During the 1830s, pottery-making families moved directly from the Carolinas and Georgia into Randolph County, Alabama, many from the Edgefield District of western South Carolina, an important pottery-making center. Potters recorded in the 1840 U.S. Census for Randolph County included Matthew Duncan, John Leopard, Holland Leopard, Robert Leopard, and James Prothro, and other prominent antebellum potters were Cyrus Cogburn, Job Falkner, Cicero D. Hudson, Elijah McPherson, Greenberry Morton, Joseph Rushton, James Pinckney Shepherd, Milton J. Ussery, and Robert Ussery. Enslaved African-American potters also worked in Randolph County during this period. After the Civil War, John Barnes, John Lehman, and Zachariah T. Ussery were important potters, and many other local families became involved in pottery making, including members of the Belcher, Boggs, Boyd, Brown, Foster, Gladney, Mapp, Meacham, Muldrew, Oliver, Phillips, Pittman, Pound, Swet, Spears, Taylor, Weathers, Williams, and Yates families. Pottery-making families were among the first settlers to come to this part of east central Alabama after the acquisition of Creek Indian lands in 1832, and the earliest pottery shops were located in Bacon Level and nearby Cedric and Hickory Flat in Chambers County. These potters produced stoneware storage jars, jugs, churns, and other essentials for life on the frontier of early nineteenth-century Alabama. Their wares were coated with alkaline glaze made from wood ashes or lime, creating a green glassy finish that made the pottery durable and suitable for food storage. This glaze, the predominant southern stoneware glaze, was brought to Randolph County by potters from North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina. Potters from Randolph County later moved west with the American frontier and established potteries in Elmore, DeKalb, Perry, and Shelby counties in Alabama as well as in Mississippi and Texas.