Samuel A. Weller

Samuel Augustus Weller, born in Muskingum County, Ohio, was the fourth of nine children of Jacob Weller (1816−1871) and Mary (née Fulton) Weller (1826−1914). Weller married Herminnie C. Pickens (1862−1954) on January 11, 1885, in Muskingum County, Ohio. The couple had two daughters, Louise, born in 1896, and Ethel, born in 1898.

As a young man, Weller worked in the Bluebird Pottery, a local Muskingum ceramics factory, and by 1872 had established his own factory (a log cabin and a single kiln) in Fultonham, Ohio. Using a kickwheel, he turned stoneware jars and clay flower pots on a small scale, and sold these utilitarian pieces door-to-door. One of his earliest designs combined common sewer tiles to make a milk pan, which he marketed successfully locally.

Because Weller was both a potter and a talented salesman, his business prospered. He had an old white horse that pulled loads of crude red clay, dug from local hills, to his shop. The horse also propelled a grinding machine to prepare clay and pulled a dilapidated wagon carrying finished products to market. By 1882 Weller moved his pottery to Zanesville, at the foot of Pierce Street along the river, and began creating more decorative wares.

Weller expanded in 1888 with purchase of a wareroom, and again in 1890, buying a tract in the Putnam district, along Pierce Street near the railway, and erecting there a large three-story plant to accommodate his 68 employees.