USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Somerset > History of the town of Somerset Massachusetts : Shawomet purchase 1677, incorporated 1790 > Part 12
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This company was incorporated in 1847 with a capi- tal of $25,000, built a substantial plant, and went to work on the production of bowls, milk pans, preserve jars, crocks, beanpots, and other articles of home use. Thirty- five years later, the company had gone into financial decline and its plant had become old and dilapidated, although its products still sold well. In 1882, the stock- holders reorganized it, shrank their stock to $15,000, issued new stock in the same amount, and with the new capital turned out a large product, including acid-resisting jars of every size from small "baskets" for jewelers' plat- ing process to enormous dye vats for the Fall River Bleachery. The enlarged plant began also to get contracts with the Lorillard Tobacco Company for snuff jars which by the early 1890's ran to 85,000 jars annually. These were shipped in the Schooner Artist, Captain George For- rester, which also regularly brought clay from New Jer- sey.
The plant was renovated, new buildings built, and the pottery took on new life. Newspaper comment by the Providence Star the next year says: "A person now visit- ing the Somerset Pottery will find numerous new build- ings for the old kilns, and for the new kilns which have taken the place of the old ones. The place, which was once noted for its rusty and worn-out appearance, is now fresh and new. In fact a complete regeneration has taken place. The point on which the company bases its success is the economy of manufacture. One thing we should not for-
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get to mention is the special firebrick, cupola and stove linings manufactured with a proper mixture of granite clay, of which they are the sole agents."
In 1883, however, the company had not begun to concentrate on bricks, lining and tile. The turning room had thirteen potters wheels in a building 100 by 37 feet in dimensions; and the plant operated four kilns, three of them for stoneware and one for earthenware. The buildings were so arranged that the kilns projected through the drying room, an arrangement made easier because the Somerset Pottery Company, never used down- draught kilns, preferring the up-draught with chimneys.
Emphasis on the firebrick and tile grew through the decade following and in 1891 the Somerset Pottery Com- pany was merged into the Somerset and Johannesburg Manufacturing Company making firebrick as its chief product. This company operated until 1897 when it was reorganized as the Somerset Enameled Brick Company, with Warren H. Sanford manager and Chester R. Fields, Somerset town clark and treasurer, as treasurer. Com- petition from potteries located nearer the clay and the markets added to mechanized quantity production, oper- ated against the Somerset Company as it soon did against the smaller individual potteries and the company was taken over by receivers who attempted for a time to op- erate it as an enamelled brick plant. It closed finally in 1909.
The buildings were razed and their lumber used for the erection of houses, and the kilns leveled. The office of the Company still remains, the small square building numbered 3046 Riverside Avenue.
The Somerset Pottery Company's works and docks were along the shore north of the later-built residence of Fernald L. Hanson. The glazed tile kiln was located on the present Hanson property, close to the great rock which is a wellknown feature of the site. A heavy iron ring set in a rock offshore and used for mooring the clay vessels can still be seen.
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THE POTTERIES
George S. Purington, proprietor of a pottery to the south of the Somerset Company's works, lived to the rear of the present Hanson house, in a house which originally stood in Assonet and was moved down to Somerset across the ice one winter. A room in the upper part of this Samuel Purington house was at one time rented to a pottery employe who was subsequently found to have used his evenings manufacturing a bomb with which he in- tended to blow up the Purington barn nearby. The pro- ject was discovered in time.
The big pottery spread offshoots all over Potters- ville in the form of little potteries set up by enterprising men who had learned the trade and went in for them- selves. At one time these small potteries numbered nine in all and with their buildings and kilns by day and their glow at night in firing time made Pottersville a striking community. A feature of the pottery years was the great piles of cord wood stacked about the village for use in the kilns, an accumulation at times of perhaps a thousand cords.
The owners and locations of these potteries, as far as present recollection can account for them, were:
Samuel Purington, south of the Somerset Pottery on a lane near Wood Street. This was later operated by his son, David Purington. Samuel Purington planted the elm trees on Riverside Avenue.
George S. Purington, on the waterfront south of the Somerset Pottery. The well of this property is in the cellar of the Hanson house, sealed over.
Thomas Kenney, south side of Center Street, not far from the Synan Pottery.
George Brown, at the foot of Cusick's Lane, on the site afterwards occupied by the "Harrington's Switch" turnout of the street railway.
Samuel B. Collins, who succeeded to the plant for- merly used by David Purington.
William and Patrick Synan, on Centre Street just up from the Pottersville Postoffice.
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Dexter Purington crucible works, on Centre Street across the wall from the Synans.
Charles E. Hathaway, north of Brightman's Lane, now Luther Avenue, between Riverside Avenue and County Street.
There was a pottery on Buffinton's Hill, near Buffin- ton Street, early in this period, whose owner appears not to be recalled. Dexter Purington erected a pottery plant near his crucible works but never operated it.
At the high period of pottery making in Pottersville, Somerset was the leading pottery town in New England. Other towns had a pottery or two, as in Charleston, Dor- chester, and F. T. Wright in Taunton. But there was no real rival in the six states.
The majority of these small plants had only one potter's wheel, none of them over three; and none more than one kiln. The plant consisted on the average of the kiln and one small shed-like building, with room enough for the workers, a stove and shelves for drying, and the storage of about a hundred tons of clay.
The owners of the plants were their own salesmen, for the most part loading two-horse wagons with their wares and peddling them around New England; although certain standard articles, like the Synan's beanpots and the Hathaway and Synan jewelers' baskets, had steady markets in Providence, Attleboro, New York and else- where. The Woolworth stores made a feature of Synan beanpots; and once by mis-shipment got hold of a crate of jewelers' dipping baskets which they offered for sale as vegetable cookers.
Pottery making suited the temperament of men in- dependent by nature, or with several irons in the fire. Even at the Company plant, potters were an independent class who worked when they felt like it, received on the average a dollar a day higher pays than in other trades, and came and went like the old-time itinerant printers. throwing over their job whenever the impulse came, and practically certain of being hired somewhere about the country when they needed work. In his own plant a man could work when it suited him.
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To be his own proprietor a potter had to have two skills; turning and firing. All Somerset pottery, includ- ing that at the big pottery, was made by hand; and ex- cept for the big crocks which ran as high as sixty gallons, in one piece. The ability of Somerset potters to make large one-piece items held their market for a long time in the face of quantity prices for articles made in several pieces.
The clay to make a piece was carefully weighed ac- cording to the size of the articles to be made, for ex- ample twenty-eight pounds for a six-gallon crock, and then set in a mass on the wheel. As the wheel, run by a foot treadle, spun the clay in a horizontal plane, it was shaped by the fingers and palm, with a small wooden paddle to give it surface smoothness, the revolving wheel assuring perfect roundness of contour if the pressure were kept even. Narrow-necked jugs were shaped to the same diameter all the way up and then pressed in to form the neck.
When the article had been shaped it was set aside until dry; then dipped in slip and set aside again pend- ing its transfer to the kiln. Slip, often referred to as Albany slip, was a very fine clay from Albany which would melt at a lower temperature than ordinary clay and spread and set all over the piece in a red brown glaze, hard, smooth and impervious to water. Slip represented the third advance in the making of Somerset's pottery. The first pottery made here was earthenware of the porous type familiar in flowerpots, of which article the Chace's had made great quantities. Then came salt glaze and next a lead glaze which advanced the product from earthenware to stoneware. The lead glaze was, however, poisonous and although lead was used even in the latter Pottersville days, the discovery of Albany slip was a great advance for this as well as other reasons.
Slip not only produced the rich red-brown glaze which makes oldtime milk pans, jars and beanpots attractive, but designs in cobalt-blue and other colorings could be painted on it and flowers, birds, butterflies and other
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designs fired on the surface produced really beautiful vases and other ornamental articles such as those the George S. Purington pottery specialized with, in its latter days.
As the time for firing approached, the potter trans- ferred his wares to the kiln where he piled them in tiers, with a small piece of fire clay between to keep them from baking together. The fire clay broke clean from the fired pieces. Piling the pieces in the kiln was a careful process, since tipping over, or uneven weight, would break or warp them, and the collapse of a stack could ruin weeks of work.
The kilns of the small potteries were round or square, ten to twelve feet in diameter and eight or nine feet high at the center. Most of them had four arches or arch- topped sections for fires, some had six. None of them in Somerset had chimneys except the Pottery plant with its seventy-five-foot ovens. A flat floor of brick was built across the top of the arches with spaces at inter- vals to let the heat through into the ovens. The barred grates beneath the arches were about three feet long and one and a half feet wide. Kilns had two walls, with a space of ten inches between them to let the heat circu- late. These were built of red brick with firebrick lining.
All Somerset kilns, including those at the Pottery company, were heated by up-draught until late in the pottery period when some owners installed down-draught equipment in which the fire circulated to the top of the oven and back again to escape through flues coming out at the bottom and running under the ground some dis- tance to vents.
When the kiln was full and ready for the heat, about twelve cords of wood were brought, ten of oak and two of pine, and the fire started. For the first twenty-four hours the heat was raised slowly, using the oak. This was important because if the heat increased too rapidly the clay exploded. For twelve hours more the heat was increased rapidly by using the pine.
The temperatures required were 1800 to 2000 degrees for earthenware, 2400 degrees for stoneware and 3000
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for fire brick. With the pieces to be fired, fragments of old slip ware had been put in the ovens at convenient places and these were watched from time to time through peep-holes in the kiln or hooked out with a rod for ex- amination. At about 2000 degrees the slip on the old fragments began to melt and the required heat was be- ing reached. Later, patented pyrometric cones made to melt at various degrees were used for this purpose. Ther- mometers came into the market in the last years of Som- erset potteries but were little used locally.
When the right degree of heat had been reached no more fuel was fed in; the kiln was sealed tight by plas- tering all crevices with clay, called "mudding up," and left for about the same period given to heating it. It was then opened and the contents left until they had cooled off to about the temperature outside.
The clay used in Somerset potteries came for the most part from Gardner's Island at the western end of Long Island Sound. It was brought by the shipload, more than one pottery sometimes sharing in the cargo. Gay Head Clay was peddled sporadically in the town by Gay Head Indians who would appear without warning with a four or five ton load brought in one of their dory-type, lapstreaked, boats with sideboards to increase the load, to sell or exchange for whatever they could get.
Later, better clay was imported from New Jersey. This clay held the doom of the Somerset potteries because potteries established near its source gradually underbid the Somerset makers and captured their markets. Estab- lishment of the western Pennsylvania and Ohio potteries, near supplies of superior clay brought the end.
The last two potteries in Somerset were the Synan Brothers and Charles E. Hathaway. The Synan's began in 1893 after learning their craft at the Somerset Pottery, and manufactured stoneware until 1913. Although Pat- rick was known as one of the best "large turners" in New England, the Brothers' chief line was beanpots, of which they could turn out twenty-five dozen a day each; and it may safely be said that for much of their twenty
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years New England baked its Saturday night beans in Synan brown pots. Edward Synan worked for his brother and learned the trade at their plant, but left before they closed up to go into the grocery business with Thomas B. Rounds, building for the purpose the store on River- side Avenue which he still occupies. They closed their pottery deliberately in 1912 after filling an order of two hundred dozen and rejecting others because prices prom- ised no profit.
C. E. Hathaway's specialty was large-sized collan- ders or crocks, although he learned his trade at the Sam- uel Purington pottery and could turn out practically any type of article. He stopped regular manufacturing a year earlier than the Synan's, having transferred his major interest to the cultivation of peach orchards. The last shipload of pottery clay brought to Somerset was for the Synan's and C. E. Hathaway jointly. Difficulty in find- ing convenient dockage for the vessel contributed to the two proprietors' decision to close.
During the World War Mr. Hathaway yielded to re- quests to resume manufacture of water filters for which he had earlier developed a formula using clay and plaster of Paris, the usual supply from Germany being stopped by the war. The demand for filters stopped in 1917 and Somerset's last potter's wheel was left to gather dust until it was put in working order for exhibition in the town's sesquicentennial year.
The pottery days of Somerset were interesting evi- dence of the truth that cities and industries grow where there are men who can build them. There was never any suitable pottery clay nearer than the far end of Long Island Sound. Yet for two hundred and ten years Somer- set furnished the majority of the pottery for New England, its annual product in the banner years totaling thousands of pieces and tens of thousands of bricks and tile, on which the word Somerset, impressed or in cobalt-blue lettering, was the guarantee of quality.
The enameled white tile with which the South Ter- minal Station in Boston is faced are tile from the Somer- set Pottery.
THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE
A GREAT amount of shipping was brought into Som- erset by the coal traffic. The coal carriers were mostly schooners, the majority of them two-masters although tonnage and canvas were steadily increased until two Somerset men, Captains Cornelius A. and Joseph F. Davis, in 1888, had the daring to build the world's first five- master, the Governor Ames.
The days of the clippers were over and the clipper captains had passed, along with their ships. John A. Bur- gess had been drowned at sea, and the others who had sailed Somerset Clippers: Wakeman, Cheever, Whittlesey, Francis, Read, Hill, Henry, Hubbard and their like: had never belonged in Somerset.
The town's merchant captains were coming ashore to stay. John H. Luther had left the sea and had a hand in half a dozen businesses and an ownership in as many vessels. Enoch T. Bowers, with cotton offices in Georgia and Fall River, had brought the beautiful Tabitha Guyton home as his wife, and died in 1867, leaving his cotton business and the main line of the Bowers name in charge of his son Lloyd Guyton Bowers at Columbus where the second Lloyd G. and the third are today leading cotton merchants. His son Philip Enoch Bowers had turned his beautiful bark Excelsior over to Daniel Bowers Eddy and settled down to the life of a merchant in Somerset. Dan- iel Brayton Eddy was home from the venturous sailing already noted.
Daniel Bowers Eddy is living at the date of this history, last surviving captain of the deep sea tradition and of the Main Street "captains' row." He is the son of David Brayton Eddy and grandson of the Captain Daniel who after the Revolution owned and sailed the Regulator and the Hiram; and direct in line from the Constable Zachariah of 1680.
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GOV. AMES - FIRST FIVE MASTED SCHOONER BUILT AND SAILED BY SOMERSET MEN
SIHVAOD
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THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE
At the age of twenty-one, Daniel Bowers Eddy sailed the Excelsior to Italy; and on later trips to Bordeaux in eighteen days, to Havre in seventeen, and to Liverpool in sixteen-figures that compare well with the Black Ball Clipper Line's thirteen days to Liverpool. He took the Excelsior from New York to Hong Kong in one hundred and twenty-two days. His later sailing was for Cady and Aldrich, the Providence owners of the famous clipper Pride of the Ocean, which the great Washington Read of Assonet sailed.
Somerset's genius for navigation was turning to steam. Egypt's William Brown had been captain of the Bay State Line's first great steamer the Bay State and its second, The Empire State. Both he and Joseph F. Davis had captained the Eudora. In 1890, Elijah Davis was the captain of the Pilgrim, pride of the Fall River Line. Nathan was captain of most of the line at various times. Baylies Davis, not related to these two, after gallant sailing in two wars, was captain of the Plymouth and then of the Puritan. Marcus Marble, son of Surbinas P. Marble; and George W. Luther, nephew of John H. Lu- ther, were Fall River Line pilots.
The old order was changing. But notable days of sail were still ahead. Charles D. Luther, another nep- hew of John H., was building and sailing with the energy and enterprise of Somerset's best tradition. The 1865 to 1940 list of Somerset vessel registrations illustrates this statement. The Crowley's: Thomas and John G., and Mary A., were owners or masters of eight vessels between 1868 and 1892.
Elmer E. Crowley, born in Somerset in 1871, the son of John G., sailed the world's only seven masted schooner, the Thomas W. Lawson and afterwards became chair- man of the United States Shipping Board.
Topping all sea-going, ship-owning families of any one Somerset generation were the five Deacon-Captain Nathan Davis sons, including Amos until he was lost at sea; with an interest in nine vessels totalling 4000 tons
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registered from Somerset, and still others listed from other ports.
Job M. Leonard had a fleet of five sailing from the Iron Works. William P. Hood had interests in six; Wil- liam E. Thrasher and his widow, Charlotte A., in five. The Marble's were always shipowners. Captain David P. Davis, of a third Davis line, was a considerable owner. In the registrations for these years, other familiar names will be found.
With these, and the great fleet of the Staples loading here, and the other fleets of bay and river, the days of sail were here again. Forty schooners in Somerset Har- bor at a time is said to have been a frequent sight. One figure of seventy-five is recalled. Pictures taken during the winter lay-up show a forest of masts.
This fleet was productive of harbor traffic of another sort. Competition between local stores for the patronage of the coal vessels was keen. As soon as one was reported coming up the bay, a boat from each shore put out to meet it, rowing down the river in an effort to reach it by the time it had come through Slade's Ferry bridge. The crews usually bought their supplies from the first rower to meet them and the races between the representatives of the various stores were the object of much sporting interest by crews and townspeople.
Stores which participated in these races were the grocery and provision stores of William M. Bowers, Marble and Bartlett, Henry E. Marble (Deacon Henry's), Staples and Cornell, and the meat market of W. H. Sample.
Other stores at the Village in this period were: Wil- liam H. Deardon, drygoods; David P. Davis, hardware, lumber, coal and general merchandise; William A. Man- chester, stoves, tinware, glassware, silverware and so on; Philip E. Bowers, hardware and a coal and lumber dock which later burned; Nathan S. Davis, periodicals; D. E. Simmons, apothecary; F. and F. Waldron, bakers; and Garett Hollihan and John Tynan, boots and shoes, suc- cessor to Charles Frank, the town's first hand-me-down clothing dealer.
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THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE
David P. Davis had the "country store" of the Village, complete with a round stove centered in the midst of a box-like square filled with sand for the convenience of the nightly senate gathered there.
William Manchester, in addition to his Main Street store, operated the type of traveling store known as a tin peddler's wagon, familiar to all the region around. F. and F. Waldron were Fred and Ferd, identical twins, one of whom did the baking while the other drove a baker's wagon; nobody was ever quite sure which. Sample's mar- ket became Fred A. Shore's and then J. J. Regan's. Oscar Hilliard had a jewelry store which afterwards became Somerset's first barber shop, still in operation.
With Samuel T. Staples when he raced to meet the coal ships, and later taking his place, was a young clerk, Owen J. Eagan, who later became proprietor of the busi- ness. This store, with its predecessors and successors, is perhaps the longest-lived commercial institution of any kind in Somerset. The business was founded by Isaac T. Peirce in the ell of the Jonathan Bowers house, first frame house in Somerset. Peirce was in the West India trade. Benjamin Reed followed him and Staples and Cor- nell succeeded Reed in the building which contained Music Hall.
This building with its hall on the second floor, was destroyed by fire during the Brilliant Polish days. Staples, however, had moved out of it to the former N. S. Davis store with the well-known Central Hall on its second floor. This building was damaged in the fire; Eagan bought the building and the Staples business, rebuilt the store and remodelled the hall on the upper floor which was thereafter known as Eagan's Hall. This bulding is in use today by Simas DaCambra as the Green Front gro- cery store.
With expanding real estate interests, ownership in several vessels, active participation in town affairs where he was chairman of the Water Board which was now building the new waterworks, Owen J. Eagen was a lead- er of Somerset enterprise when he died in his prime in 1931.
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Pioneer Lodge of Masons was organized in 1863. Ely- sian Lodge of Odd Fellows organized in 1886. The Somer- set Grange started in 1888. The Grand Army organized Wheaton Post in 1885. Not long after, came the Young Men's Irish American Temperance and Benevolent Society rising to a membership of one hundred. It was the era of fraternal organizations, grocery store councils in the evening, church suppers, and active church organizations. Somerset Village, self-contained, busy and contented; with a harbor full of vessels, industries flourishing, and a Main Street shopping center of postoffice and fifteen stores; with hourly trains at one end and the busy bay beyond Philip Bowers' store and docks at the other; and Simmons' or Hood's livery stable to furnish transporta- tion if need arose, was a vigorous and satisfying New Eng- land harbor town that is worth recalling.
The livery stables of those days had an importance now forgotten. They furnished the transportation now provided by automobile and bus and the owners were figures in a town's life. Bradford Simmons' livery stable on Main Street and Julius R. Hood's on Maple were insti- tutions and as "Brad's" and "Jule's" were popular meet- ing places.
LaForrest L. Simmons, son of Bradford, was a promo- ter, with Captain Charles D. Luther and others, of at least two schooners which were an adjunct to his coal business. One of these, bearing his name, was the last commercial sailing vessel on the Taunton River. L. L. Simmons also operated the horsedrawn busses Fern and Myrtle, one of which met every Somerset train.
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