Celebrating 200 years!

Emerson Creek Pottery is a family-owned and operated business, now in its second generation as a legacy business. Our pottery was started in the late 1970s from a passion for creating beautiful, functional, nontoxic pottery for everyday use. 

The pottery’s first home was in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, inside a historic house called the Emerson Home, located near the beautiful Emerson Brook, which flows into the Blackstone River. This home and brook were named after Millins Emerson.

Today, Emerson Creek Pottery is located in the countryside of the rolling hills of rural Bedford County, Virginia. Emerson’s original potters moved to this location in Virginia in 1977 and built a wood timbered pottery studio on site. 

The small original studio is now surrounded by several building additions as the production of our pottery and the size of our team have grown over the years. 

On our campus, you’ll also find an original 1825 hand-hewn timber cabin. This is the home of our Emerson Creek Pottery Outlet Store, but as you can imagine, this home had a long history before we ever laid eyes on it. 

As the history books tell it, this historic home was originally built by Jeremiah Wade (who lived from 1780 to 1849). In 1825, Jeremiah built what is now the west section of the house. 

Later, in 1862, Jeremiah’s son, Silas, purchased the home and land from his father for one dollar. Silas was a blacksmith and a farmer, and he is responsible for adding on the east section of the home.  

Due to the design of the addition, the main floor of this home is on multiple levels, meaning there is a small staircase with several  steps that one must take to go from one end of the building to the other. 

In a land transfer in 1881, Silas and his wife conveyed to their son, Pleasant, “400 acres on the property which he now resides, cattle, sheep, hogs, horses, wagon and harness, and one set of blacksmith’s tools with all my plantation tools of every description.” 

Pleasant was a blacksmith and postmaster in the area, and he and his family were the last of the Wade family to live in this home.

In a recent conversation with D. Pharr, the son of Lula Wade (daughter of Pleasant Wade) recounted “I sometimes wonder how my mother and brothers and sisters survived with only an outside well and fireplace heat. They had to be of strong, hearty heritage. To my knowledge electricity was not brought across most of Bedford’s farmland until around 1944. Aunt Mary, who researched the Wade family history, was the only sister that graduated from college (Longwood) and taught all grades in a one-room schoolhouse near Peck’s Church.”

Another interesting fact about the history of our property: What is now the long gravel driveway that takes you from the paved road to our Pottery and Outlet Store, was once one of the primary roads in the area named Shingle Block Road. 

We love the fact that our humble beginnings in Massachusetts and our facility today both belong to lands with great history, and with historic family homes on each property. We’re also fortunate that we’ve been able to find any records at all on these properties and the families who owned them before we did, considering record keeping was done mostly by handwriting in journals and documents in the 1800’s and early 1900’s as well. 

We’ve recently gone to great lengths to ensure the Wade House continues to stand strong for many years to come. We’ve just repainted the roof, added new insulation, windows, and siding; and we’ve re-done the entrance deck and painted the exterior of the building. We found some neat history in the process of these repairs. In fact, when these improvements were underway in 2024, a section of exterior siding was removed. Under the siding, we discovered flat stones wedged between the massive timbers as chinking to seal gaps from the elements. We think that’s pretty ingenious. 

We invite you to visit our Pottery Outlet Store, which is located inside the original Wade House at 1068 Pottery Lane and is open on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 10am until 4pm (April – December) and on Fridays and Saturdays, only, throughout the winter.

If any historians or Wade family members wish to share their knowledge about this home and property, we invite you to contact us at hello@emersoncreekpottery.com. We would love to add to what we’ve found and we’d be happy to make any needed corrections to our research.

Disclaimer: Due to this home being 200 years old, and the multiple levels built by two generations of the Wade family, this home can be difficult for those who are mobility impaired to navigate both floors.