value, Gooch's reports might seem to indicate that manufacturing was an insignificant factor in Virginia's economy and that the only pottery-making endeavor worth mentioning at all was so trivial it could be brushed aside as being almost, if not quite, unworthy of notice. Occasionally, historians have selected one or another of these references to the "poor potter" to support the view either that manufacturing was negligible in colonial Virginia or that ceramic art was limited to the undeveloped skills of a frontier potter.[183] The recent development of archeology, however, as an adjunct of research in cultural history—especially in the historic areas of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown—has produced substantial evidence challenging both the accuracy of Gooch's reports and the conclusions drawn from them, which, contrary to Gooch's statements, proves that pottery making in Yorktown was highly skilled and much at odds with the concept of a "poor potter."
The observation that a remarkably developed ceramic enterprise had been conducted in or near Yorktown was first made by Mr. Noël Hume, the archeologist partner of this paper, in 1956 when he identified fragments of saggers used in firing stoneware, which were excavated in association with numerous stoneware waster sherds and a group of unglazed earthenware sherds of good quality at the site of the Swan Tavern in Yorktown.[184] The question naturally arose, could these expertly made wares have come from the kilns of the "poor potter"? Although ultimate proof is still lacking, identification with him is sufficiently well supported by documentary and artifactual hints that—until further scientific findings are forthcoming—it is presented here as a hypothesis that the "poor potter" did indeed make them. This portion of the paper considers not only the specifics of artifacts and documents, but also the state of manufactures in Virginia before 1750 and their relationship to the character and attitudes of Governor Gooch.