Bezaleel Wells letter to Thomas Rotch, Steubenville, May 10, 1817

              A-360-4 
page 1

                                  Steubenville 10th May 1817
Dear Sir
    Your letter of 3d curt was recd by last nights mail. I am much pleased to learn that you have made an experiment in some degree satisfactory on the white clay  on my farm. It will be an important discovery should that clay be found suitable for manufacturing queens ware. I believe such a clay has not heretofore been discovered. All that I have heard of are biscuiting, and burning overturn dark coloured generally straw colour or brown. I have therefore supposed that if we ever succeeded in making a white ware, it would be by using an opaque glazing, which I have understood can be made of calcium black tin. The great difficulty attendant on most of our white clays is the presence of lime with them, and I was apprehensive that it might be the same with that on my farm, as I have observed lime in the banks of the run adjacent to where the clay is. The such produced by the presence of lime with argillaceous earth is that when submitted to the heat necessary for semivitrification, it fuses, and becomes a solid body, in this case when hot water is put into a vessel made of it, it flies to pieces like glass to make the experiment fairly, and satisfactorily, you ought to bis=