Colonial Glass of the Wistars & The Alloway Creek Campaign

Featuring the Malcolm L. Polis Collection

The events that led up to the closure of America’s first successful glassworks were ultimately forged by the hand of unrelenting war. Glass house Salem County (United Glass Company; Wistarburgh) stood quietly for years successfully operating under the prying gaze of British eyes. From 1738 through the French and Indian war Wistarburgh thrived only to come undone when America sought self government and decided to act. Prior to the revolution, two impending yet opposing points of view existed in those times; exploitation of the colonies by the mother country and the colonial trend toward industrialism as well as independence. The prevailing British mercantile philosophy was that “all these colonies, which are but twigs belonging to the main tree (Britain) ought to be kept entirely dependent upon & subservient to England, and that can never be if they are suffered to go on in the notions that they have, so they may set up the same manufactures here as people may do in England.“ This is why Wistarburgh went forward without fanfare, as they had reason to fear that conspicuous success in that field may lead British Merchants to demand legislation prohibiting glass making in America. By 1776, there were more pressing concerns for everyone. Peaceful Salem County was awakening by the advent of the Revolutionary War and about two months after the battles of Lexington and Concord touched off open hostility, the local citizens began to form militia companies called Associators on the style of the Massachusetts Minutemen.

Credits: John E. DeCaro (Writer) Stephen Atkinson (Photographer) John Savannah (Narrator)