The Potters of Clark County

On 15 Mar 1917 in Marshall, Walter Ernest Scott (son of Alexander Scott and Martha Ellen Robinson) and Ruby Lavona Mallory (daughter of William Luther Mallory and Emma Tapscott, a Wabash Valley Tapscott) were wed and therein lies an interesting story.

Martha Robinson was not the first wife of Walter’s father, Alexander. A little before 1850, Alexander Scott had arrived in Clark County from Ohio, a very young child, with his parents Jacob and Hettie (Brown) Scott. The family settled first in York Twp and then in Melrose Twp, near where Ohio Chapel Methodist Protestant Church would someday stand. Melrose became the Scott family homeland and Ohio Chapel, the Scott burial ground. The Scotts were among the families donating money and effort to the construction of the church, which was dedicated in 1892.

Sometime around 1868 (their first child was born in 1869), Alexander Scott married Sarah J. Condon, daughter of Henry Condon and Eliza Dixon. The Condons were unusual in that nearly all Clark County records and newspaper articles give their name and that of their descendants as “Cowden,” but many more records outside that county give the name “Condon.” The problem arose because county residents insisted on substituting “Cowden,” a well-known Clark County name, for “Condon,” which was almost unknown in the county.

Between 1866, when they were married in Muskingum County, Ohio, and 1870, when they were living in Anderson Twp, a new couple appeared in Clark County—Uriah Wilbur and Hester M. Stockdale and their son, William, along with Uriah’s parents, Enoch and Mary.

The Wilburs were members of an early family of Ohio potters, the beginnings of the renown 20-century Zanesville art potteries. Abundant clay, firewood, and a navigable tributary of the Ohio River made the Zanesville area perfect for pottery. The Wilbur potters were located in Putnam, Ohio, now part of Zanesville and one of the state’s oldest settlements. Pottery became known as “Putnam Currency,” and in 1827 Uriah’s grandfather, Thomas, developed a pottery with a capacity of 50,000 gallons. Those Wilburs who migrated to Clark County continued as potters, but the area had neither the resources or the market of Muskingum County.

On 19 Feb 1874 the first of several legal announcements appeared in the Marshall Weekly Messenger stating that a notice of “non-residence” of Sarah J. Scott had been filed by Alexander Scott and that unless Sarah showed up in court “on the second Monday of April 1874” to answer complaints a divorce decree would be filed. Sarah had run off – with potter Uriah Wilbur!

On 6 Jun 1874, presumably after the divorce was granted, Sarah and Uriah were married in Boone County, Iowa, where Sarah’s mother and father, Henry and Eliza Condon had moved a few years earlier. Sarah left her two children, Ella and Edward, behind with their father, Alexander. But Sarah soon had a new child, Henry Wilbur, whose birth in 1873 or 1874 may have resulted in Sarah’s demise. On 15 Jun 1876, Uriah was married a third time, in Pettis County, Missouri. to Estella A. Grant. Henry appears with his father, Uriah, and step mother “Stella,” in the 1880 census for Boonville, Missouri.

Like Sarah, Uriah had also abandoned offspring. His son William is found with his mother, Hester, his stepfather, William Jones, and his half-sister, Artie, in the 1880 census for Plymouth Twp in Richland County, Ohio. Hester had married the widowed William around 1876, a couple of years after her husband and Alexander Scott’s wife had “eloped.”

Confused? So am I. Perhaps this chart will help. Or perhaps it will only increase the haze.