Export of North Devon Pottery to America's Eastern Seaboard: History and Mysteries

Last Thursday there was an expedition to the South of Roanoke Island, to Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands. Our new friend Tom offered to drive Dave and I down to both places in a day trip and I had told Tom that I needed to visit Scott Dawson at the History and Mysteries Museum in Buxton, near Hatteras, about

50 miles south of Manteo.

Warren who works on the Elizabeth 2 replica ship at the Island Festival Park had told me about Scott and suggested that I go and meet him as he has some artefacts that could be North Devon Pottery. I had called Scott a couple of days before to see when would be a good day to visit and told him about my fellowship and what I was studying, he said he had some North Devon pottery and would get some finds ready for me to see.

With great excitement we set off with Tom and got to Buxton around 11am. Scott was a great character and gushed forth with information as soon as we went inside. The Museum was at the back of the office and though quite small was bursting with printed information on the walls and images and had display cabinets full of finds from the immediate area. There were also copies of documents written by the English on their voyages of discovery and an Algonquian dictionary. Scott impressively talked us through the history of the English colonists arriving in 1584, 1585 and 1587. His main argument is that the 'Lost Colony' on Roanoke Island is in fact not of Roanoke and that, according to his study of primary sources of writings made at the time, the colonists actually arrived at Hatteras Island, where present day Buxton is. “This is really obvious from the description written as a place is described as being 20 miles long and surrounded by water to the North and South. If you look at a map it couldn't be anywhere else.”

Scott is a native of the area and his family can be traced back to the 1600's. He knows the area extremely well and has found sites for archaeological digs to take place - one of which was in November 2009 and was led by Dr Mark Horton (Bideford 500's patron) and his Bristol University archaeology students. Bideford's ex-Mayor Andy Powell was also there. Scott showed me some of the finds from that dig and some he had found himself. It was amazing to see, as quite clearly there are small pieces of North Devon Pottery – he showed me and explained how the sherds were found, literally laid on top of each other intermingled with sherds of native American pottery which he suggested proved that English and Native American people were co-existing together. What we don't know is whether the pottery was brought with the people who lived there or whether the pieces were traded and found their way to Buxton from another place. It was amazing to see these and hold them and bags of sherds were pulled out from a large black lidded box, all of which were excavated from Buxton at only about a foot and a half deep. What struck me is that as well as some sgrafitto-ware, with the tell-tale yellow creamy slip, there were also bagfulls of pieces of browny black glaze, exactly the same as I had seen by the bagful in Raleigh from the Brunswick Town dig. I was frustrated that I am not expert enough to identify thesherds but Dave took some good photos and we may be able to get some identification upon returning to Bideford.