Pen Hook Pottery

Last year, I acquired some pottery that I think is from the Pen Hook Pottery which hasn't existed for over a hundred years. (The village is now Penhook, one word instead of the original two.) I'd wanted to learn more about the pottery, but I couldn't find much online.

From p. 64, Franklin County 1785-1980 

Tex Carter, who is writing a book about the F&P railroad sent me two pictures taken at the Franklin County Historical Society Museum:

The exhibit pictured above is from Dorothy Cundiff, who knows local history and has been head of the Retail Merchant's Association for many years. Like me, she lives a few miles from where the pottery was.

The info in the picture frame: 

"About 1873, Kit Carter built a store across the road from Clement Store (later home to Mr. & Mrs. J.W. Perdue). Carter made pottery here about 12 years. In 1882, Wade Johnson began making pottery in back of what is now Blair's store (once Blair & —er's). The clay came from Pittsville. His [potters? partners?] were Elly Johnson and a Mr. Siegal.

"Janey Smith provided these pictures of pottery owned by her grandmother, Fannie Macenheimer Smith, who lived on Novelty Road at Penhook near the Pottery manufactory."

From an article on pages 45-46 in Franklin County 1785-1979 Yesterday & Today,  published by the Retail Merchants Assn, I learned this about the pottery: About 1879, a narrow gauge railroad was established to run from Rocky Mount to Franklin Junction (now Gretna). Since the railroad came through Pen Hook, where a store had been since the 1850s or earlier, the little town underwent a boom and a pottery shop opened in the 1880s. No trace of the pottery shop exists today, but it was apparently on a hill between what became Blair's Grocery (the building still remains) and Hodges' Store (which no longer exists).  Mr. C.L. "Kit" Carter founded the pottery business, and "his pottery bcame a fashionable item as well as a useful one." Clay for the pots came from Pittsville in Pittsylvania County and was delivered by train. It's possible that some local clay might have been used, too. Among his helpers at the pottery were A. J. Ramsey and Mary Ann Muse.

From p. 116 (a story by Miss Starn Carter of Gretna, VA): "He [Kit Carter] was a highly successful merchant at Pen Hook, manufacturer, and real estate operator. He operated a pottery keel [kiln?] and made many of the vessels still found around the county such as urns, churns, jugs, and jars. These were hauled by wagons into neighboring states and wagonloads of merchandise brought back to the store. The old Carter store stood on the hill in the vicinity of the home now owned by Mrs. Emmitt Jefferson."

Christopher ("Kit") Lawson Carter
Photo provided by his grandson Tex Carter

Pictured below are the pottery pieces I have. I don't know if all of them came from the Pen Hook Pottery or not. Some jugs are glazed in what is called the tobacco spit glaze because—although it was made from wood ash and not tobacco—it looks like chewing tobacco spit.

None of the pottery has a potter's signature, but I've been told that potters didn't want to be identified with their jugs that might be used for whiskey. I don't know if that's true or not.

The piece with a 2 is one of the few that have marks. I assume 2 stands for two gallons.

A few pieces appear to be salt-glazed with plume decorations.

Here's a view looking down.

All the pieces appear to be utilitarian. Nothing fancy here. Some are missing handles or show wear around their rims. Likely they were used for many years.

The paper towel roll will show the size of one of the larger jugs.

If anyone knows more about the pottery, I'd be glad to hear from you. Meanwhile, I'll keep researching.

~

Essay Inc Comment

Usually when someone comments on this blog, it's a day or two after I post—except in the case of the horse trailer scam where the scammers keep trying and folks keep Googling them and sharing their experiences. So, when I received this comment the other day. . .

. . . for "Two Memoirs About Writing" that  I'd posted a year ago, I was more than a little suspicious. For one thing, I'd written about two non-fiction books, not a "novel with a passionate look to it," and—while both were lovely books—the two books were not "such lovely novels."

And a student helped the scammer commentor "write my essay for me" (and "the quality was phenomenal") "helped me gather fictonal content"—Whoa! Fictional content for an essay?! Plus the rest of the sentence makes no sense. Obviously, English is not the commentor's first language.

The link in the comment leads to Essay Inc, which is supposedly based in the UK but has an Austin TX area code. Against my better judgment (Will malware infect my computer?), I went to the essay mill's site, and took a few screen shots of part of the home page:

Note that the writing on the website is no better than what's on the comment. Who would be desperate stupid enough to buy a "plagiarism free" essay in which "the authenticity of our work is never challenged" from this company?

Just in case a student is having second thoughts, the scam "essay site" attempts to play his fears:

Apparently these scam writing services services are popular ways to separate students from their (or their parents') money. There are even warning sites about which writing services not to use, like EssayScam's list of fake "essay website reviews" sites created by fraudulent term paper companies—because students who are trying to dupe their teachers certainly don't want to get duped themselves. 

There are even sites that recommend the best writing services, like this one. After all, if you're going to cheat, you certainly don't want to deal with a service that'll cheat you. And if you deal with any of  the multitude of sites that aren't even in America, getting a refund for services not rendered will be well nigh impossible.

During my Eng 101 teaching days more than a decade ago, a few freshmen attempted to hand in essays I knew they hadn't written themselves, and it was fairly easy to Google up selected parts of their essays. Now teachers have more sophisticated ways to detect plagiarism, such as this one. But Googling worked for me. In fact, I blogged about this topic last year on "Sarah Hill Shill."

But, back in those days, there were plenty of "free" essay sites to choose from. There still are. One is eCheat, which features an example of a personal essay that begins, "Three times a week after school I go visit my dad. When I enter the hospital room where he has lain in a coma since his accident. . . ."

Is that opening line a grabber, or what? Surely no English instructor would suspect a student who loves his poor, unfortunate dad so much of cheating!

But wait, there's more. "The Importance of a Father" is also on the essay sites Write Work, Essay Edge, and Kibin. And more. Plus the exact essay was published in 2008 and again in 2013 in a self-published book, How to Write Creative Non-fiction on p. 27 (When I Googled the opening two sentences of the essay, Googlebooks coughed up that title as one of the sources.) And the author of that book got it from a website about parenting. 

I used Amazon's "Look Inside!" feature to get this screen-shot.

Given the number of times this paticular essay appears on the Intenet, if a student turns it in as his own work, it won't take a professor long to find out what a low-life cheating scumbag the student is. All it takes is a little Googling.

If a student "borrows" an essay from the 'Net, he's likely to get caught. If he tries to buy one from a "writing services" site, he's likely to lose a pile of money. Either way, he's a loser.

Sometimes honesty is, after all, the best policy.

~

Daddy's Girl

The other day, I was privileged to receive an advance copy of Lin Stepp's lastest Smoky Mountain romance, Daddy's Girl. I've posted about some of Linn's books before—Saving Laurel Springs and Welcome Back. Both of those books were about women returning to places where they grew up.

Daddy's Girl, however, is about a woman who never left the small North Carolina town where she was born. Olivia Benton's mother died when she was a child, and her grandmother died a few years after, so Olivia becomes the one who looks after her father, cooks his meals, and looks after the family home. She especially enjoys taking care of her grandmother's lavish garden in back of the house. Later, she buys a florist shop a florist shop and loves running it.

Tanner: "I'll read it after I see what'sgoing on outside."

Meanwhile, her friends in the popular clique to which she'd belonged in high school are going to college, getting married, etc. Even her childhood next-door neighbor and best friend, the nerdy out-cast Weird Warner Zachary—the target of much high school bullying, goes to college in New York and gets married. While Olivia dates off and on, she never gets serious. She is, after all, Daddy's Girl—even though Daddy had started dating the widow of one of his colleagues.

Arlo: "I'll put it at the top of my to-read stack."

Ten years after high school, when Olivia and her three ex-cheerleader besties are having lunch in the same Bryon City drugstore where they've been meeting since high school, a black Mercedes pulls up out front and a well-dressed guy comes in. He's handsome W.T. Zachary, a well-known author famous for his Geeky Gilmore series of books for young people—but he used to be Weird Warner. Olivia has always loved him even though she once rejected him, so awkwardness ensues. He's been widowed a year now, so much of the book deals with W.T.'s and Olivia's off-again/on again relationship.

But it deals with more. A sub-plot involves Olivia's employee Patti and her son who suffers at the hands of bullies. Patti is a relative newcomer in town and seems to have some secrets in her past. But she won't talk about the past. Then there's a vandal who spray-paints messages on buildings in town, but no one has been able to catch him.

Alfreda: "What I liked best is that this book had a cat in it."

I won't give away anymore of the plot, except to say it has some twists and turns, and everything works out in the end. It's a clean, up-beat book that will appeal to women of any age. Since it addresses some of the choices a young woman must make, it would be a great book for a mother to read with her teenage daughter.

One of the things I really like about Lin Stepp's books is the richness of detail in her setting, and the map that she provides. Bryson City is a real town, and she mentions some of the real places. She gives the reader a wonderful glimpse of small town life.

She has created believable characters that are not without flaws, and some of those characters will likey remind you of someone you went to high school with or someone you've met.

Another plus is the study guide she included in the book. Daddy's Girl could provide a book club with much to discuss. The book debuts on April 1, 2017, but you can preorder a copy from Amazon.

For more information about the author or her book, visit her Amazon author page or her website, www.linstepp.com.