A Pioneering Potter
Samuel Marshall of Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Justin W. Thomas
T he mouth of the Piscataqua
River provided
important transportation
hub for domestic and European
an
imports in the late seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Portsmouth, N.H.,
especially was a target for boats
unloading crates of European
ceramics, red earthenware and
stoneware.
Archaeological work in
Portsmouth in the last 50 years
has uncovered pieces of English
earthenware, English slipware,
English stoneware, European
delftware, German stoneware and
Chinese porcelain: Clear evidence
that these were among the types
of imported ceramics unloaded
at the docks in Portsmouth in the
eighteenth century. Evidently, local
homes enjoyed European-made
pottery, particularly before the
American Revolution.
Domestic red earthenware from
Maine, Massachusetts and New
Hampshire has also been recovered
from eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century sites in Portsmouth. But the
only identifiable domestic stoneware
appears to have been imported
from Charlestown, Mass. in the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Despite its thriving import trade,
Portsmouth also managed to sustain
a market for locally produced red
earthenware. At least four businesses
fed this market: Samuel Marshall, who
operated before 1750; John Shilabur,
who is listed as a potter in 1766;
Winthrop Bennett, who ran a shop from
1789-1796; and Joseph Dodge, who
purchased Bennetts company in 1796,
and continued to operate a successful
business into the nineteenth century.
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But Marshalls legacy may be the most
exceptional today since he operated
in a period of uncertainty, conflict and
constant change.
Samuel Marshall
Pottery
Samuel Marshall (no
record of birth, d. 1749) was
an eighteenth-century utilitarian
red earthenware potter, active c. 1729-
1749. He may have apprenticed in
Massachusetts, and he may have also
have run a pottery prior to 1729.
State records show that Marshall
purchased a piece of waterfront property
in Portsmouth in 1736. The land was
conveniently located next to an inlet
from the Piscataqua River. In 1736,
Marshall married Eleanor Sherburne,
and the couple used their lot of land
to build a Georgian-style home. This
is where Marshall likely dug clay, and
manufactured red earthenware.
The inlet in front of Marshalls home
was where he owned a dock, a warehouse
and a gundalow, a flat-bottomed cargo
vessel up to 70 feet long, that was
common in New England coastal waters,
and well suited to carrying pottery.
Marshall operated his potters business
next to Puddle Dock in Portsmouth as early
as 1736. His shop was located on property
now owned by Strawbery Banke that
was excavated by archaeologists in the
1970s. The recovered artifacts included
lead-glazed red earthenware sherds,
some decorated with slip-decoration,
kiln wasters, kiln furniture and kiln bricks.
Archaeological evidence also shows that
Marshall produced simple utilitarian
kitchenware for the local market such
Slip-decorated mug recovered in Charlestown, Mass. Found as bowls, crocks, chamber pots, jars,
in an early to mid-18th-century privy at the site of the Three
mugs and pans.
Cranes Tavern. The slip is similar to that on the mug found in
Portsmouth. Courtesy of Boston Archaeology Department.
Samuel Marshall owned African
American slaves, whose involvement
in the pottery is recorded in the
book, Black Portsmouth: Three
Centuries of African-American
Heritage. Adam and Mercer were
slaves of Samuel Marshall who
worked in the pottery. They dug
and weathered the clay; they
milled and kneaded the clay; they
made the glaze; they stacked the
kiln; they stoked the fire for the
kiln; and in addition to all this
manual labor, they turned pots on
the wheel themselves.
According to Lura Woodside
Watkins in Early New England
Potters and Their Wares, There is
evidence to show that Marshall was
a wholesale dealer in pottery and
perhaps did a shipping business,
sending out consignments along
the coast.
Likewise, Marshall also
purchased red earthenware
wholesale from John Parker in
Charlestown in the late 1740s.
This information is recorded in
Parkers potters daybook, which
is owned by the Baker Library
at Harvard University. However,
Marshall may have also imported
Charlestown red earthenware
earlier in his career, as well since
archaeologists have recovered
Charlestown pottery as early as
a 1715-1735 in Portsmouth. The
Charlestown pottery that Marshall
bought from Parker was shipped
to Portsmouth but was probably
sold all over the region (detailed
records do not exist).
From what I have studied,
Charlestown red earthenware
has not been recovered in great
quantity in Portsmouth, but it has
been found at colonial military
forts in Maine and Canada. Marshall
may have acted as a broker for
Parker, and helped fulfill some
of the utilitarian pottery needs
at military forts in northern New
England and Canada.
For example, a wonderful
Charlestown red earthenware
chamber pot was recovered at the
Fortress of Louisbourg in Nova
Scotia that dated to 1755-1760,
only a few years after Marshall
purchased wholesale orders of
red earthenware from Parker.
Charlestown red earthenware
sherds have also been recovered in
a mid-eighteenth-century context
at a tavern in Berwick, Maine.
www.antiquesjournal.com April 2017 Antiques Journal Page 43
There was clearly a brisk
domestic trade in pottery: Red
earthenware made at the Daniel
Bayley Pottery Company in
Newburyport, Mass. has also been
discovered in colonial contexts in
Maine and Canada.
The pottery did not close when
Samuel Marshall died in 1749.
Instead, it appears that his wife,
Eleanor temporarily continued
with the business. She is recorded
in John Parkers daybook in the
early 1750s purchasing orders
of earthenware. Another widow
who kept a pottery running after
her husbands death was Grace
Parker in Charlestown: When her
husband died in 1742, she ran the
Chamber pot recovered at the site of Samuel Marshalls Pottery
Parker Pottery until she died in in Portsmouth, N.H., 1736-1749. Courtesy of Strawbery Banke
1754. Archaeology Department.
An important mug found
in Portsmouth
To my knowledge, there has
not been any red earthenware
properly attributed to Samuel
Marshall except what has been
recovered archaeologically.
The most hopeful candidate is
probably a slip-decorated mug,
which was discovered filled with
dried paintbrushes by Portsmouth
antiques dealer, Hollis Brodrick,
in the 1970s, in a shed just a few
hundred yards from Marshalls
pottery. Slip-decorated Charlestown, Mass, porringer with an unusual
This mug is an important handle. Recovered in a 1715-1735 archaeological context on Deer
Street in Portsmouth, N.H. This unusual form and slip decoration
survivor whose slip technique is
has been found in Charlestown. Courtesy of Strawbery Banke
similar to that found on a pair of Archaeology Department.
red earthenware mugs that may
have been made at the Parker
Pottery, which were recovered
from an early to mid-eighteenth-
century privy at the Three Cranes
Tavern in Charlestown. The form
of the mug is also similar to
that of mugs recovered both in
Charlestown and at the site of the
Marshall Pottery.
Marshall may have been
influenced by English predecessors:
The mug shares characteristics with
pottery produced in Staffordshire,
England, and also by John Astbury
in England in the early to mid-
eighteenth century.
This mug may possibly
represent what is left from Samuel
Marshall today, and certainly
speaks for the export/import
Charlestown, Mass., chamber pot recovered at the Fortress of
business between John Parker and Louisbourg in Nova Scotia. Found in a 1755-1760 archaeological
the Marshalls. context. Decoration is similar to pots from the Parker Pottery in
Charlestown. Courtesy of Fortress of Louisbourg/Parks Canada.
Samuel Marshalls legacy
Samuel Marshall was a landmark potter. He
had the foresight to establish the first known
American pottery in Portsmouth, which had
previously been dominated by English and
European imports.
There is informed speculation, but no
proof, that Samuel Marshall, the Parkers and
the Duches in Philadelphia were all involved
in an inter-coastal trade. The Duches were
a prominent family of potters based in
Philadelphia, but family members eventually
branched out into South Carolina and
Charlestown, Mass.
There is documentary evidence of the
coastal trade between Charlestown and
Portsmouth, so it is quite feasible that the trade
extended south to Philadelphia. In some ways,
the Marshall Pottery could be considered as an
extension of the Charlestown, Mass., pottery
industry: An expansion that occurred as early
as the 1720s.
Marshall was literally a pioneer potter in
New Hampshire. His early intuition that there
was a market for local pottery helped spark a
fire that would ultimately spread throughout
New Hampshire. There always has to be a first
for others to follow, and Marshall was a leader
in that first generation of New England potters
who challenged the import trade by meeting
local needs with local products.

Slip-decorated mug found in a

The site of the Samuel Marshall Pottery in
Portsmouth, N.H., 1736-1749, as it appears
today. Courtesy author.
shed in Portsmouth, N.H., in the
1970s. The decoration appears
to imitate known early to mid-
Mugs recovered at the site of the Samuel Marshall Pottery in 18th-century styles. Probably
Portsmouth, N.H., c. 1736-1749. Charlestown, Mass., 1730-1760.
Courtesy Strawbery Banke Archaeology Department. Courtesy of Hollis Brodrick.

Story Behind Smithsonian Ashleys Sack Uncovered by CWU Professor

ELLENSBURG, WA For almost a
decade, a slavery-era artifact known as
Ashleys Sack has intrigued historians
unable to identify Ashley the girls
name preserved in needlework.
The Smithsonian, where the sack
is on display, may now attribute the
recent discovery of Ashleys identity
to Central Washington University
Professor Mark Auslander.
Auslander, who teaches in the
department of anthropology and
museum studies and is director for the
museum of culture and environment
spent the last year researching the
lineage of the three women whose
names were needle-worked into the
cloth. Research led him to North
Carolina and Philadelphia where
he searched slave, court and estate
records, as well as early bank and
census data.
The object has become a kind
of obsession for me during this past
year, said Auslander. His findings
were recently published in the article
Slaverys Traces: In Search of Ashleys
Sack, in the noted academic journal
Southern Spaces.
The original object was found
in 2007 at a flea market in the small
town of Springfield, Tenn. Little was
known of its history, but it gained
great attention by historians and
academics. Even less was known
about the females listed on the sack.
Ruth Middleton created the
embroidered sack in 1921. In
needlepoint lettering, Middleton
presented an account of her familys
legacy. She traced the story of 9-year-
old Ashley, who was born a slave,
being sold to another owner, and
how Ashleys mother, Rose, provided
her with simple yet meaningful
family keepsakes. Ashley was Ruths
grandmother. Since its rediscovery,
the sack is now considered a lasting
legacy of slavery and the resilience of
families to keep connected.

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