Andreas Höger and the First Moravian Maps of Wachovia

Michael O. Hartley, PhD

In the fall of 1754, Peter Boehler and Andreas Höger traversed a 100,000-acre tract of land in North Carolina that had recently been acquired by the Moravian Church.[1] The Moravians named their Carolina land “Wachovia.” Boehler, a leader in the Moravian Church, and Höger, a skilled map maker who was also Moravian, were tasked to measure Wachovia and produce a map. Records kept by the Moravians clearly state that Andreas Höger produced a map of Wachovia while he was in North Carolina, but throughout the twentieth century no map had been identified to his hand. In fact, some scholars doubted that the map actually existed. This article reports on the discovery of Höger’s map—an investigation that led to the identification of not one but three maps produced during the short time in 1754 that Peter Boehler and Andreas Höger were in North Carolina. The product of their efforts in Wachovia … Continued

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Taste and Harmony Without Frippery at Blandwood, North Carolina Governor John Motley Morehead’s Antebellum Mansion

Judith Z. Cushman Hammer

In 1844, as Governor John Motley Morehead launched an expansion of Blandwood, his Greensboro, North Carolina residence, he embraced emerging national trends in architectural design and the arts, and, at the same time, adhered to regional tastes. Morehead hired the noted architect Alexander Jackson Davis of New York City to undertake the project, and over the next few years they discussed the furnishings and interior details as well as the building of Blandwood. Their conversations reveal the nuanced taste of a forward-thinking statesman and the broad tastemaker role of a prominent architect. Ultimately, Blandwood reflects Morehead’s respect for North Carolina’s political climate, agrarian setting, and industrial future as well as Davis’s vision for a harmonious blend of architecture, landscape, and furnishings. This antebellum mansion, as a result, not only documents a significant statesman/architect partnership but also embodies tensions apparent in nineteenth century material culture.   — ♦♦◊♦♦ —   As … Continued

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Lost Potters of Loudoun County, Virginia: The Gardner-Duncan Family

Amy Bertsch

Loudoun County, Virginia is located midway between Alexandria and the eastern edge of the Shenandoah Valley, two places where rich pottery traditions are well-documented. Hundreds of surviving pieces of pottery, historical records, and artifacts recovered through archaeological work clearly establish the potters, techniques, and trade of Alexandria and Shenandoah Valley pottery. A kiln site south of Leesburg discovered in 2004 offers a unique opportunity to consider the work of the forgotten potters of Loudoun County, and in particular, one family of potters whose tradition later reached as far as Missouri and Colorado.[1]   Sycolin Road Pottery The Loudoun County kiln site was discovered in 2004 during the initial phase of a road-widening project and while it has not been fully excavated, it was surveyed by the Louis Berger Group, a cultural resource management contractor for the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT). Located along Sycolin Road, the site yielded remains of … Continued

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Female Education and the Ornamental Arts in Antebellum Tennessee

Jennifer C. Core and Janet S. Hasson

In 1836 Rev. W. R. Thomason of the Pulaski Female Academy in Giles County, Tennessee stated that the goal of female education was “to preserve and cultivate the ornamental character of the female sex.”[1] During the years of Tennessee’s settlement and early statehood, public education was non-existent. In the early nineteenth century, the first small, private schools were established by clergymen or individual proprietors, or subscription schools were created in which a consortium of parents hired a teacher. Some children had private tutors. Students only went to school if their parents could afford it, and male education took priority. Nashville had public schools by 1852 and Memphis followed suit in 1858; however, it was not until after the Civil War that a state-wide, public school system was established.[2] Children aged two to six who were not educated at home might attend dame schools, called infant schools in Tennessee, which met … Continued

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Cabinetmaker John Brown and the Tall Case Clocks of Wellsburg, West Virginia, 1800–1825

Sumpter Priddy III

A group of five tall case clocks made during the first quarter of the nineteenth century has drawn attention of decorative arts scholars and collectors for more than fifty years. With movements made by three different clockmakers, all five are housed in cases produced by the same unidentified cabinetmaker. A recent evaluation of historic documents and extant woodwork now makes it possible to attribute these remarkable clock cases to the hand of John Brown (1761–1835) of Wellsburg, Brooke County, Virginia (now West Virginia). John Brown’s clock cases are exceptional not only for the quality of their design and quantity of inlay but also for the seminal moment that they represent in the cultural life of Virginia’s northwestern frontier. Despite the distance to eastern urban centers, Wellsburg stood ideally situated on the banks of the Ohio River, where it flourished as a commercial center. Eastern settlers heading west to the Mississippi … Continued

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2019 Editor’s Welcome

Gary Albert

This year marks a personal milestone: I have now lived in North Carolina longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. The South has been my home for over twenty years, and I hope never to leave. It is with great pride that I say that, while I may not be a southerner by birth, I am a southerner by choice! This tidbit of information about your dear editor is revealed in order to place into context my embarrassment when I explained to Judith Cushman Hammer that I had not visited Blandwood, the subject of Judith’s article in this year’s MESDA Journal. Located in Greensboro, only thirty miles from my home in Winston-Salem, Blandwood is the residence of North Carolina Governor John Motley Morehead that was significantly updated in the 1840s by the renowned architect Alexander Jackson Davis. My face reddened even further as I learned from Judith about the history of … Continued

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William Roberts’s “Excursion over the Mountains”: Backcountry Landscapes “from the Pencil of a Virginian”

Katie McKinney

After serving his second term as President of the United States and returning to Monticello in 1809, Thomas Jefferson compiled a detailed inventory of artwork he owned and where it was displayed. In the dining room, beneath religious paintings and a still life, Jefferson listed landscapes that included a print of New Orleans, two views of Niagara Falls, an elevation of Monticello, and a view of Mount Vernon. In addition, he recorded two landscapes by a previously little-known Virginia-born artist William Roberts (1762–1809) listed as: “81. the Natural bridge of Virginia on Canvas by Mr. Roberts” and “82. the passage of the Patomak through the Blue ridge. do.”[1] Roberts’s paintings of the Natural Bridge and Harper’s Ferry, views of two of Jefferson’s favorite places in America, were dispersed by sale along with all of the former President’s possessions after his death in 1826. It is unknown whether or not the … Continued

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Research Note: The Eighteenth-Century Potters of Salisbury and Rowan County, North Carolina

Stephen C. Compton

More than a dozen potters and their apprentices resided in Rowan County, North Carolina from 1755 through the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Most of the potters resided in the town of Salisbury, a community made possible by a 1755 grant for 635 acres of land issued by the British agents of the Earl of Granville, Sir George Carteret, one of the original Lords Proprietor of the Province of Carolina. Rowan County was formed from Anson County in 1753 and Salisbury was created along the Great Trading Path, a vital American Indian route across Piedmont North Carolina, as the site for the new county’s court house and prison.[1] Many of the region’s early residents were German Palatines affiliated with the Lutheran and Reformed churches whose families first settled in Pennsylvania following their escape from persecution and economic deprivation in European homelands. They traveled to Carolina down the Great Philadelphia … Continued

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Looking for Polly Armistead: Intimations of Mortality and Identity in a Late Eighteenth-Century Needlework

Laurel Horton

In 1980 MESDA acquired a white embroidered bedcover inscribed “PA August the 16+ 1793,” which had descended in the Wright and Warren families of eastern North Carolina (Figure 1). Recognizing the importance of an eighteenth-century bedcover, museum curators conducted preliminary research, resulting in an attribution of the counterpane to Priscilla Armistead of Edenton, North Carolina.[1] However, Priscilla was only ten years old in 1793, which seemed too young compared with the ages of other known counterpane makers.[2] In 2010 a search of online resources located the transcription of the will of Priscilla’s brother William Armistead, who referred to their sister Mary by her nickname “Polly,” who was born five years earlier than Priscilla.[3] Further, the counterpane was donated by the family of Polly’s descendants, not Priscilla’s. A deeper examination of the counterpane itself reveals much more than the identity of its maker. Polly’s decision to prominently embroider her initials and … Continued

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Note: The Cumberland, Unexpected Artistry of the Southern Frontier

Mel Hankla

The Cumberland is not just the famous river that shares its name. The region is neither Tennessee nor Kentucky and both make up this unique place (Figure 1). Kentucky-born novelist and social historian Harriette Simpson Arnow discussed the region in Seedtime on the Cumberland. She best characterized the Cumberland in her book’s first chapter, aptly titled “The Old Boot”: The drainage basin [of the Cumberland River] forms a curious, shoe-like shape, something like an old-time buskin, badly worn and wrinkled, with a gob of mud caught in the instep, blurring the heel, yet with all the parts of a foot covering. The long and narrow toe, lifted as if for kicking, touches the Ohio, the wrinkled heel goes southward onto the high tableland of the Cumberland Plateau and is shaped by the Caney Fork river and its tributaries. The top of the shoe is formed by the Rockcastle and its … Continued

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