There will be individual chapters about the better-known red earthenware families in South Danvers (Peabody), Massachusetts in Volume I of my forthcoming two-volume, 1,660-page, tenth book, titled, An Early Industry of Household Wares: The Red Earthenware of Salem Village, Danvers, Peabody, Beverly and Salem, Massachusetts: http://www.earlyamericanceramics.com/2026/01/update-on-new-book-forthcoming-two.html.
Among those Quaker families were the Wilsons, who were also intertwined with the Quaker potters in Bristol County, Massachusetts. The family may be best known today for an advertisement placed by Joseph Wilson in the Newport (Rhode Island) Mercury on June 22, 1767: "Joseph Wilson - potter at the North End of Providence Informs the Public that he can Supply them with Earthen Ware at a Cheap Rate, made in the best Manner and Glazed in the Same Way as Practised in Philadelphia - All Persons in this Town may be regularly supplied by Means of the Boats which constantly pass between this Place and Providence."
The Wilson family descended from Theophilus Wilson (1601-1689), who migrated as part of the Puritan movement from England to Essex County, Massachusetts, sometime before his daughter, Jane Wilson (1614-1693) was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1614. Theophilus and his family also lived in Bristol County, Massachusetts and Cambridge, Massachusetts, before settling in Salem, Massachusetts about 1635.
Joseph Wilson learned the pottery craft in South Danvers before he relocated to Dedham, Massachusetts before 1764, and later Rhode Island by 1767. He is then cited in a lawsuit in Boston in the 1780s, where he was described as a "local potter."
There were a number of other Wilson family members who remained in South Danvers working as potters in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, although very little is documented about their production today. Interestingly, my niece Alexis and myself visited the location of the Wilson Pottery in South Danvers (Peabody) about a decade ago, where we found evidence of slip decoration that will be published in my forthcoming two-volume book.
Nonetheless, published in an article written by Charles D. Cook for the January 1931 issue of The Magazine Antiques, titled, Early Rhode Island Pottery, is a lidded red earthenware handled pot reportedly made by Joseph Wilson in Providence. I cannot prove the attribution, although there are a small group of these types of jugs known today, which I have always wondered if they were made by the Wilson family in South Danvers. The form somewhat coincides with another style of handled pot also thought to have been made in the area, such as one example published in Lura Woodside Watkins' (1897-1982) book, Early New England Potters and Their Wares, now owned by the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
The Wilson Family Pottery of South Danvers, Massachusetts
Please Stay Tuned...Much More to Come...
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