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SINCE  2015

Pig Flask, Collection of History Museum St. Louis, Mo.

N. D., Nathan Davis purchased the Kirkpatrick Pottery and resumed the operation.

Apparently, Davis and John Folks were pipe makers for Cornwall Kirkpatrick.

Sample of Anna Pottery vessels, bearing religious significance.

Cherubim head with wings,

Cherubim wheeling sword,

Angelic boy with bow floating in seashell.

Butterflies.

Anna Pottery 1876 Centennial Little Brown Jugs, bearing scarce base marking “Anna Pottery” in Masonic Pigpen Cypher used by Free Masons.                                                  by Greg Mathis

      Cornwall Kirkpatrick was a charter member of the Masonic and Odd Fellow Lodge of Anna: Secretary of Lodge, #520;  A. F. and A. M. Secretary of Encampment #291, I.O.O.F.; Treasure and Conductor of Anna Hiawatha Lodge #291. I.O.O.F.; Secretary of Board of Trustees of Southern Illinois Hospital for the Insane; Director of Southern Illinois Fair Association; Chairman of Committee on Chartered Lodges in Masonic Grand Lodge of Illinois; and King of Egyptian Chapter #45, R.A.M. Reference. (Perrin, “History of Alexander. Union, and Pulaski Counties, Illinois,”1883); and  (Hoffman, “History of LaSalle County,”  1888). Cornwall was first Mayor of Anna in 1872 and re-elected in 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1883, and 1884. (Anna Centennial Committee, “100 Years of Progress,” Lam: 1954).

Mysteriously, Cornwall incised the base code marking in a reverse fashion, creating somewhat a secret riddle. Viewing this mark in a mirror, the cypher translates “ANNA / POTTERY.”​​

Over several decades, amateur archaeologist Parker Melvin recovered thousands of clay tobacco pipe artifacts produced at the LKDP pottery site at Point Pleasant, Ohio. Imperfect unsellable pieces were discarded in several wasters off the Ohio River at Big Indian Creek. His huge collection was analyzed and documented by the Ohio State University Archaeologists, Department of Transportation, and the Smithsonian Collections, depicting numerous variation of each of the general pipe designs originally created at the Lakn, Kirkpatrick, Davis, and Peterson kilns at Point Pleasant.

Cornwall Elihu Kirkpatrick IV

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​Here is a little info for others who may be interested, here is an article from the Enquirer 1980- Packy’s Pipes By David Hunter The Enquirer Magazine, Sunday, March 16, 1980: Packy’s (Parker Melvin Sr.) prodigious Point Pleasant pipe collection, consisting of thousands of so-call¬ed "Indian pipes." is truly amazing. It goes far beyond what  anyone would expect any amateur archaeologist to unearth. His Mount Lookout home is crammed with crates and boxes and baskets full of clay pipes and shards of broken pipes, along with other relics— such as two complete Indian skeletons, the skulls and remains of some 23 other Indians, as well as arrowheads, pot¬tery, tools and tomahawks. In sum, it represents 25 years of digging and collecting. Packy is Parker Melvin, 73, former gas station operator and investor, who semi- retired at the age of 28, and in the mid 1950s, re¬turned to his boyhood interest in Indian artifacts. His discoveries — first an Indian burial mound on the Turpin farm near Newtown and then a long-lost 19th-century clay pipe factory on the banks of the Ohio River at Point Pleasant, Ohio — has earned him a place in "Who's Who in Indian Relics.” The Smithsonian Institution has authenticated the pipes, which were made by settlers for trade with the Indians. Eleven samples are now on file in the Smithsonian collection of American ceramics and glass. Others are in a museum in Owensboro, Ky., at Indian trading posts in the West, and at the Heritage Restaurant on Wooster Pike in Plainville, owned by Packy Melvin’s son, R. Howard Melvin. Packy Melvin often sells or trades pipes at flea mar¬kets. The more common varieties go for as little as $4.50 each. In all, he has identified 65 distinct pipe designs, many of them quite rare. Melvin and his brother, Elliott Melvin, who now lives in Florida, ran a thriving gas station in East Hyde Park in the 1930’s. It was so successful that the brother’s took turns running it while the other took a year’s vacation with pay. Later, the station was sold to Sohio. But the idle life became a problem, and in the mid-1950’s, Packy Melvin renewed his interest in archeology. He began digging at the Turpin farm in Newtown, where the Museum of Natural History had uncovered an Indian buri¬al mound. Melvin search¬ed areas that appeared un¬touched and soon shoveled into a second mound. Most of the human remains in his col¬lection come from this site, including the complete skeleton of a VI.P. Indian brave who wore river-shell beads. The arrow¬head that killed him at 24, was also found. Melvin bought relic col¬lections and dug for more out West. He joined archeological groups to meet both professionals and amateurs. "That." he said, "Is where you get the tips." And he kept hearing about "Indian pipes" that “washed out of the river-bank" during floods near Point Pleasant, Ohio. There also were skimpy accounts of an old pipe factory there Finally, in 1965, a fisherman friend gave Melvin a pipe bowl he had found near Big In¬dian Creek at Point Pleas¬ant. "I decided to go up there and scratch around to see if there was anything to it.” he said. “Almost immediately I found some pipe pieces and I knew I was on the right track. I came back the next day with shovels.” Aided at times by an assistant and his son, and at other times by his own son, Monty, and grandsons, Stuart and Scott, Melvin began what came to be a five-year dig. They began digging each spring, as soon as flood-waters subsided. Digging, however, had its perils. Workers had to toss old throw rugs on the mud to gain a foothold after floods, and cave-ins always posed a threat. Once the assistant's boy emerged from a tunnel just minutes before it collapsed. Another time, part of a ceiling gave way and a heavy crockery jar full of melted pipe bowls fell, clipping Melvin on the shoulder. "It could have broken my neck." he said. But by then, Melvin was certain he had hit upon the original site of the factory, and evidence indicated it had burned down. The crockery jars, which Melvin calls "saggers." were perforated with holes to permit heat to circulate inside them. They were filled with newly molded pipe bowls and placed inside a kiln to bake. "The wood fires were hard to control.” Melvin said. "If a breeze fanned the fire, the pipes would get too hot and would fuse together inside the pot.” No traces of lumber were found; only objects such as fired clay, that would have withstood the heat of a burning building. These included handmade square nails and spikes, all of them bent as if twisted when walls fell. Also found was a hand-forged metal shaft with two of four blades intact at one end. This paddle device was used to mix the clay. Melvin eventually found a Mr. Clark, then in his 90s, who had worked at the pipe factory in the 1880s as a lad of 16. He described how mules turned the bladed shaft to mix clay in a huge vat. When pliable, it was rolled and cut into two-inch lengths which were pressed into a mold. Wooden plugs were inserted to form the bowl and the fitting for the stem. The clay dried rapidly (soft clay dug up at Point Pleasant hardened within the hour). Bowls thus formed were put into saggers and baked white-hot in a kiln for four days. Then. Mr. Clark told him, "river salt" was shoveled onto the fire. The salt ex¬ploded immediately into a fine mist which settled upon, and glazed, the pipes. "It is a lost art," Melvin said. "I saw copies of my pipes at an Indian trading post in the Northwest, and by comparison, they were crude in workmanship and very poorly tempered." Still it was difficult to find whole, usable pipes at the Point Pleasant dig. “It seemed that I was always finding bits and pieces, and broken sections of saggers with melted pipes fused together inside.” Melvin said. "A lot of pipes were broken in manufacture and simply discarded on the riverbank. Many whole pipes, buried a century or more, became permeated with water and were close enough to the surface to freeze and crack in winter." More whole pipes were found with deeper digging. Many were embedded in (and preserved by) a coarse, gray crust. possibly salt from an errant glazing. Muriatic acid removed it easily. One find appeared to be a load of new pipes that had been readied on the river-bank for shipment, then caught by rising water and eventually buried by silt. They were in perfect condition. Early colonists used pipes much like the ones made in Europe soon after Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first tobacco back from Virginia in the 16th century. They were made of kaolin, a white clay relative of porcelain. But they were made with clay stems, which broke easily. Americans soon were making their own pipe bowls, using durable natural reeds as stems. Indians, whose rare attempts at baking clay pipes in campfires resulted in a brittle article, prized hand-ground stone pipes decorated with chisel work. They often took a year or more to make. To an Indian, a good pipe thus was harder to come by than, say, a beaver pelt. So it was that some unknown but enterprising settler, in the 1820s, built a pipe factory on the banks of the Ohio that turned out thousands of pipes over six decades for trade to the Indians for valuable furs. To enhance their value, the factory produced a new pipe design almost every year. The only mention of the operation ever found in 19th century writings says a pipe factory at Point Pleasant was owned by a Nathan Davis between 1848 and 1865 and that he acquired the business from a Mr. Peterson. The Smithsonian was particularly interested in one of Melvin's pipes: a relatively plain bowl with the initials N on one side and D on the other. In his fifth year of the Point Pleasant dig. Melvin's finds diminished. Soon he quit, except for a brief return when the properly was being bulldozed. "I didn't find another single thing." he said, "but my wife, Hazel, found two more pipes.” He and Hazel have been married 53 years and she has never complained about the houseful of relics, he says, except to say "they make it hard to dust." When the dig was complete, Parker Melvin's score was astonishing. He had found more than 100 pipes in mint condition, at least another 1000 in whole and usable condition, and the broken parts of tens of thousands of others. A display at The Heritage groups 63 pipe bowls of different design. Since they were mounted, two other types have been found. Melvin is working on a new display of 130 pipes, consisting of all 65 types in perfect condition and the same 65 in which some irregularity occurred in manufacture. Packy, who now spends his winters in Florida, says he has no future archaeological plans . . . except for an excursion this spring to Kentucky's Red River Gorge to collect reeds for new pipe stems.

The Cornwall Kirkpatrick Pottery

          Point Pleasant, Ohio.

​                   cc: 1849​​

The Lakin-Kirkpatrick-Davis-Peterson Pottery Site at Point Pleasant, Ohio

L K D P 

Ohio State University Archaeologists and excavation analysis by the Ohio Department Of Transportation have labelled the Point Pleasant reed stem trade type patterns to include the Chevron, Criss Cross, Zig Zag, Punctate, Indian Effigy. Turbaned Effigy, Gramp, Granny, Plain Elbow. Ringed Elbow, Diagonal Ridged Elbow, and Milled Chesterfield. Within these twelve design  patterns, over 64 variations are distinguished due to mold wear and mold replacements during manufacturing.

Anna Pottery pig flasks, Private Collections

                                              THE ANNA POTTERY
                                                  UNION COUNTY, ILLINOIS

Cornwall Kirkpatrick with brother Wallace, and father Andrew Sr., relocated to Anna from Mound City in the spring of 1859 and fired their first ware in November, 1859. This was an important chapter in the hand craft of the traditional Kirkpatrick potting family, and is most eloquently conveyed by Ellen Paul Denker in her comprehensive collegiate master's thesis, "Forever Getting Up Something New." A most interesting perception about the Kirkpatricks appears in her report's introduction "As with all artifacts, the study of pottery provides innumerable insights into the patterns of lives past and present, patterns of both makers and users. The complex interpretation necessary to understand the stoneware specialty products created by the Kirkpatrick brothers reveals the rhythm of life in Illinois during the late nineteenth century. Economic conditions, social movements, the local fauna, and important local, regional, and national events are reflected in their bizarre and delightful creations. Between 1859 and 1896 the brothers Cornwall and W. Wallace Kirkpatrick built and operated a large stoneware pottery in Anna, Union County, Illinois.

Although they exhibited their wares at such important international exhibitions as the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876 and the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and at numerous local and regional fairs, their important contribution to the American pottery tradition has remained largely unrecorded in this century. Early works on American ceramics, principally those by Edwin Atlee Barber (1893), John Spargo (1926), Arthur Clement (1944), and John Ramsay (1947), provide the historian with virtually no facts about the Kirkpatricks and their business. Ramsay does include the brothers in his list of potteries, but the information is inaccurate and far from complete. Apparently Ramsey did not read the unfolding story of the Kirpatricks' Anna Pottery which was published in five installments in the Editor's Attic of Antiques magazine during the 1930's. Although the first example of Anna pottery published in the twentieth century appeared in the April, 1933 issue, it was not until the November, 1938 issue that the mystery of the location of the Anna Pottery was solved with publication of the inscribed jug in the New York Historical Society.An article published in 1943, Art in Southern Illinois, 1865-1914, records some of the Kirkpatrick products, but it was 1974 before a thorough essay reconstructing the history of the Anna Pottery appeared. As new pieces have come to light, interest in the Kirkpatricks has increased, but no endeavor has heretofore been made to consider the historical and sculptural products of the brothers within the context of the American pottery tradition.Locating records of the Anna Pottery has been difficult. Despite several independent attempts their daybooks and personal records have not been found. The site of the pottery cannot be archaeologically excavated because it is currently occupied by two commercial buildings and completely covered over with blacktop. Although there were at least three photographers working in Anna during the period, including one of Cornwall's sons, only two photographs are known that relate to the pottery. Census information, where available, was helpful in this study. Union County land records were useful in sorting out problems of land ownership and management, and county histories, though not always reliable, outlined the lives of the potters. The most important primary sources were two locally published newspapers the Jonesboro Gazette and the Farmer and Fruit Grower. The pages of both are filled with news, anecdotes, and descriptions of the principal characters of this study, as year after year reporters captured their activities, accomplishments, and personalities. The enthusiastic hyperbole these journalists often employed breathes life into the shadowy figures of the past and allows us to meet Cornwall and Wallace as they stood among their contemporaries.Today, the Kirkpatrick brothers are best known for the eccentric and humorous novelty wares they made as a sideline to their regular business of utilitarian crockery. I have discovered that the Anna Pottery was also important during the period as the principal producer of stoneware containers and reed stem tobacco pipes in mid America.Among other various Midwestern industries, the Kirkpatricks business had a role in developing the economy of the region. In Chapter 1 I trace the backgrounds of Cornwall and Wallace Kirkpatrick before they settled in Anna in 1859. Chapter 2 is a history of their enterprise at Anna and a discussion of the relationship between the Anna Pottery and other Midwestern potteries. In Chapter 3 I explore the personalities, interests, and characters of the brothers. Finally, Chapter 4 is devoted to the extraordinary pottery they produced. Through the extension of ancient and historic European pottery traditions the Kirkpatricks produced novel stoneware forms and decorations that reflect their own time, place, and unique talents." In addition to the actual sale of outstanding kaolin fire clay, a vast array of stoneware and whimsical folk art was produced at their pottery in Union County, Illinois. As stated in Mrs. Denkers thesis, Forever Getting Up Something New, "Cornwall and W. Wallace Kirkpatrick were quite literally born into the American pottery tradition. Their father Andrew was a potter, born in Washington, Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1789. He was married and had moved to Fredericktown, Knox County, Ohio, before 1814, the year of Cornwall's birth. By 1820, the family had moved again, this time to Urbana, Champaign County, Ohio, located north of Cincinnati. In Urbana, Andrew operated a small earthenware pottery and produced approximately $1800 worth of all kinds of potters ware, annually. Andrew and Ann (Lefevre) Kirkpatrick had thirteen children. Of their ten sons, five became potters with their own potteries and four died relatively early in life. Pottery was more than a family tradition, it was a family passion. According to Cornwall's biography in the Union County (Illinois) history, he left the common schools of Ohio at the age of twelve to apprentice as a store clerk and bookkeeper, probably in Cincinnati. After seven years, he returned home and learned the trade of potter with his father, remaining about one year, and mastering the business before the year expired. He then spent several months working on the flatboats that piled the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from Cincinnati to New Orleans for the purpose of "seeing the country" and though receiving but $10 per month, felt well repaid in the strange sights which met his view.Illness sent him back to Urbana, where he went into the pottery business for himself in 1837. He probably took over his father's shop, because in that year Andrew, his wife, and those children still at home (including Wallace, born in 1828) moved to Vermillionville, LaSalle County, in northern Illinois. There Andrew took over a pottery begun several years earlier by John Kirkpatrick (b. 1812 - d.), another son. In 1839, Cornwall left Urbana for Covington, Campbell County, Kentucky, and married Rebecca Vance of Cincinnati. At Covington, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, he operated a pottery until 1848. He also served two terms on the city council, probably the first of the many public officer Cornwall would hold. His first wife died in 1847, leaving him two children. By 1849, he was back in Ohio. This time he chose Point Pleasant, Clermont County, southeast of Cincinnati along the Ohio River, where he was able to buy a pottery from Sarah Lakin on April 2, 1849. This same year he married Amy Vance, Rebecca's sister, and bought the cabin in which Ulysses S. Grant had been born. About half of Cornwall's production at the Point Pleasant site was reed stem tobacco pipes, while the other half was utilitarian wares, jars, bowls, pie plates, jugs, firebrick, and flue pipe. In 1850, with four employees, he was producing 35,000 gallons of ware valued at $2,450. Pipes made at Point Pleasant have received some attention in the archaeological literature because of the variety of pipe designs produced, as well as the sheer volume of pipes turned out over the years. Little is known, however, about the shapes and decorations of the container wares made there between c. 1838 and 1890 under at least four different ownership's. Two shards collected from the surface of the Point Pleasant site are evidence that Cornwall made salt-glazed stoneware at that time since one is signed "C. KIRKPATRICK [sic] PT. PLEASANT." Wallace arrived from Vermillionville in 1849 to learn the pottery trade from his brother, but his stay in Point Pleasant was short. He joined the gold rush to California in 1850, arrived in Cincinnati in 1852, married, another Vance sister, Martha, and returned to northern Illinois for a brief period. Though the pottery at Point Pleasant was destroyed by fire in 1851, Cornwall rebuilt it and continued working there until about 1854. While still owner of the property in Point Pleasant, he established a pottery on Fulton Street in Cincinnati in 1854. This may have been short-lived; although he is identified as a potter in the Cincinnati city directory of 1856, his pottery, listed in 1855, is not included in the directories lists of potteries for succeeding years. His business may not have flourished, but politically he was active. While in Cincinnati he served on the City Council and the Committee on Public Improvements. During Cornwall's residence in Cincinnati, the Emporium Real Estate and Manufacturing Company was organized by Paul K. Wambaugh, John Fawcit, and John R. Gabriel, as a joint-stock association for obtaining a foothold in Mound City, Pulaski County, Illinois, which had been laid out in 1854 by General Rawlings. As a contemporary historian observed, none of the above gentlemen had a dollar at the time, to gain a foothold anywhere; however, they surrounded the organization with the mystery of secrecy. They gave out that a secret city was Emporium. The city was to be grander than all the cities built since the downfallof ancient Rome. The imaginary gold streets of the New Jerusalem were to be duplicated in the Emporium City the name given to this forty mile square city on paper. Cornwall must have been taken in by this group, because late in 1857 he built a three-story pottery for the production of stoneware in Mound City. Wallace and Andrew joined him there, but may not have invested money in the project. The Mound City Pottery, managed by a manufacturing company, was supposed to be a large operation employing steam instead of horse power for grinding clay and for operating the potters wheels, but through financial mismanagement of the parties who handled the funds, [it] proved to be an unfortunate venture. Indeed, Cornwall lost his shirt. In the Census taken at Anna, Wallace's personal estate was valued at $8000, while Cornwall's was listed at only $150. Surface collection of shards at the Mound City site indicates that pipes were a big production item there as they had been at the Point Pleasant site. Little is known of the other wares produced during the potterys brief period of operation. One surviving object In Anna the Kirkpatrick brothers built the most successful of their many pottery operations. During their early peregrinations, they saw some of the country, overcame the difficulties involved in stoneware production, and established themselves as major Midwestern producers of reed stem tobacco pipes. Their movements prior to the Anna period have been ascertained more from a variety of written documents than from archaeological material. The few extant wares from these early years only hint at the scope of their production. More will need to be learned about this period before the shapes and designs of the utilitarian and specialty wares produced at Anna can be fully understood." Indeed, Mrs. Ellen P. Denker's efforts and comprehensive work shall be appreciated for generations to come.