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through 1875—would have been an era of free and open sales and consumption. These werethe same years in which the “Poor House” fell into ruin.Of the ale bottle fragments recovered from intact contexts, the bulk were found inLevel 2 in the southern half of the site (Table 7). The dating and spatial distribution indicatethat most of the ale bottles belong to the period of the “Poor House” or after, but probablybefore the era of the RobersonHotel/Central Hotel (1882–1911).Other stoneware vessels in the Kitchen group include jars (Figure 38b, d), jugs(Figures 38a–b and 39), and pitchers. All but one vessel appear to date from the early to midnineteenthcentury. Stoneware was first produced in North Carolina in the second quarter ofthe nineteenth century (Zug 1985:24). At least two of the jugs were incised, which is adecorative style that disappeared after the 1840s (Zug 1985:28–29). There was one machinemade,jiggered stacker jug, circa 1890s. Virtually all but the stacker jug were salt-glazed andwere for the most part produced locally in the eastern North Carolina Piedmont. One bluepaintedjug was of a type manufactured in Virginia. Several of the vessels can be attributedon the basis of style to known nineteenth-century potters: the Fox family (Nicholas and sonsHimer and Daniel were in operation from the early nineteenth century until 1880s);Nathaniel Dixon (born 1827, died 1863); and Elijah K. Moffit (born 1836, died 1910) (Zug1986:435–447). The trading networks to distribute the work of these potters were wellestablishedby the 1830s.Guilford, Hillsborough, and Pittsboro were trading hubs for the east-west andnorth-south merchants and traders. A network of plank roads, also known asthe “farmers railroads,” was built throughout Alamance and Chatham countiesfrom the 1830s to 1850s. Construction of these roads was state-subsidizedand extended from western Chatham County to the market areas ofFayetteville and Wilmington [Carnes-McNaughton 1997:83–84].Jugs were used to contain all kinds of liquids, including whiskey, wine, beer, cider,vinegar, oil, and molasses (Zug 1986:302–303). Battle (1907:576) tells of an incident in the1840s when a wagon full of jugs of peach brandy encamped just outside the alcoholprohibition zone around town and sold to students.Jars and crocks were used extensively to store foods in the nineteenth century. Asstated above, they kept foods cool and preserved in the era before refrigeration (Zug1986:288). They held fruit preserves, butter, lard, cheeses, pickled vegetables, and saltedmeats (Zug 1986:296). Retailers, such as the general stores operated on Lot 11, sold much oftheir product in these containers (Polak 1997:101).Pitchers were a versatile vessel form that could be used for food storage (such asbuttermilk) and also for serving and washing (Zug 1986:328).The distribution of kitchen stoneware sherds from intact contexts shows that themajority of stoneware was found in Level 2 in the southern half of the site (Table 7).Annular ware sherds make up 2% (Table 3) of the total ceramic assemblage. This is adecorative style of contrasting colored banding which can be found on several different waretypes. The Pettigrew pottery assemblage consists of 13% Creamware, 27% Pearlware, and60% Whiteware (all non-vitreous earthenwares). These ware types succeed each othertemporally (with some overlapping) in the order listed, indicating that the bulk of this group34