A RARE AND IMPORTANT ALKALINE-GLAZED STONEWARE STORAGE JAR, DAVE, PROBABLY DRAKE AND GIBBS POTTERY OF REV. JOHN LANDRUM POTTERY, POTTERSVILLE, EDGEFIELD DISTRICT, SOUTH CAROLINA, DATED JUNE 12, 1834

Inscribed on the shoulder Concatination (sic) 12th June 1834, with Dave insignia and thumbprint. Numerous age cracks; portion of handle missing; small firing hole.



Accompanied by Dave's slave mortgage. ( two pieces)



The use of the word concatination; meaning "to chain together; to connect as by the links of a chain; union by a series or a chain" may be profound reference to Dave's condition as an enslaved man. Certainly it is a testimony to his education, intelligence and eloquence.

PROVENANCE

Reps Edwards (1770-1840)
m. ?
Mary Elisabeth Bennett (1779-1853)
Jonathan Bennett Edwards (1809-1884)
m. (1) 1837 or 1838
Sarah Elizabeth Woodson (1814-1854)
m. (2) ?
Mary Ellen Humphries Peek (1826-1891)
John Caldwell Calhoun Edwards (1847-1917)
Joseph Eugene Edwards (1800-1959)
m. ?
Mattie Belle Lake (1884-?)
To the present owners

CATALOGUE NOTE

The Life and Times of Dave the Slave:Potter and Poet

The fragmentary evidence on the life of Dave the Potter has been brilliantly reconstructed by Jill Beute Koverman in her magisterial exhibition catalogue, “I made this jar…”: The Life and Works of the Enslaved African-American Potter Dave (Columbia, S.C.: McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, 1998), to which we can now add a few more fragments from the mortgage agreement that accompanies this jar. While Ms. Koverman concludes that Dave was born about 1800, the mortgage agreement, included with the sale of the present jar, between Mary Bennett Edwards (1779-1853) and her son, Jonathan Bennett Edwards (1809-1884), who served as administrator of his father’s estate, Reps Edwards (1770-1840), is dated April 11, 1845, and conveys ownership to her son of “a certain negro man called and known by the name of Dave about thirty-seven years of age,” which could mean that Dave was born later, about 1808.

Dave the Potter is recorded as the property of Harvey Drake in 1830, and he belonged to Drake in his youth until 1833. After the Emancipation and the end of the Civil War, Dave took the last name of Drake, and one David Drake is listed in the 1870 Federal Census living in the Aiken/Graniteville area, as 70 years old, born in South Carolina, and a [pottery] turner by occupation. He does not appear in the 1880 Federal Census and was presumably deceased by that time. The most reliable thing to be said of his vital statistics is that Dave the Potter was born between 1800 and 1810, flourished between 1834 and 1864 (the dates inscribed on his first and last signed and dated pots), and died sometime between 1870 and 1880. The earliest signed and dated stoneware storage jar known heretofore is dated July 12, 1834; the Edwards family example we offer in this sale is dated a month earlier, June 10, 1834.

Dr. Abner Landrum, Harvey Drake, and Amos Landrum were “copartners in the business of a pottery establishment” in Pottersville, a small community located a mile from the Edgefield Courthouse and it is believed that Dave was trained by these three men. Dr. Landrum, a physician, was also owner and publisher of the Edgefield Hive, and there is speculation that he taught Dave to read and write so he could work for him as a newspaper typesetter. Dave was probably turning pots in his late teens under the tutelage of Abner Landrum and/or Harvey Drake. Dave was living in Pottersville and is recorded in 1830 as the property of Harvey Drake. When Drake died in December 1832, his widow sold Dave in January 1833 to Reuben Drake and Jasper Gibbs for $400, who were business partners until 1836. Reuben Drake moved west to Louisiana, and was followed by his partner, Jasper Gibbs (and his bride, Laura Drake), in 1842. At the same time, there is also evidence that when Dr. Abner Landrum moved to Columbia, South Carolina, in 1832, he gave Dave to his son-in-law, Lewis Miles. Dave’s pottery markings indicate that in 1837 and 1840 he belonged to Lewis Miles.

“Sometime between 1840 and 1846, Dave was again traded, sold, or transferred to Reverend John Landrum [the father-in-law of Lewis Miles],” Koverman states. “Upon Landrum’s death [December 1846] Dave (listed as a boy) was part of the household inventory of 1847 and sold to his son [and brother-in-law of Lewis Miles], Benjamin Franklin Landrum, for $700.” We believe that this “hazy period” of 1840 to 1845 can now be