I George Rogers of Brantree in the County of Essex [England] coller Maker Send Greeting. Whereas William Rogers late of Virginia Mercht was in his life time younger brother to me the said George Rogers and at the time of his death left an Estate to his only son named William Rogers which sd last mentioned William Rogers dyed lately intestate so that in right of Law the said Estate is devolved & come unto me....
This document served to appoint "Thomas Reynolds of London Mariner" as his attorney and to assign to him all his rights in the estate.[217]
We hear no further of George, suggesting that his claim on the estate was settled permanently, but of Thomas Reynolds we learn a good deal. On June 6, 1737, as captain of the ship Braxton of London, he arrived at Yorktown from Boston "where she was lately built." He brought from New England a cargo of 80,000 bricks, "Trayn Oyl," woodenware, and hops.[218] It was he who had married Susanna Rogers.[219]
He sailed to Bristol on September 30, 1737, perhaps to sell or deliver his new ship in England. In any case, he returned from London the following April as master of the ship Maynard. He made several crossings in her until he docked her at London on October 10, 1739.[220] While there he must have learned of the death of his father-in-law; whether for this reason or some other, his name was no longer listed among those of shipmasters arriving at and leaving Yorktown. Since he then would have been in effect the head of the family, he probably gave up the sea and settled in Yorktown to manage William Rogers' enterprises, because William, Jr.,—intended to take over the principal family properties upon his coming of age—died within about a year of his father's death. Reynolds, both on his own account as Susanna's husband and as attorney for George Rogers, logically would have succeeded to proprietorship. In any case, by 1745 he was established so successfully at Yorktown that he was made a justice of the peace. At some point he went into partnership with a Captain Charles Seabrook in a mercantile venture that involved ownership of the ocean sloop Judith and two "country cutters" named York and Eltham.[221]
Reynolds lived next to the Swan Tavern in Yorktown and was characterized by Courtenay Norton, wife of the merchant John Norton, as having "shone in the World in Righteousness."[222] He died in 1758 or 1759.
That the pottery was being operated, presumably by Reynolds, at least until 1745 is evident from an advertisement by Frances Webb of Williamsburg in the Virginia Gazette for June 20, 1745. This called attention to "all Sorts of Rogers' Earthenware as cheap as at York." And, although we have no assurance that the earthenware was made at the Rogers pottery, we learn from the Gazette that two days prior to this the sloop Nancy had sailed from Yorktown for Maryland, bearing a "Parcel of Earthenware."[223]
How long the pottery may have flourished is not known. There is no further mention of it after 1745, and the shipping records do not suggest that earthenware or stoneware products were then being shipped out of York River.
The most significant fact about the "poor potter" is the revelation that he made stoneware. Stoneware manufacture is a sophisticated art, requiring special clays, high-temperature firing, and the ability to use salt in glazing. When William Rogers acquired his first lots in Yorktown in 1711, no stoneware, so far as we know, was being made in North America. By 1725, when Rogers sold earthenware to John Mercer, the Duché family apparently had just succeeded in making stoneware in Philadelphia.[224] Since we have no documentary evidence of Rogers' first production of stoneware, we do not know whether his stoneware antedated that of the Duchés; we know only that after he died in 1739 numerous pieces of stoneware were listed in what were obviously the effects of his pottery shop. There is strong archeological evidence, however, that it was made about 1730 (see p. [110]).
Although Rogers may not have been the first to make stoneware in colonial North America, that he was at least one of the first must have elevated him to a position of prominence among colonial potters. Far from being a poor potter who conducted a business "with very little advantage to himself, and without any damage to Trade," he was supplying a colonial market that heretofore had been filled solely from England and Germany. There is a hint that he may have shipped his wares to North Carolina, because the Virginia Gazette announced on September 21, 1739: "Cler'd out of York River ... September 11. Sloop Thomas and Tryal, of North Carolina, John Nelson, for North Carolina ... some Stone Ware."[225] Three years before, Rogers had sued in court to collect "a Bill Payable to him from one Richard Saunderson of North Carolina."[226] The possibility that the stoneware in the sloop Thomas and Tryal had been made by Rogers is highly conjectural, since European imports often were redistributed and transshipped in American ports. But, since its cargo as a whole consisted of non-European materials, this still remains a possibility.
The most notable inference that Rogers' stoneware may have infiltrated distant colonial markets is found in the Petition of Isaac Parker to the Massachusetts Court to establish a stoneware manufactory in Charlestown, Massachusetts, filed in September 1742: "... there are large quantities of said ware imported into this Province every year from New York, Philadelphia, & Virginia, for which ... returns are mostly made in Silver and Gold by the gentn who receive them here."[227]