An important signed nineteenth century stoneware crock sold tonight at Winter Associates, Inc. in Plainville, Connecticut that had been consigned from a private home in Connecticut. Interestingly, this crock is directly related to a signed nineteenth century stoneware jug that was recovered around 75 or so years ago along the banks of the Manasquan River near Riviera Beach in New Jersey. Both of these objects may have also been manufactured by a potter working with or somehow associated with Nicholas Van Wickle (1796-1865) in Manasquan, Monmouth County, New Jersey.
But as with many New Jersey pottery families, the Van Wickle family's lives and businesses intertwined with those of other pottery families. Nicholas was the son of Jacob Van Wickle (1770 - 1854), learning the craft from his father. Nicholas was named after his grandfather, Nicasius Symon Van Wickelen (1728 - 1801), whereas the family also had ties to Brooklyn and migrated to New York City from Wijckel, Friesland, Netherlands, probably in the 1680s.
Nicasius does not seem to have been a potter but rather a farmer, although his son Jacob worked as a potter running a factory with General James Morgan, Jr. (1757-1822) and Branch Green (1773-1847) in Old Bridge, Middlesex County, New Jersey, where he worked from 1805 to about 1827. It is also important to note that the Morgan family and Green had strong ties to the stoneware industry in New York.
The Van Wickle and Morgan families were intertwined for several generations. Both James and Charles Morgan were witnesses to Nicasius Van Wickle's will in 1801, and Jacob Van Wickle married James Morgan's sister, Sarah Morgan.
Furthermore, Nicholas Van Wickle married Ida Suydam (1796 - 1857) in 1821. The couple had nine children, three of whom died in childhood. Nicholas Van Wickle seems to have assisted his father in the running of the Old Bridge pottery for a time, possibly serving as an apprentice under his father's direction.
In 1824, Nicholas purchased 430 acres in Manasquan, and eventually opened his own stoneware business there, sometime in the late 1820s. Van Wickle also seems to have been a successful farmer.
By 1838, Nicholas Van Wickle owned 700 acres, as well as his stoneware firm; it was advertised in the January 25, 1838 issue of the Monmouth Inquirer & General Advertiser, that Van Wickle "has for sale at his factory at Manasquan, a general assortment of Stone Ware, such as Pots, Jugs, Jars, Pitchers, &c., &c., which he will sell on reasonable terms." By 1840, however, Van Wickle had closed his pottery and relocated with his family to a farm located elsewhere in New Jersey, although he does not appear to have worked in the pottery business again.
According to an article written by James S. Brown for the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey on May 14, 1950, titled, Reporter Finds Pottery Mystery Along Banks of Manasquan River, which reads in part"...immediately came up with a small brown jug on which in neat script is written "Asher Applegate, Maker, Manasquan, N. J." This jug looked promising; an investigation disclosed a number of Asher Applegates of Monmouth County, where the first name seemed to run in the family but none, apparently, was the potter who signed the little jug. Deeds at Toms River revealed that Nicholas Van Wickle and his wife, Ida, by 1851 were listed as Franklin Township, Somerset County residents and between that date and 1860 all of the Manasquan River holdings were sold. Did Asher Applegate lease the pottery site and the river clay banks from Van Wickle the potter and Applegate was an employee?"
Nonetheless, this is possibly the same Asher Applegate (1809-1890) that is listed in census records as a potter working in Taunton, Massachusetts in 1850 and 1860. It is also important to note that Taunton was a part of the collective red earthenware and stoneware industry in Bristol County, Massachusetts, which was heavily influenced by the Quaker religion. Applegate may have been a journeyman potter, although the Applegate who worked in Bristol County died in 1890 and was buried in Sandy Hill Cemetery in Taunton.
Additionally, according to the Baker family history records of Taunton, "On July 1, 1859, Charles F. Baker (1837-1899) married Abby O. Applegate (1839-1893), daughter of Asher and Fannie Maria (Presbrey) Applegate. Asher Applegate came from New Jersey to Taunton and worked as a potter in the Phoenix Crucible Works." But as Brown noted in his article, the Applegate family was prominent in New Jersey, and the name Asher ran in the family, including a man with this name from Monmouth County who served in the Civil War.
Interestingly though, the crock that sold tonight bears the same inscription and a similar style of floral decoration as the jug illustrated in Brown's article. The inscription on the base of the crock reads, "Asher Applegate, Maker, Manasquan." However, the crock is also decorated on one side with an inscribed bird that is similar in style to types produced in New York, as well as by Nicholas Van Wickle in Manasquan, along with other areas in New Jersey and elsewhere in the Northeast. But the name Ann Cook is also inscribed twice above the bird, once in script and a second time in block letters.
I have no proof that it is the same Ann Cook, although the only record that I can find of a woman with this name in Manasquan, Monmouth County, New Jersey is an Ann Cook who was born in 1798 and died in 1883. She is buried in the Quaker Cemetery in Manasquan and was of a Quaker faith. These types of presentation objects are also known among Quaker potter families in Massachusetts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, such as a pair of marriage jars owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. This type of production is also discussed in detail in my fifth book, titled, A Celebrated Industry: The Historic Wares of Southeastern Massachusetts, Bristol County and Cape Cod: https://historicbeverly.net/product/a-celebrated-industry-the-historic-wares-of-southeastern-massachusetts-bristol-county-and-cape-cod/.
Nevertheless, this crock sold tonight to New York collector Adam Weitsman for $4,750 plus the buyer's premium.
19th Century Stoneware Crock from Manasquan, New Jersey
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