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them by pottery entrepreneurs.
The potters themselves clustered around naturally occurring clay
deposits, thereby creating numerous "jugtowns" of a dozen shops and
more. While the ceramic product turned out by these potters varied
with the area, its clays, its traditions, the basic steps in the production
process varied little throughout the South. Most of these men
fashioned their own tools with the assistance of local blacksmiths, built
their own kilns of homemade bricks, and processed their own clay and
glaze materials. And while the potters and the society around them
regarded pottery-making as a respectable and reasonably profitable
trade, its adherents rarely sought —or found —the professional status
of their fellows in die North. More often than not, southern stoneware
potters worked anonymously, characteristically combining potterymaking
with farming.
Because of their late entry into pottery-making, the Meaderses did
not enjoy too many years of great stability in their chosen craft. Even
as they developed skills and built a clientele, changes were on the
horizon, changes that would bring about a social and economic transformation
with the dawning century. For a few years, however, they
worked in an environment not very different from that of the previous
decades.
During these years, the economy of White County, Georgia,
depended upon agriculture. Setders for the most part occupied subsistance
farmsteads, congregating occasionally at a few tiny general
stores diat dotted the countryside. Of these, the Leo store and post
office stood closest to the Mossy Creek voting district. Several times a
year, business took the family a three-mile distance to the county seat,
Cleveland, which boasted a physician, a dentist, an attorney, a
courthouse, and two dry-goods stores; these trips, however, depended
on necessity.
The trade network, in which the Meaderses participated actively,
relieved the isolation of their rural existence to an extent. Wagon
freighters criss-crossed the region, trading produce and bringing news
to the outlying settlements. After 1895, these wagoners introduced
commercially manufactured glaze materials to the potter's benefit
and, after 1900, introduced vast numbers of glass botdes and "tin"
cans to his eventual disadvantage.
The Gainesville-Northwestern railroad further eroded the area's
isolation when, in 1912, it pushed a spur line through from Gaines-
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