THE
ACORN
Journal of The Sandwich Glass Museum
The Boston Glass Manufactory
spring 2012
The Acorn • Spring 2012 1
Above: Glassworkers engaged in gathering, blowing,
reheating, and otherwise manipulating cylinders for
windowpanes. The illustration was included in the
document collection of Frederick T. Irwin, who wrote
The Story of Sandwich Glass. Author’s collection.
Right: To make a table of crown glass, a glassblower
takes a large amount of glass on his blowpipe, blows
a large sphere, and flattens it. Then an assistant
attaches a pontil to the center of the flattened side.
The glass is detached from the blowpipe, leaving an
opening about 2” in diameter. The pontil is rotated
until centrifugal force causes the glass to fly open,
resulting in a flat disk. This illustration is from Rev.
Dionysius Lardner’s The Cabinet Cyclopedia: Useful
Arts, published in London, England, in 1832. It depicts
the maker twirling the disk to widen it, which creates a
flat table 50” or 60” in diameter. The table is detached
from the pontil and, after annealing, is scored for cutting
into panes. Sandwich Public Library.
Cover: Trade card c. 1885, uncirculated, of an
alchemist recording the results of his experiments
using an assortment of laboratory objects.
Author’s collection.
2 The Acorn • Spring 2012
The Boston Glass Manufactory
by Joan E. Kaiser
T
he Boston Glass Manufactory was a June 17,
1809, reorganization of the Boston Crown Glass
Company to which the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts General Court had granted the privilege
of manufacturing crown window glass and bottles in
the town of Boston, Massachusetts, on July 6, 1787.1
The capital investment of the new corporation was
$250,000. Interestingly, of the eleven original partners,
Boston-born Robert Hewes (1751–1830), is most often
associated with the firm’s founding, although his direct
involvement was only for a limited period of time. It was
his second of three short-term ventures in the window
glass business.
Known as a colorful gentleman, Hewes’s early years
included managing the family slaughter house as well
as the closely related making of candles and soap, the
manufacture of starch and liniment, and such occupations as fencing, surgery, and bone setting.2 His first
glassmaking venture that glass scholars are aware of
took place in Temple, New Hampshire, where in 1780 he
erected a factory for the production of crown glass and
chemical ware. He named it the New-England GlassWorks. Production of samples had barely gotten under
way when the factory burned down. Hewes rebuilt it,
but the harsh New Hampshire weather caused frost to
destroy the furnaces. After major repairs that did not
hold, some glass was made in the fall of 1781, but, by
the end of the year, Hewes gave up. However, believing
that the fast-growing New World’s most pressing need
was for window glass, he returned to Boston’s more
favorable climate and independently petitioned the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts General Court, due to
assemble in January 1782, for financial assistance and a
fourteen-year patent to erect a glass works on Pleasant
Street in Boston.
The General Court granted Hewes a seven-year patent
on March 1, 1783, but he failed to establish the Pleasant
Street works. On July 6, 1787, his petition was rescinded
in favor of that granted to the newly established Boston
Crown Glass Company of which he was an associate.
Hewes’s affiliation with the new firm was brief; his name
disappears from company documents by October of
that year, long before mass production got under way.3
In 1788 he became a partner and the first superintendent of the East-Hartford Glass-Works, usually called the
Pitkin Glassworks, of East Hartford, later Manchester,
Connecticut. The Pitkin firm was formed in 1783, but its
production of bottles and crown window glass did not
begin until Hewes’s arrival five years later. His connection
was severed before October 1789, and, as far as is known,
he disappeared from the glass industry scene.4
The eleven associates who founded the Boston Crown
Glass Company appointed a committee of two to locate
an appropriate lot on which to erect a glasshouse. They
selected a property on Essex Street between Short
Street and Peck Lane overlooking South Cove, a bay
that separated Boston from South Boston. A brick,
pyramidal shell of a glasshouse was erected in 1788. It had
no chimney, only a ventilator. By way of congratulations,
John Amelung of the New Bremen Glassmanufactory
(sic) near Frederick, Maryland, sent an engraved tumbler
dated January 23, 1789, to the Boston company’s
directors. By November 1790 glassmaker Frederick E. A.
Kupfer had been hired to construct a six-pot furnace, an
annealing oven, and six wood-drying ovens. However,
glassworkers hired by Kupfer determined that the 1788
glasshouse itself was unsuitable for making crown
glass. The brick shell was taken down and construction
began anew. A 100’ by 60’ wooden house with a brick
chimney was erected in its place.5 Support buildings
included a store.
Glassmaking in the Essex Street works finally began on
November 11, 1793, under the superintendence of one
Samuel Gridley. The foreman was Frederick Kupfer’s
son, Charles F. Kupfer, who also served as clerk. The first
employees were German blowers, some of whom had
worked in Hewes’s Temple works and others obtained
from a factory in Baden-Baden, Germany. The earliest
The Acorn • Spring 2012 3
glass was not well made, but after eventual success it
was described as “good and brilliant glass, of a light
bluish white color and quite thick.” According to a 1795
Boston advertisement, the panes were sized from 6” x
8” to 19” by 13”. With thirty-two pounds of melted glass
taken on a blowpipe, a circular, flat disk of finished
glass, termed a table, could measure as large as 60” in
diameter. Under a patent granted on June 15, 1793,
the firm also was required to produce hollowware such
as bottles and carboys. However, if these objects were
made this early in the firm’s history, they were not
advertised and cannot be identified today.6
With cities springing up all over America and the need
for window glass increasing, two directors of the Boston
Crown Glass Company were sent to Middlesex Village,
later Chelmsford, Massachusetts, to erect a factory for
making cylinder window glass. Unlike crown glass, the
less-expensive cylinder glass was made by blowing
large tubes that were cut open and flattened by annealing. The Chelmsford works opened in 1802. The main
building was 124’ long by 62’ wide, with two furnaces,
three flattening ovens, and six wood-drying ovens.7
Above: Crown glass window, 18th Century American, set with
windowpanes commonly called “bull-eyes” that feature pontil
scars in the center of each pane. It will be displayed in the special
exhibition, Pressing Business. Gift of Byron U. Richards in
memory of Ross W. Richards.
As stated previously, on June 17, 1809, the Boston
Crown Glass Company reorganized as the Boston Glass
Manufactory, the name by which it would be known
throughout its lifetime. With plans for continued expansion, on March 15, 1811, the company purchased
from the South Boston Association a lot of upland in
South Boston.8 It was located between First and Second
Streets and bounded on the southeast by B Street.9
A building housing South Boston’s first glass furnace,
where crown glass would be blown, was erected on the
westernmost section of the lot. A house with a six-pot
flint glass furnace was built in the center, just east of
and parallel to the crown glasshouse. In anticipation
of a successful venture, this time the company looked
to England for competent blowers. A search by Charles
Kupfer produced skilled workmen, including an expert
batch mixer and blower of flint glass, Thomas H. Cains
(1779–1865), who had apprenticed in Bristol, England,
at the Phoenix Glass Works. He was working independently at the time of their meeting. Kupfer hired Cains
as foreman of the flint works with the understanding
that he would produce tableware and an assortment of
apothecary furniture and chemical ware.10
The Englishmen arrived, ready to begin a new life in
a new country. However, they had little to do. Their
endeavor was interrupted by a war between the United
States and England, declared on June 18, 1812. As
had happened during an American Revolutionary War
battle in 1776, two high hills in South Boston, known as
Dorchester Heights, were fortified for several regiments
4 The Acorn • Spring 2012
of the Massachusetts militia. A watch was stationed on
the heights because British warships were in sight and
at times came into Boston Harbor, which was guarded
by U.S. troops. To the relief of less than brave Massachusetts soldiers, who had been enlisted for only thirty
days, there was no battle.11 However, soldiers overrunning
and pillaging the land and the inability of industry to
obtain raw materials caused the South Boston works to
close temporarily. Finally both furnaces were producing
by the end of 1812. The Boston Glass Manufactory advertisement placed by Charles Kupfer in the December 16,
1812, newspaper Columbian Centinel is believed to be
the earliest that includes ware from foreman Cains’s
flint glass furnace.
BOSTON WINDOW GLASS AND GLASSWARE—
The Proprietors of the Boston Glass Manufactory,
inform the public, that they have on hand, a quantity of Boston and Chelmsford GLASS, of various
sizes—among which, are 6 by 8, 7 by 9, 10 by 8,
and other sizes as high as 18 by 24. Irregular sizes
and Fan lights are cut in the shortest notice. Also,
Entry and Gate lamps; Chimneys and other Lamp
Tubes, of different shapes. Likewise Tumblers and
Phials; Retorts; Apothecary’s Furniture and Medicine Bottles; Chymists and Electrical Apparatus;—
together with sundry other glassware. Orders
executed at the shortest notice on application to
C. F. Kupfer, at the Boston Glass House, Essex St.
Another advertisement dated April 20, 1815, and published in subsequent issues of the Columbian Centinel
and Boston Gazette illustrates a table of crown glass
and blowers working at a crown glass furnace. It lists a
variety of items available from the Boston, Chelmsford,
and South Boston works.12 Yet, despite the glowing
claim that “the Glass Ware is pronounced by judges,
not to be inferior in quality and workmanship to any
imported,” during the company’s formative years the
flint ware in particular was far from the quality that
foreman Cains’s reputation later would be known for. By
the time of this advertisement until the end of 1818 the
firm’s agency was under the management of Edward A.
Pearson. This gentleman dedicated many hours writing
to current and potential customers, and other company
agencies that were established in major cities. It is our
good fortune that his clerk hand copied those letters
into a letter book now held by the Winterthur Museum,
Garden & Library in Winterthur, Delaware.13 (The letter
book firmly documents the company’s activities. It
clarifies written histories that are based on the somewhat inaccurate memories related in 1880 by Thomas
Cains’s sixty-five-year-old son, William.14) Many letters
were in the form of apology for inefficiency because,
for example, an object that should be in stock was not,
and therefore would not be available for some time,
particularly if a certain color was ordered. This was
especially true of the flint glass works because only
three of Cains’s six pots were used for working glass.
The other three were used for drying wood. Certainly
production was derailed when during a shakeup three
key flint glass employees—William Emmett, George
Flowers, and John or Richard Fisher—walked away
and leased the Boston Porcelain and Glass Company’s
factory in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. There was
no production at all when the fire was put out for more
than three weeks in September and October 1816 to
rebuild the single furnace. And there was not much
hope for adding a second furnace as industry limped
along during the years of desperate economy that
followed the War of 1812.
Pearson’s letter book introduces the glass scholar to a
segment of the glass industry that often has been overlooked. Correspondence of December 5, 1816, to William
Wardlaw and Company of Richmond, Virginia, is enlightening in view of a reference to “Henry’s Chemistry”:
Since last addressing you, particular attention has
been paid to y’e manufacture of Apoth. & chem.
Apparatus of every description, all ye articles referd to
in the plates to Henry’s Chemistry are made, & we are
now executing Orders for several Public Institutions.
Left: This windowpane was
the center section of a table
of crown glass, commonly
described as “bull’s eye” because
it incorporates a scar from a
pontil. As seen in this end view,
the thickness varies. All panes
cut from a table vary in thickness, even those cut from outer
sections. To meet such wavy
undulations, a glazier, when
setting them in window frames,
was required to carve the
wooden mullions that separate
them. Private collection.
The Acorn • Spring 2012 5
“Henry’s Chemistry,” or, formally, The Elements of
Experimental Chemistry was written by William Henry
(1774–1836), an English chemist and the discoverer of
Henry’s Law. First published in London, England, as two
volumes in 1806, it became a standard work. Ten plates
of scaled line drawings included in the 1814 London
edition allowed apothecaries, chemists, perfumers, and
college professors to set up a laboratory with apparatus
made to their specifications. The first American edition,
published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1819, includes
plates from the London editions. They allow us to see
exactly what is meant by “apothecary and chemical
apparatus.”15
Four of Pearson’s letters fill a gap in the saga of Philadelphia’s Thomas W. Dyott (1777–1861), a purveyor of
medicine for venereal complaints and patent medicines
that he sold by the brand name Dr. Robertson’s Family
Medicines.16 Dyott opened a medical practice in 1805.
By 1809 he added a dubious medical degree to his
name and owned a private mold for blowing square
flint glass bottles. Soon he was in the flint glass business,
selling bottles to other druggists and “doctors” like
himself. In 1814 he had commissioned fourteen agents
in the greater Albany, New York, area alone. At that
time one of his bottle sources was the Kensington Glass
Works in Kensington, near Philadelphia, which ceased
production by 1815. With the Kensington works out
of business, Dyott turned to two New Jersey factories,
the Olive Glass Works and the Gloucester Glass Works,
and became an agent for these concerns. He also sent
Pearson orders to be filled by the South Boston Flint
Glass Works.
Above: Plate I from the 1819 edition of The Elements of Experimental Chemistry, written by William Henry. The miscellaneous
chemical ware includes a retort (Fig. 1a), a tabulated receiver
with and without stopper (Fig. 1b), an alembic (Fig. 2), roundbottomed flasks (Figs. 4 and 5), and a retort with stopper (Fig.
13a). The scale at the bottom represents 24”. Richard A. Paselk,
Humboldt State University, Arcata, California.
Opposite: Blown-molded Turlington bottles. Englishman Robert
Turlington patented his medicinal, twenty-seven-ingredient
“Balsam of Life” in 1744. His original bottles were curved, but he
later angled their form to prevent counterfeiters from buying
them back and filling them with generic versions of his cure-all.
Turlington’s plan failed. Over the next 150 years, numerous glass
companies included more than ten variants of these hard-edged
bottles, which were sold empty to the trade. The lip of the South
Boston Flint Glass Works’s first variant may be flared rather than
welted to the outside like the bottles shown here. Bottle on left:
James Megura Collection; bottle on right: Joan E. Kaiser.
6 The Acorn • Spring 2012
Pearson communicated with Dyott four times in 1817.
On April 25 Dyott was informed “The mould for the
Patent bottles is now made & in a short time will be
forwarded with the remaining articles not now sent.”
A letter of May 24 mentions a total of six cases of glassware as well as species mouths and essence vials, and
that of July 30 accompanied an invoice for two more
cases. On August 15 Pearson apologized for an order
“which in the hurry of bus[iness] was overlook’d.” One
month later the Philadelphia Press of September 17
published a notice of Dyott’s stock on hand. Certainly a
portion of this inventory had come from South Boston.
No further correspondence appears in the Pearson
letter book. Dyott bought into and eventually owned a
second Kensington Glass Works built on a lot near the
earlier Kensington works that had closed. It is interesting
to study how closely Dr. Dyott’s Prices Current: Glass
Ware of the Philadelphia and Kensington Vial and Bottle
Factories17 of the 1820s follows the format of the 1819
Prices Current of South Boston Flint Glass Ware.18
As indicated previously, Thomas Cains was a man of
high standards, but as foreman he had little control
over the direction imposed by those who had financial
interest in the business. Finally, in January 1818, after
five years of overseeing the making of substandard
objects, he bought into the corporation. Changes were
immediate. The South Boston Flint Glass Works would
compete in the market by blowing, as well as pressing,
objects with improved design, weight, and form. To
offset the increased cost of production, common bottles
would be made of non-flint glass that was not decolorized,
termed green glass.
The restructuring had little effect on an already eroding
morale. The wooden building that surrounded the Boston
Glass Manufactory’s single crown glass furnace blew
down in a gale in September 1818 and was rebuilt out
of brick, adding expense and causing delays in shipping
windowpanes. There was infighting among upperechelon employees of all three factories. Research of
glass scholar Lura Woodside Watkins determined that
the person responsible for the lack of harmony was
John S. Foster (–1834). He was a window glassmaker at
the Chelmsford factory who was working his way up in
Boston Glass Manufactory management. For the long
term, he was inept in both capacities.19 Yet as treasurer
and assistant clerk, he soon controlled Edward Pearson’s
accounts receivable. Apparently preparing to resign,
Pearson instructed his customers to remit the balance
of their accounts before February 1, 1819, and pay
directly to Foster. Pearson’s letter book ends here.
Thomas Cains was considered moderately successful at
the flint works, but in 1822 continual mismanagement
of the parent concern caused him to look elsewhere
for employment. After turning down several job opportunities, he built his own factory on property that he
owned on the eastern side of B Street. First called Cains’
Glass House, it would be family operated until it shut
down in 1870.
Meanwhile, at the Boston Glass Manufactory, conflicts
with Foster led to Charles Kupfer’s eventual resignation.
The year 1824 saw reorganization again. The South
Boston property remained under the ownership of
the Boston-based concern, but its management was
split into separate ventures. One group that included
Foster incorporated as the South Boston Crown Glass
Company on February 4, 1824, to continue making
windowpanes at the crown glass furnace. On February
22, 1825, a second group incorporated under the firm
name South Boston Flint Glass Works, intending to
produce flint glass by leasing from the Boston Glass
Manufactory the glasshouse vacated by Cains.
Above left: Blown-molded liquid opodeldoc Boston prescription
bottle. The bottle’s cylindrical form is identified as Boston by the
glass bottle industry. Opodeldoc, with emphasis on the third syllable, was a soapy liniment made of a solution of soap, distilled
spirits, camphor, and essential oils. The Boston Glass Manufactory’s agent Edward A. Pearson invoiced such bottles at $8.00 per
gross on March 14, 1816. Such bottles were made of flint glass
until 1818, when Thomas H. Cains bought into the parent corporation and changed company policy. Author’s collection.
Above right: Twelve-ribbed and sixteen-ribbed objects are documented to the hand of Thomas H. Cains. This peacock green pungent was blown in a mold that had sixteen vertical ribs. Twisting
it after removal from the mold produced the diagonal configuration. It is of the form that in 1877 Cains’s son, William, showed to a
Dorchester newspaper editor, who described it as “a blue smelling
bottle, of the twisted comical (sic) pattern formerly so much in
vogue that came into existence over sixty years ago.” “Smelling or
Pungents, moulded and twisted” are itemized in the 1819 Prices
Current of South Boston Flint Glass Ware. Author’s collection.
The Acorn • Spring 2012 7
Both groups had to know that their futures were tenuous.
The Boston Glass Manufactory borrowed $15,000 on
July 7, 1825, by using its two South Boston works as
collateral.20 The mortgage would have been satisfied
in 1829, but the parent corporation together with its
Chelmsford and South Boston subsidiaries declared
bankruptcy in 1827. The failure ended Foster’s career in
Boston. He moved to Burlington, Vermont, to establish
a cylinder glassworks on the shore of Lake Champlain.21
Most of the Boston Glass Manufactory’s South Boston
property reverted back to the South Boston Association.
On May 26, 1827, the real and personal property connected with the glassmaking facility was conveyed by
bankruptcy proceedings to assignees, who published
the following notice, dated June 11, 1827, in the Boston
Commercial Gazette:
Boston and South Boston Crown Glass and Chelmsford
Cylinder Glass for sale. A quantity of Glass of all the
sizes and descriptions usually manufactured at the
Boston, South Boston and Chelmsford works, also
a quantity of Materials and Utensils. Inquire at the
late Counting Room of the Boston Glass Manufactory, Essex-street. The making of Glass at the above
mentioned works has been discontinued.
How much inventory was sold is open to conjecture.
It was rumored that unsalable crown glass worth
$150,000, termed rusty by window glass industrialists,
was left in Boston at the Essex Street factory. It was
destroyed by fire on February 16, 1829. Under different
ownership, the Chelmsford factory continued production
until 1840.
Top left: Free-blown whale oil lamp with interior air trap, threethread decorated standard, and pressed rose foot. The South
Boston Flint Glass Works first listed stand lamps in 1819, although
pressed glass was introduced into the United States in 1817. The
horizontal ring around the font was made by incising a deep
groove into the exterior surface and smoothing the glass over the
groove. Air trapped in the groove, when viewed from the exterior, appears as two silvery rings. This was one of several motifs
commonly employed under Cains’s supervision. A three-thread
hoop decorates the standard. The form of the standard is unique
to lamps manufactured in South Boston. The standard was free
blown and then rotated in a wooden block that was hollowed to
this configuration. Art and Kathy Green Collection.
Left: South Boston’s earliest stand lamps were constructed by adhering a rudimentary peg to the bottom of the font by means of a
disk of glass, called a wafer, and thrusting the peg through a larger
wafer that attached the whole to a blown hollow standard. The
rudimentary peg of the font unit is clearly visible where it protrudes
into the standard. It is not found on Sandwich Glass Manufactory
and Boston & Sandwich Glass Company lamps, first made in 1825.
Note the distinctive form of the standard. Private collection.
8 The Acorn • Spring 2012
The remaining inventory of stock produced in the flint
glasshouse was purchased by the Boston & Sandwich
Glass Company. That company had been founded only
two years earlier as the Sandwich Glass Manufactory
with a warehouse in Boston and one eight-pot furnace
in Sandwich, Massachusetts. The glassworks lot was
subdivided into two parcels, the westernmost one on
which the crown glass furnace stood and the easternmost one on B Street on which the flint glass furnace
stood. On August 13, 1828, the easternmost parcel was
sold to Edward A. Pearson, former agent of the Boston
Glass Manufactory now identified as a broker. He continued production primarily by pressing cup plates, and
to better compete in this market he soon constructed
a small two-pot furnace in a converted outbuilding. On
March 6, 1830, he and one Levi Farwell incorporated
the business as the Boston Flint Glass Company. The
firm is listed in the 1830 Boston directory; however, by
November the works was offered for sale to the Boston
& Sandwich Glass Company and East Cambridge’s New
England Glass Company.
Left: Free-blown whale oil
lamp with pressed square
Lacy base. Without question
the base with its Lacy pattern
beneath was also produced
by the Boston & Sandwich
Glass Company. Yet the
beautifully shaped font is
unlike fonts attributed to
the Sandwich works. It does,
however, mimic the form of
South Boston standards. The
author believes that the lamp
was made in South Boston
and that the mold in which
the base was pressed was
one of those acquired later
by the Sandwich firm. Art
and Kathy Green Collection.
The Boston & Sandwich Glass Company’s directors
appointed a committee to consider Pearson and Farwell’s
proposal. It recommended the purchase of the stock,
tools, and materials. Another committee conferred with
a New England Glass Company committee to consider
the real estate. For reasons unknown to the author,
that transaction did not occur. In 1833 the Boston &
Sandwich Glass Company built a ten-pot furnace in
Sandwich, which, with a six-pot furnace built in 1829,
brought its total number of furnaces there to three.
Above: Research indicates that the square Lacy lamp base, shown
here on a Sandwich lamp, was pressed in a mold that the Boston
& Sandwich Glass Company purchased from the Boston Glass
Manufactory’s South Boston Flint Glass Works in 1827, or in 1830
from Edward A. Pearson and Levi Farwell’s Boston Flint Glass
Company. Sandwich Glass Museum, Sandwich Historical Society.
Left: The author believes that this square scrolled standard and
paw foot (lion head) lamp base is another that was pressed in
a mold that the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company purchased
from the South Boston Flint Glass Works in 1827, or in 1830 from
Edward A. Pearson and Levi Farwell’s Boston Flint Glass Company.
The base is common to Sandwich, but is found on an intricately
constructed, 14¾” high candlestick with South Boston characteristics that is in the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio. It is
pictured in Kenneth M. Wilson’s American Glass 1760–1930 I,
page 343, plate 433. The head of an animal thought to be a lion is
molded between the upper ends of the S-scrolls. Sandwich Glass
Museum, Sandwich Historical Society.
The Acorn • Spring 2012 9
Right: The domed foot
of this labor-intensive,
free-blown candlestick
mimics the form of a sugar
cover that descended in
the Cains family. A gaffer
with a keen sense of design
and proportion made
it. The nozzle’s galleried
rim suggests that it was
furnished with a pewter
socket into which a candle
was inserted. Low and high
candlesticks are itemized
in the 1818 Prices Current.
The 1819 Prices Current
lists “low tale” and “high
best” candlesticks.
Private collection.
Below: Profusely illustrated Boston Glass Manufactory billheads
were used by the agencies of Edward A. Pearson in 1815 and of
Joseph Wing and Stephen Sumner in 1821. This blown-molded
diamond-patterned salt is one of twelve objects depicted with two
tables of crown glass and a box of cylinder windowpanes against
a background of the three glassworks. James Poore Antiques.
The Boston & Sandwich Glass Company and the New
England Glass Company’s joint involvement in the
South Boston works continued, however, as documented by a deed finalizing its sale in 1833. When it
was bought by George C. Shattuck on June 8 of that
year, the sale was subject “to a lease from said Company
of the same premises for five years yet unexpired upon
the conditions therein contained to the Boston & Sandwich & New England Glass Companies.”22 Exactly when
the five-year lease was formalized, when it expired, and
whether it was renewed cannot be determined by the
author. Presumably the agreement was signed in 1831,
around the time that the Sandwich concern voted to
purchase the stock, tools, and materials. (To date the
author has identified two lamp feet that were pressed
in molds that most likely were transferred from the
South Boston facility to the Sandwich works.)
Over the next several years, a financial depression
that affected industry worldwide swept across the
United States. It led to the Panic of 1837 that virtually
destroyed the market for glass. Any attempt by a flint
glass firm, large or small, that may have occupied Shattuck’s property after the lessees vacated would have
been poorly rewarded. Some activity was noted there
in 1845, perhaps in preparation for leasing it to Patrick
F. Slane (c.1817–1888), who ran a flint glassworks in
East Cambridge, just a stone’s throw west of the New
England Glass Company’s factory. He moved his entire
American Glass Manufactory to South Boston in 1847.
Here he was fairly successful in the low-end and middle
market until 1857, when he relocated again, this time to
New York. His corporation was the last to manufacture
glass on the site.23
On April 29, 1829, the crown glass parcel was sold
to Edmund H. Monroe (1780–1865), a Boston broker
of real estate and securities as well as an incorporator
of the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company and three
glass companies with furnaces in East Cambridge. On
October 28, 1830, Monroe sold it to Charles, David, and
John Henshaw, who converted it into a distilling and
refining facility. When the depression hit, Monroe found
himself relinquishing his interests in all of his South
Boston real estate. After several transfers of ownership,
some of his lots became the property of the Boston
Chemical Laboratory. The laboratory and the Henshaw
distillery properties evolved into the massive Downer
Kerosene Works.
10 The Acorn • Spring 2012
AFTERWORD
It has been noted that the author’s history of the South
Boston glass industry “left no stone unturned.” There are
two stones that need upending. The first involves the
elusive adventures of one William Eayres, whose career
in the business spanned less than a decade.24 In the early
1830s some of the former Boston Glass Manufactory’s
lots in the vicinity of Second Street and A Street became
the site of numerous short-lived bottle houses and flint
glasshouses. Eayres managed a flint works there in 1834
and 1835. Previous to that, in 1828 and 1829 he lived on
Broadway in South Boston and was employed as the agent
of an unidentified, but seemingly local glass company.
He then moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where
in January 1831 with nine others he incorporated the
short-lived Providence Flint Glass Company. He served
as its agent until it shut down in 1833. By 1834 he returned to a South Boston residence on Third Street.
He is listed as a glassmaker in the Boston directory of
1835, after which he is no longer found as a South Boston
resident or businessman. As Eayres is not a common
name, William probably was related to one Ebenezer
Eayres, who on October 22, 1788, fell from scaffolding
during construction of the chimneyless factory on Essex
Street.25 The author requests the reader’s assistance in
determining the firm for which William Eayres served
as agent in the late 1820s.
Nathaniel Staniford, or Stanniford, is another figure who
fades in and out of history.26 The 1827 Boston directory
lists him as a glasshouse manager on Second Street. The
time of his arrival in South Boston is not known to the
author because South Boston residents were not included
in the directory before that year. He may have been a
superintendent under Thomas Cains at Cains’ Glass
House. As far as is known, Cains’s was the only working
flint house at the time, unless Edward Pearson had
reopened the South Boston Flint Glass Works earlier than
current research suggests. Boston & Sandwich Glass
Company correspondence connects him to a flint rather
than a bottle or window glass factory. A letter dated
September 17, 1827, notes that he had five hundred
tubes, or burners for whale oil lamps, made. Another
dated October 31, 1827, reveals that “Stanniford makes
a Cylinder Night Lamp broad at Top.” During his tenure
in South Boston, a magnificent free-blown mug was created that he presented to Captain Ebenezer Goddard, Jr.
(1779–1838), whose life history is also elusive. Information
on Nathaniel Stanniford would be greatly appreciated.
Notes
1. Joan E. Kaiser, The Glass Industry in South Boston (Lebanon, New
Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2009), 7.
2. Kenneth M. Wilson, New England Glass & Glassmaking (New York,
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1972), 51–58.
3. Ibid., 57, 59.
4. Helen McKearin and Kenneth M. Wilson, American Bottles & Flasks
and Their Ancestry (New York, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.,
1978), 54–58.
5. Kaiser, The Glass Industry in South Boston, 233.
6. Wilson, New England Glass & Glassmaking, 79–82.
7. Ibid., 83.
8. Suffolk County (Massachusetts) Registry of Deeds (henceforth
Suffolk Registry), book 235, pages 241–243.
9. A locator map illustrating the layout of the Boston Glass
Manufactory’s South Boston properties is found in Kaiser,
The Glass Industry in South Boston, 8.
10.Ibid., 7. Further information is found in chapters 2, 3, and 4.
11.Thomas C. Simonds, History of South Boston: Formerly Dorchester
Neck, Now Ward XII of the City of Boston (Boston, Massachusetts:
David Clapp, 1857; Reprinted by Higginson Book Co., Salem,
Massachusetts, n.d.), 105–106.
12.Wilson, New England Glass & Glassmaking, 202.
13.Edward A. Pearson’s letter book in the Winterthur Museum, Garden
& Library is in the Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and
Printed Ephemera, no. 82x57. It was brought to the author’s
attention by glass scholar and friend, Maynard E. Steiner.
14.Kaiser, The Glass Industry in South Boston, 235, note 7.
15.Ibid., 15–19.
16.Helen McKearin, Bottles, Flasks and Dr. Dyott (New York, New York:
Crown Publishers, Inc., 1970).
17.Ibid., 38.
18.Leith Smith, Barbara Donohue, and Martin Dudek, Emergency
Archaeological Data Recovery of the South Boston Flint Glass Works
and the American Glass Company (Formerly Reported as Crown Glass
Works); Contingency Plan Implementation; Contos Property, Parcel
60-CS-1; Central Artery/Tunnel Project; Boston, Massachusetts, vol. 2
(Littleton, Massachusetts: Timelines, Inc.; for Boston, Massachusetts:
Massachusetts Highway Department, 2000), Appendix E. This
publication is a detailed report of an archeological dig that was
conducted on the site of the South Boston Flint Glass Works in
1997 (Kaiser, The Glass Industry in South Boston, 72–74). The 1818
and 1819 Prices Current are courtesy of Kenneth M. Wilson, whom
Smith consulted.
19.Lura Woodside Watkins, “The Boston Crown Glass Company,”
Magazine Antiques 37, no. 6 (June 1940), 291.
20.Suffolk Registry, book 301, page 230.
21.Kaiser, The Glass Industry in South Boston, 234, note 21.
22.Suffolk Registry, book 369, pages 212–213.
23.Kaiser, The Glass Industry in South Boston, chapter 5.
24.Ibid., 1, 133.
25.Wilson, New England Glass & Glassmaking, 79.
26.Kaiser, The Glass Industry in South Boston, 27–28, 30–31.
Back cover: Plate II from the 1819 edition of The Elements of Experimental Chemistry, written by William Henry. The miscellaneous
chemical ware includes a funnel with trap termed safety funnel (Fig. 26a), a precipitating jar (Fig. 26f), and a burner (beneath Fig.
27a). An object with an extra neck, as shown in Fig.17a, was termed tabulated. The scale at the bottom represents 24”. Richard A.
Paselk, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California.
The Acorn • Spring 2012 11
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12 The Acorn • Spring 2012