Suttles Pottery

🏛️The era

After the Civil War, Texas was a land of opportunity for people from all over the country, including veterans of both armies. Settlers poured in, and with them came a huge demand for everyday goods. Before glass jars and refrigeration were common, families needed sturdy stoneware: crocks for pickles and butter, jugs for water and syrup, churns and storage jars of every size.

Potteries sprang up wherever good clay could be found. South Central Texas became an important center for this work. The Wilson potteries near Seguin, where Isaac Suttles worked in 1870, are among the best-known early stoneware operations in the state, remembered in part for the role of formerly enslaved potters there.

The Suttles brothers came from Zanesville, Ohio, a town long famous for its pottery industry. They carried with them a craft tradition rooted in the Ohio Valley and brought it to the sandy hills of Wilson County, where they found the clay they needed.

👥People & events

Isaac and George Washington Suttles were brothers and Union veterans who left Zanesville, Ohio, for Texas after the war. Isaac, born around 1840, had married Mary Ann McBride in 1866. By 1870 he was in Seguin, working at the Wilson Potteries. Records suggest his wife may not have joined him in Texas.

George, born in 1844, had married Elizabeth Strate in 1861. The couple reportedly moved to Texas in 1876 for her health, and George appears in Wilson County records the next year. He joined Isaac at a kiln in the sand hills near La Vernia. There the brothers fired bricks along with stoneware for both everyday and decorative use. An 1877 newspaper article praised their workmanship and noted how much people wanted what they made.

Around 1882, the brothers moved their operation into La Vernia itself, to a kiln near this site. They were members of the Asbury Methodist Church, known today as La Vernia United Methodist Church. Then tragedy struck. In September 1884, Isaac was killed in Abilene, possibly in an attempted robbery.

George kept the kiln going in La Vernia for many years. He and Elizabeth raised four children, and their descendants still live in the area. Elizabeth died in 1905, and George lived until 1930, long enough to see the age of homemade crockery give way to factory-made goods.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Small potteries like the Suttles operation were part of a craft network that stretched across 19th-century America. Skilled potters moved west and south, carrying techniques with them. Two brothers from Zanesville bringing Ohio know-how to Texas is a clear example of how American craft traditions spread.

Archaeology has helped fill in a story with few written records. Firsthand accounts and excavations suggest George used an updraft kiln and probably salt glazing, in which salt thrown into the hot kiln forms a glassy coat, along with Albany slip, a dark brown glaze made from a clay first mined in New York. He may also have used an alkaline glaze, a technique closely tied to Southern stoneware. That mix of methods reflects potters blending traditions from different regions.

The broken pieces in a pottery's waster piles may seem like trash, but to archaeologists they are a treasure. Studying them helps historians understand how ordinary Americans stored food, ran households and supported local industry before mass production took over.

🧭If you visit

Come to this marker knowing that the kiln itself has vanished. There is no visible trace of it today. Part of the fun is using your imagination: a clay mixing area, a potter's wheel turning, a hot kiln and heaps of broken shards piled nearby.

La Vernia is a small town in the rolling country east of San Antonio, and the sandy hills nearby are the kind of landscape where the brothers first dug their clay. While in town, you can look for La Vernia United Methodist Church, the congregation the Suttles family belonged to as Asbury Methodist.

This stop pairs well with a trip to Seguin, where Isaac once worked, for a look at a whole region of Texas stoneware history. If you enjoy antiques, keep an eye out in local museums and shops for salt-glazed crocks and jugs. They are the kind of everyday pieces potters like the Suttles brothers made by the thousands.