Approximately 150 people turned out for the 200th anniversary celebration of the beginning of the Edgefield Pottery Tradition and the Groundbreaking of the new Groundhog Kiln at Piedmont Technical College Sunday.

Jim Klauber, senior vice president of PTC, welcomed guests and the Rev. Tim McClendon gave the invocation. Following the Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of "The Spirit of Edgefield," Bettis Rainsford, historian of the Edgefield County Historical Society, recognized the following for their roles in the pottery tradition: the McClendon family who helped bring attention to Edgefield pottery; Beth Jackson Cali, owner of the Pottersville site; Stephen Ferrell and family who brought Edgefield pottery alive through the Old Edgefield Pottery; Dr. Lex Walters, former president of PTC, who brought about the pottery school there; and Miguel Pereyo, who helped to secure the bricks to make the groundhog kiln.

Rainsford gave an overview of the history of Edgefield pottery with highlights of the lives of Edgefield Pottery Tradition founder Dr. Abner Landrum and slave potter Dave Drake.

Landrum (1785-1859) was a physician, planter, inventor, publisher and founder of the village of Pottersville, said Rainsford. He was the son of the Rev. Samuel Landrum, a Baptist minister and missionary who came from North Carolina in the 1770s. He was educated at Dr. Moses Waddel’s Academy in Willington and developed an early interest in science and pottery and developed a fairly large pottery industry in Edgefield. He later published the Edgefield Hive, a pro-Unionist newspaper.

In 1831, he moved to Columbia and edited the Unionist newspaper there, "The Carolinian." Dave Drake was a slave potter who was very close to Dr. Landrum. He lost his leg in a railroad accident and was known for the large, signed and dated pots he produced.

Ferrell, master potter with Old Edgefield Pottery, said these pots are "the Tupperware pieces preserved for us by our ancestors." "Rocks and pottery are some means by which we learn of our ancestors," he said. "It is a dynamic area. The good thing about pottery is that there is a lot more earth out there."

He gave a list of some of the names associated with pottery which include: Allen, Bodie, Brooks, Chandler, Cogburn, Massey, Davies, Duncan, Ferguson, Gibbs, hatcher, Horn, Hahn, Kirbee, Leopard, Mathis, Owenby, Pickens, Rhodes, Ross, Rountree, Rushton, Seigler, Staubes, Stone, Trapp, Thurmond, Turner and Baynham.

Leonard Todd, author of "Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave," spoke, also.Todd is author of three previous books, a graduate of Yale and a former Fulbright Scholar to France. He was for many years a resident of New York City, where he was a writer and graphic designer. He moved to Edgefield to research his ancestors, the Rev. John Landrum and Lewis Miles and to write his book on the life and legend of the potter Dave. He is the recipient of the 2000 South Carolina Center for Book Awards for Writing, Teaching and Literary Arts Advocacy.

"It seemed in my research that in 1870, information on Dave ended," he said. "And then one day while I was attending a celebration on the grounds of Bettis Academy, a fine black school that Rev. Alexander Bettis had founded near Miles Mill after the Civil War, I met Mrs. Thomasina Holmes Bouknight, who had attended the school as a young girl. When I discovered that she was born in 1916 only a few miles from where my family lived, I asked her, almost automatically, whether she had ever heard of a potter named Dave."

Then he went on to read in his book the story of the pot made by Dave for Mrs. Bouknight’s mother. Bouknight was present at the program Sunday.

At the close of the program, Gary Clontz, instructor of the Professional Pottery Program at PTC, described the background, design and function of the Groundhog Kiln, so named because it is burrowed into the side of a hill like a groundhog.

"Some attribute the history to the Chinese kilns," he said. "It may have come from England. I tend to think it came from a variety of places. It is partially submerged in the earth and the earth becomes its buttress. It is also insulation for the kiln."

Clontz said it takes about 12-16 hours of firing and that 150-500 pots can be stored on the floor.

Ground was then broken for the new Groundhog Kiln to be built at PTC.