The story of a teapot – returned from Dayton in 2012
There is a strong historical business connection between Saltaire and Dayton, Tennessee which you can read about in a separate post. There is also a more personal story to be told concerning a well-travelled teapot…
In 1861, William Hanson was living with his wife Martha and three children at 40 Whitlam Street, Saltaire and William is recorded as working as a fitter at Salts Mill. Their children were Rose (b. 1853); Frederick (b. 1855) and Eva (b.1861). By 1871 the family had moved to what was then numbered as 29 Albert Road, Saltaire and William was recorded as a machine fitter, with his son Frederick as a joiner/carpenter. The Hanson family know that Sir Titus Salt valued William Hanson’s engineering skills highly and that he was personally presented with likenesses of the great man.
His son Frederick (father of three sons and two daughters) also worked at Salts Mill and became responsible for a team of workers charged with maintaining the Saltaire houses. Hanson family legend has it that one hot August day, when Frederick’s team had worked especially hard, Frederick took them to a pub called the Ring of Bells in Shipley for a drink. The outcome of this was that his father William sacked him, and Frederick moved with his family to Slaithwaite, near Huddersfield, an event that must have happened at some time between 1891 and 1901 according to census returns for the times.
William Hanson’s youngest daughter Eva became a school teacher in Saltaire. She met and got engaged to a book-keeper, called Percy Johnson, working at Salts Mill sometime before 1885. Percy must have been a senior employee at Salts because he was persuaded to travel to Dayton Tennessee with Titus Salt Junior and Charles Stead, around 1884, to take responsibility for the finances of the Dayton Coal and Iron company that they had founded in 1883. Eva travelled to Dayton to marry Percy Johnson in Rhea County in 1885 and, apart from visits back to see family in Yorkshire, they remained in the United States and eventually were to settle in Canada. Eva and Percy married in Dayton, Tennessee and amongst their wedding gifts was a teapot. They had one child who sadly died before adulthood. They were however, valued highly by descendants of the Hanson family.
They were especially loved by one of Frederick Hanson’s grandsons, Donald Hanson, who started work at Globe Mills, Huddersfield in 1939, aged 14 years. He was to rise through the ranks into senior management in the company that owned this mill, Illingworth Morris, and in 1967 became a director of Salts (Saltaire) Ltd., some years after Illingworth, Morris had made a successful takeover bid for the Saltaire based company. Donald later became chair and joint chief executive for Illingworth, Morris in 1981. The story of his time then is one of great drama that was to result in much media interest.
Long after Donald retired from work, in May 2012, when the Saltaire Historians Dave Shaw and David King were invited to visit Dayton, Donald requested that they enquire about his great aunt and uncle to find out more about their time in Dayton. Donald had many fond memories of Aunt Eva’s visits back to Yorkshire that always involved gifts of American toys that could not be found in the United Kingdom. In Dayton Messrs. Shaw and King contacted Pat Guffey, County Historian for Rhea County, and he had an immediate answer ‘Percival knew my great grandparents and presented them with a teapot brought from England, when he finally left Dayton’ – asking ‘would you like to have it, to give to Mr. Hanson’.
The teapot was brought back to Saltaire in May 2012, where it was presented to Donald, who in turn, presented it to the Saltaire Collection. It is the only known 19th century object that binds the communities of Saltaire and Dayton, Tennessee. The Saltaire Collection is very grateful to the Saltaire Historians, Dave Shaw and David King, for this invaluable item and the story of its connection across the world.
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