Written in stoneware: The potteries of Summersite
By Jonathan Monfiletto
A Yates County native who has collected pieces of pottery from various local stoneware manufacturers and researched the history of many of these companies recently reached out to me with a question about the succession of these producers in the Penn Yan area. She had found a stoneware batter pail marked “Conklin & Heimburger, Penn Yan” and wondered how this company might have related to the Mantell stoneware business.
This woman had previously sparked my interest in learning about Byron Ansley and Ansley’s Dairy after she asked me about the company behind an Ansley’s Dairy milk bottle she had come across. Naturally, she now sparked my interest in learning about stoneware manufacturers in Yates County; we have traded messages to share the information we have uncovered in our research, and now I present that research here.
In fact, my research into stoneware manufacturing overlapped with another topic I had begun researching at the time. You see, as it turns out, stoneware production in Yates County appears to have been concentrated around the foot of Keuka Lake – on the east branch, where the outlet flows out of the lake and heads toward Seneca Lake – because of “a choice bed of clay” in that area, according to a May 30, 1958 article in The Chronicle-Express. This area, now incorporated into the village of Penn Yan, was once its own separate settlement outside of the village proper. It was known as Summersite.
In 1832, George Campbell founded the first pottery at Summersite – in modern-day terms, think of the intersection of Lake Street and South Avenue and the location of Red Jacket Park – after possibly working at potteries in Manhattan before arriving in Penn Yan. Another source states John Campbell established a redware pottery in the area before 1830, while his son George took over the business by 1850. This source indicates John and George came from New York City. However, a newspaper advertisement dated February 20, 1832 announces George Campbell producing earthen water pipes, candle molds, and other earthenware at his factory at the foot of Crooked Lake.
The 1958 article, written by former Yates County Historian Frank Swann, mentions the firm of Savage & Knapp operating around the same time in the same area. That appears to have been a partnership of Joseph L. Savage and Samuel Knapp, who advertised in 1846 the sale of flint ware, bricks, and earthenware pieces. According to a chapter titled “The Dundee Connection” in a book titled Stoneware of Havana, NY, Savage also enjoyed a partnership in making stoneware in Dundee with James Holmes, of Barrington, who had discovered a bed of clay on Washington Street in Dundee. The Holmes & Savage partnership lasted just a short time – as did, presumably, the firm of Savage & Knapp – as Savage formed another partnership in the village of Havana (the former name of Montour Falls) by August 1850. In 1848, Holmes had already acquired another partner by the name of Purdee, and they continued making stoneware in Dundee.
Meanwhile, George Campbell sold his pottery in 1855 to James Mantell, who had come to Penn Yan from Lyons the year before. Mantell had been a potter in Lyons from 1840 to 1853 and thus was well prepared to keep Campbell’s business going. For a brief time, Mantell had a partner in Shem Thomas, who had arrived in Penn Yan in 1853 but moved on to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1856. Mantell continued his business on his own until around 1876, apparently concluding his work with his death. By this point, Swann states, the original clay deposit had been exhausted and “suitable supplies for pottery were brought from New Jersey as ballast in canal boats.”
Nevertheless, the pottery industry in Summersite remained strong, with Oscar Conklin, Mantel’s son-in-law, taking over the business. He worked with at least three partners during this time in business – his firms were known as Conklin & Patterson, Conklin & Mingay, and Conklin & Heimburger. F.J. Elliott & Co. purchased the business sometime in the 1880s – a handwritten note in our subject file dates this purchase as May 1883 – though I have not uncovered an end date for this firm or a successor to this business. At some point, this may have represented the end of the stoneware pottery industry in the Summersite area of Penn Yan.
Much like this major industry in the area, the end of Summersite is also not clear to me. I assume the settlement melded into the village of Penn Yan over time as the village grew up, but I have not yet found concrete evidence for this. What I have found, though, is concrete evidence for the start of this lakeside settlement.
According to Stafford Cleveland in his History and Directory of Yates County, the first settler at the foot of Keuka Lake was John McDowell in 1803 on land belonging to Abraham Wagener, building a double log house on the bank of the lake on the east side of the outlet. A year later, William Wall purchased a tract of land on the west side of the outlet – the present-day Indian Pines area – and took steps to form a village, including surveying the ground into lots. However, Wall died soon after, Wagener took possession of the property, and the proposed village never came to fruition.
However, on the east side of the outlet, a village did come into being with the name of Elizabethtown. By 1817, Meredith Mallory had built a flour or gristmill in the area at the head of the outlet, depending on the low fall of water near that location. However, during the construction of Mallory’s mill, Wagener raised the level of the dam at his mill at the foot of Main Street so there was insufficient water to turn the wheels at Mallory’s mill. By September 1818, Gilman Lovering was operating the Bath, Painted Post, and Geneva stagecoach line. The construction of the highway led to the establishment of several taverns in this area. Zara L. Walton purchased the line on January 1, 1819 and kept it going. Exactly one month after Walton’s purchase of the highway, on February 1, 1819, a group of citizens met at Peter Heltibidal’s tavern and approved a resolution naming the community Summersite.
No matter the name of the settlement, it did seem to hold promise for a major village. In addition to the taverns – Wallace Finch started the first one and was succeeded in its ownership by Heltibidal, George and Robert Shearman, and William Kimble – there were mechanics and a grocery, both presumably serving the stagecoach passengers and workers. In addition to the potteries, other industries sprang up in the area. Isaiah Kimble manufactured augurs and bits; later on, Azor Kimble established a carriage shop. When the Crooked Lake Steamboat Company was incorporated in April 1826, there were hopes for a boom in the village. However, the company never got off the ground – or out on the water.
The Crooked Lake Canal opened a few years later, and the age of the steamboats on Keuka Lake soon dawned. However, by that point, the sun seems to have set on Summersite. “The prospective city of Summersite has faded away,” Cleveland wrote in 1873, while Swann noted the community has been encompassed into the village of Penn Yan.
