The quality of the products was good by colonial standards, and their quantity impressive. Consequently, in spite of Governor Gooch's misleading reports, William Rogers begins to emerge as one of the pioneers of industry in Virginia. It is to be hoped that it will be possible eventually to undertake a full archeological excavation of his factory site and so enable Rogers to step out once and for all from behind the deprecatory sobriquet of the "poor potter" of Yorktown that has concealed for more than two centuries his name, his acumen, and his potters' talents.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to Colonial Williamsburg for helping to subsidize the preparation of this paper and for permission to illustrate specimens from its archeological collections; also to J. Paul Hudson, National Park Service curator at Jamestown for similar facilities; as well as to Charles E. Hatch, senior National Park Service historian at Yorktown, for access to various archeological reports in his library.
I am particularly grateful to James E. Maloney of the Williamsburg Pottery for the immense amount of work which he so generously undertook not only to reproduce copies of the Yorktown products but also to recreate the wasters as well, thus providing information regarding the colonial technical processes that could not have been obtained in any other way. I am also grateful to Joseph Grace, Colonial Williamsburg's watchmaker and engraver who made an accurate copy of the unofficial excise stamp used on Rogers' mugs, and to my secretary Lynn Hill, who toiled long and hard to bring order into this report.
I am further indebted to Wilcomb E. Washburn, Chairman, Department of American Studies, at the Smithsonian Institution, who first drew my attention to the artifacts in front of the Dudley Digges House; and to my wife Audrey, to John Dunton and William Hammes, all of Colonial Williamsburg's department of archeology, who through the years have helped collect ceramic evidence from Yorktown.
I. N. H.
U.S. Government Printing Office: 1967