You may not recognize the name Richard Jordan but you probably know who he is. If you have ever seen English Staffordshire pottery from the 1830s, he’s the farmer in the wide-brimmed hat standing with a cow in front of his farm house in what is now Camden, (who knew!) New Jersey. The English firm shipped the popular pattern to the U.S. for purchase by the expanding middle class market.

Jordan (1756 -1826) was a Quaker evangelist and abolitionist who returned frequently to North Carolina to buy freedom for his own family’s slaves. He also recognized the importance of the Treaty Tree.

Tea caddies were fashionable containers in which to store tea. Richard Jordan created an oval tea caddy from the wood of the great elm ca. 1813 as a gift for Quaker leader Susannah Horne, a visitor to his home. Ms. Horne was literally a globe-trotting Quaker whose letters about her trip across the Atlantic Ocean can be found at Haverford College.

The inside of the lid is inscribed:

During the tremendous Gale of Monday Night last the great Elm Tree at Kensington under which it is said William Penn the founder fo Pennsylvania ratified his first Treaty with the Aborigines, was torn up by the Roots. This celebrated Tree having stood the Blasts of more than a century since that memorable Event is at length prostrated to the Dusk. It had long been used as a Sandmark, and handsomely terminated a North east Vien of the City and Liberties on the Delaware. Extract from Poulsons Amer. Daily Advertiser, dated Mo. 1810. This Cady was made by Richard Jordan from a part of the above described Tree, and presented to Susanna Horne when on a visit to him the first day of Fifth Month 1813.