Category: Ireland

Charles Clarke, Pewter Manufacturer, of Waterford

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If you google Charles Clark Waterford pewter, you may see some ads on ebay for antique dishes made by this Irish pewter manufacturer in the early 1800s. You may find his name in my blog post about the Shearman family, and you may also come across a 2009 post on RootsWeb by Lorraine Elliott, looking for more information about him. 

Earlier this year, Lorraine, who is descended from Clarke’s grandson Robert Clarke Shearman, got in touch with me. Charles Clarke was an ancestor to both of us. I’m descended from his granddaughter Martha Bagnall Shearman, who immigrated to Canada in 1847. Robert, who was Martha’s brother, settled in New Zealand.  

Lorraine did some research on Clarke and discovered quite a bit about his professional accomplishments, although his personal life and family connections are still something of a mystery. 

The large pewter dish in the upper left was manufactured by Charles Clarke and is on display in the National Museum of Ireland — Decorative Arts and History, Dublin. HR photo

Charles Clarke (  – 1830) was a Waterford ironmonger and brass founder as well as a maker of pewter flat ware in this ancient city in southeast Ireland. He was active in metallic crafts from at least 1788 until his death. 

An advertisement in the Waterford Mirror on June 8, 1807, advised Charles’ customers that he made plumbing supplies and sold tea and coffee urns. Ten years later, the same newspaper reported that his factory had made a beautiful set of wrought iron gates, “a model of lightness, simplicity, strength and elegance,” for the Chapel Yard at Craig in nearby County Kilkenny. His foundry designed and made bells for many of Waterford’s churches, and he made stills, condensers and brewing coppers for the distilling and brewing industries. 

He may have been in the family business. Waterford Streets Past and Present lists Nehemiah & William Clarke, Brass Founders, Braziers and Engine Makers on Peter Street in 1788. There is also a solo listing for William Clarke. Pigot’s 1824 City of Dublin and Hibernian Provincial Directory listed Terence Clarke, hardwareman and ironmonger, on Waterford Quay. How these people may have been related to Charles is unknown.

Charles was located on Barronstrand Street by 1790, with what appears to have been a household ironmongery shop at the front of the building and a foundry and a factory in the rear. He lived nearby at 38 Barronstrand Street. 

Barronstrand Street, Waterford. JH photo

The year 1782 was an eventful one in Ireland, with members of the Irish volunteer militia forcing the British government, which then ruled Ireland as a colony, to make Ireland an equal partner. These attempts at reform soon failed, and political unrest continued throughout Charles’ life. Meanwhile, on Dec. 18, 1782, The Dublin Hibernian Journal announced the marriage of “Mr. Charles Clarke of Peter St. to Miss Bennett, late of Bath.” Bath is located in southern England, across the Irish Sea from coastal Waterford. 

Charles had at least two daughters, Charlotte and Arabella, however, the girls may have been half-sisters. It is likely that Charlotte Bennett Clarke — the mother of both Martha Bagnall Shearman and Robert Clarke Shearman — was the daughter of Charles Clarke and Miss Bennett. A retrospective article that appeared in the Waterford News (Aug. 5, 1955) noted that Arabella Clarke died in 1822, age 13, at her father’s residence in Barronstrand Street. It is not clear whether there were other children, or when Miss Bennett died.  Lorraine found hints that Charles married several times, however, Clarke is a common name.   

When Charles died on Jan. 9, 1830, there was no male heir willing or available to inherit his business and, according to the Waterford News, it was sold to Samuel Woods and renamed the Phoenix Foundry.

This article is also posted on https://genealogyensemble.com

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Breaking Through my Shearman Brick Wall,” July 6, 2016, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/07/breaking-through-my-shearman-brick-wall.html

Janice Hamilton, “Christ Church Cathedral, Waterford: A Tale of Two Weddings,” June 8, 2016, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/06/christ-church-cathedral-waterford-tale.html

Notes:

Charles Clarke is mentioned in two booklets by David Hall: Types of English Pewter and Brass, Bronze and Copper, 1600-1900.  Both are published by the author in association with the National Museum of Ireland and available at the shop in the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts and History, Dublin. 

See Robert S. Hill, “Shearman, Robert Clarke”, from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://TeAra.got.nz/en/biographies/1s10/shearman-robert-clarke. 

The National Archives of Ireland has a transcript of Charles Clarke’s will, dated 1830 and proved in the Prerogative Court. (Reference number IWR/1830/F/217, volume 4/236/16.) The executor was William F. Clarke of Waterford. 

Lorraine found other references to Clarke marriages in Waterford, however, we do not know how these individuals were related to Charles. In 1771, Miss Clark of Peter Street married Capt. Thomas Doyle. In 1773, Mr William Clarke, brass founder of Waterford, married Miss Thomson.

In 1792, Miss Jane Clarke of Peter Street married Mr. Magrath, cabinet maker. The National Archives of Ireland has an abstract of a marriage licence grant for William F. Clarke to Mary Mackesy, dated 1826, for the Waterford and Lismore diocese.

Miss Bennett, late of Bath, is of great interest to me because she is represents the most distant of my direct maternal ancestors, but without more information, it is hard to trace further back in that line.

Breaking Through My Shearman Brick Wall

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In 2014, I wrote about the brick wall surrounding the Irish origins of my great-great grandmother Martha Bagnall Shearman.1 Thanks to the generosity of a new-found distant cousin, I have now demolished that brick wall, moved the family tree back another six generations and discovered additional Shearman family branches in New Zealand and the United States.

I knew that Martha Shearman was born in Waterford, Ireland, married Charles Francis Smithers there in 1844 and came to Canada three years later.2 Because of Charles’ career in banking, the Smithers family lived for several years in Brooklyn, New York, and I discovered that two of Martha’s brothers and a sister had also immigrated to Brooklyn. I knew nothing, however, about the Shearman family’s roots in Ireland. 

Shearman Esq. in Grange, lower right corner

I posted the article online and eventually Lorraine Elliott, who was born in New Zealand and lives in Australia, came across my blog. She contacted me to tell me that her ancestor Robert Clarke Shearman,3 a New Zealand policeman, was another of Martha’s siblings. The clue that helped convinced her that we were related was a photograph in her great-great-grandfather’s album identified as Maria Boate, Martha’s and Robert’s sister in Brooklyn.  

Some years ago, Lorraine’s research led her to a genealogy of the Shearman family written in 1853 by John Francis Shearman (I’ll refer to him as JFS). He was a cousin of Martha’s and Robert’s, an amateur archaeologist and a Catholic priest. (Some of the Shearmans were Protestants, others converted to Catholicism.) This document is in the archives of the National University of Ireland at Maynooth, near Dublin. Lorraine sent me the notes she had on that document, along with some of her own research on the extended Shearman family.   

The JFS genealogy takes the Shearmans back to the mid-17th century when Thomas Shearman (c 1610-1704) came to Ireland from England with Oliver Cromwell’s invasion forces. He then settled in Burnchurch, County Kilkenny, in southeast Ireland. Subsequent generations of Shearmans lived in and around Grange, not far from Kilkenny City. 

Lorraine’s notes stated that Martha was one of 13 children, and that their parents were Thomas Shearman (c. 1785-1850) and his wife, Charlotte Bennett Clarke (no dates available).4 Her research suggested that Thomas lived in Dunkitt, Kilkenny, near the city of Waterford, but other sources say that he was from the nearby city of Waterford. Perhaps he lived in Dunkitt in his early life, then moved to the city.

Ruins of Burnchurch, Kilkenny

I recently came across another Shearman genealogy on familysearch.org.5 This 15-page manuscript was written in 1863 by a member of another branch of the family, George Shearman (1818-1908) of Penn Yan, a small town in New York State. It was clearly based on the family history written by JFS 10 years earlier, and it added more detail about George’s line and had less information about mine. It listed Thomas Shearman and named his sons, but only mentioned that he also had five daughters.

All this information comes with a caveat: neither of these documents meets the requirements of genealogical proof standards. The names and dates of birth, marriage and death were probably based on family records and anecdotes and parish records that existed at the time, but today there are no official records in Ireland to back them up. Nevertheless, Shearman family members can be found in various cemeteries, old Irish city directories, newspaper articles, Tithe Applotment Books and indexes of wills. Kilkenny researcher Edward Law found numerous records pertaining to Grange House, home to my Shearman ancestors in County Kilkenny, and the librarian with the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, Rothe House, Kilkenny was extremely helpful in my search for traces of the family.

This article has also been posted on the collaborative blog https://genealogyensemble.com.

Photo Credits: Rothe House; Janice Hamilton

Footnotes:

  1. Janice Hamilton, “My Shearman Brick Wall”, Writing Up the Ancestors, Feb. 9, 2014, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2014/02/my-shearman-brick-wall.html
  2. Janice Hamilton, “Waterford Cathedral: A Tale of Two Weddings”, Writing Up the Ancestors, June 8, 2016, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/06/christ-church-cathedral-waterford-tale.html
  3. Robert S. Hill, “Shearman, Robert Clarke”, from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://TeAra.got.nz/en/biographies/1s10/shearman-robert-clarke. Note that this article says Robert’s uncle was William Hobson, first governor of New Zealand; Lorraine has been unable to confirm that. 
  4. Charlotte was the daughter of Waterford pewter manufacturer Charles Clarke and his wife “Miss Bennett, late of Bath.” This maternal line has now come to another brick wall.  
  5. “Genealogy of the Shearmans”, prepared by George Shearman of Penn Yan, New York, c. 1863 https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939K-VQH2-8?mode=g&i=113&wc=9DWX-ZNL%3A1040900401%2C1040900901%3Fcc%3D1880619&cc=1880619