In early America, people used red clay--the color was due to the iron content--to make pottery with a shiny lead glaze. However, it was very breakable and didn’t travel well, so many towns made their own locally. In what is now West Virginia, at least six redware potteries were around in the late 1700s and 1800s, including Samuel Butters in Clarksburg, R. Brown in Wellsburg, the Day brothers in Wheeling, the Foulk Pottery and John W. Thompson in Morgantown, and Stephen Shepherd in Charleston.