One of the "problems" with the analyses of the fired brick could be in the
origin of the clay. Some buildings are made from clay across the street,
particularly in Coram on Long Island, NY next to the "Tea Room" visited by
Eleanor Roosevelt during the Depression, once a home to my brother and
friends. It looked like the "house of ill repute" in the series not long ago
"Christie" which took place in the Appalachia's.

Any way, a particular clay, called "green sand" for example, was mined out
of Peekskill, NY (also a source of rare emery) and taken upriver to the West
Point Foundry, a fact of material without which certain castings could never
have been made, a strategic resource, perhaps allowing the "rifling" of the
Parrott "rifle" or cannon.

A previous example was in the description of the "fine clays" of Huntington,
NY on Long Island. What is known was that a number of businesses made
pottery in the 18th century, however, the clay was exported, depleted and
the later salt-glaze potters, "Brown Brothers" used a coarser clay. No
susrviving examples were known to exist from the earlier potteries, though
the later one, its site under a boat storage yard, has had a few surviving
examples. Where, the point being, the clay mined was sent to is also
apparently not known.

About 20 years ago I requested an inter-library dissertation from Ohio. This
work was an economic analysis of the clay based industries there, which have
become well known to archaeologists and the world  more recently as a PCB
incinerator was built within 500 yards of a school in that now economically
and former ceramic industry area is lacking in population and other
industries. A teacher in the school won an international award for drawing
attention to the plight of the school. Open contracts for the PCB disposal
were once available from the US government and those companies I thought
were to operate out in the remote Southwest United States.

Anyway, according to that dissertation published about 1930 I think,
surprizingly reported, that many many tons of clay were exported into Ohio
from Great Britain until the economics of world trade made it uneconomical
and other industries (i.e. Syracuse and Buffalo china) began in earnest mass
production.

George Myers



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