The Maine Brick Company - A Business of Interest Seen in an Unusual Brick

"Brickmaking was constantly regulated in the seventeenth century to insure correct preparation of the clay and uniform size of the finished product. The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ordered, June 10, 1679, that all bricks when made should measure nine by two and one quarter by four and a half inch, and the molds used should be well shod with iron. The clay should be dug by November first and turned over in the following February or March, one month before it was to be used. The addition of salt or brackish water to temper the bricks was forbidden. Another regulation dated November 10, 1711, gives the size of bricks as nine by two and half an inch by four and one half inch." (Lura Woodside Watkins, Early New England Potters and Their Wares - 1950)

Brickmakers were seen in the New World before the earliest known potters were turning their wares. Bricks were needed for homes and chimney construction. Potters had their own demand, too. The first potters kilns in New England may have been manufactured with bricks imported from England; however, the production of bricks dates much earlier than its use in Europe and the New World.

The earliest known bricks date back to 6,395 BC in the Indus Valley region of what is now parts of India, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. The use of the brick has varied very little over the centuries. It has always seen a primary use for infrastructure.

The demand for bricks in the New World was great. That demand only grew with more Europeans leaving the Old World for America in the eighteenth century. Brickyards were needed and they began to grow. The most prominent New England brickmakers were in Medford, Massachusetts, but Charlestown and Salem manufactured bricks, too. Each likely served a strong local need. An active export system to all areas of America was probably seen.

"The manufacturer of bricks and of earthenware go hand in hand. The earliest potters are found in the places where brickmaking was first carried on." (Lura Woodside Watkins, Early New England Potters and Their Wares - 1950)

New England's brick business grew in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The clay sources were the same supply used by local earthenware potters.

Over the weekend, I saw a Maine antique picker who often pulls unusual redware and stoneware from homes and barns in Maine. He told me he had a brick for me.

Maine Brick Company - Made Somewhere in Maine

Likely 19th Century

The brick reads, Maine Brick Company across the front of it. The name was imprinted onto the clay as part of the mold. I have seen a number company names impressed on bricks, but never this name. The brick appears early 19th century. It's weight and size appear less than the bricks of the widely popular New England Brick Company of the twentieth century - and similarly related brick companies of New England and New York.

The New England Brick Company operated in Medford, Massachusetts. The company was first known as the Bay State Brick Company. The company underwent a name change on November 23, 1900. There are reports the Bay State Brick Company manufactured upwards of twenty million bricks annually in the latter years of the nineteenth century. It is not known if all bricks showed a company name or only a percentage. I believe it's likely the later of the two. The impressed name probably served as an unconventional advertising tool.

New England Brick Company - Medford, Ma

20th Century

I read through the information Manlif Lelyn Branin provides of Maine's nineteenth century brick industry in the book, "The Early Potters and Potteries of Maine." The earliest records of brickmaking in Maine appeal to have happened at the Norcross Pottery of eighteenth and early nineteenth century Hallowell, Maine. The family run pottery made both bricks and utilitarian earthenware. In the nineteenth century - utilitarian potter, James Daniels worked near the brickmaker, Aaron Huntress in Lincoln, Maine, but no more information was given. 

Harvard Professor Lura Woodside Watkins identified a brickyard in Gardiner, Maine, but provided no more information. 

It appears there were some potters in Maine who manufactured bricks, too. A similar business approach was seen in New Hampshire. The brick industry in Massachusetts was mostly separate from the potters industry. 

I am personally not familiar with the Maine Brick Company. I could not find any information online or any books that identified who this company was. I am curious to know the company background, but further, I would like to know who ran the business. Was it a potter?

Bricks certainly traveled around. I found this brick in a stack of similar bricks in Danversport, Massachusetts. It bears the name Tuttle after the Tuttle Brick Company.

 Tuttle Brick Company - Middletown, Ct

Likely 19th Century

The Tuttle Brick Company was based in Middletown, Connecticut of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is not known when the company ceased operation, but it was likely sometime before the midway point of the twentieth century. South Danvers, Massachusetts' redware industry thrived in the 1800s, but the demand for bricks was never entirely filled locally. I personally do not believe bricks were ever manufactured in Essex County after the American Revolution. Locally, the demand was still seen for bricks. It appears the Tuttle Brick Company owned a contract of some-sort in the nineteenth century to provide bricks to the greater Salem, Massachusetts area. The length and depth of the brickmakers involvement in Essex County is not known.

I wonder what significance the Maine Brick Company may have served in the state of Maine, possibly New Hampshire and perhaps Vermont. What possible standing structures could the brick company be responsible for today? How successful was the company? And again, was a potter involved in a multipurpose business that served bricks for industrial and construction needs - and utilitarian wares for households? It's all interesting. There may be someone reading this who knows exactly what the Maine Brick Company stood for.

Bricks can help date a self-contained archaeology site. The impressed company name can provide a very broad range of the archaeological context from when the brickmaker operated. There were examples of New York made bricks at the Clough House excavation in Boston's North End neighborhood that were seen in a preliminary dated context. Here are a few reports from that dig.

Clough House Report 1
Clough House Report 2

If you would like to learn more about bricks - these are a couple of interesting links that show a wide variety of examples and a detailed history of makers.

http://brickcollecting.com/
Early BrickMaker Examples 

Much more it come...