These dish fragments were recovered from the Jotham Meeker farmstead site in Franklin County. They are decorated in red floral and scenic patterns by transfer printing, a process by which a design is transferred from an engraved metal plate onto the pottery, creating a ware called transferware. The partial maker's mark on the back of the sherds names Henderson and Gaines of New Orleans, agents for the Davenport Pottery in Staffordshire, England from 1836 to 1866. The site was excavated in 1985 at a Kansas Archeology Training Program field school. Jotham Meeker served as a Baptist missionary among the Ottawa on their reservation.
Kansas Memory
Kansas Historical Society
Dishes from the Jotham Meeker Farmstead, 14FR308 - 1