Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 9

Table Glass Excavated at Fort Amherst, Prince Edward Island

by Paul McNally

Interpretation

Ivor Noël Home has pointed out (1969: 27) that glass on American domestic-colonial sites tends to lag markedly behind the dates commonly given to styles by collectors and analysts of English glass, but this argument has never seemed to hold true for 18th-century military sites in Canada. Table 1 demonstrates the periods of popularity for each identified style of table glass found at Fort Amherst, with dates based largely on standard authorities of English glass. The limits of occupation at Fort Amherst are indicated by vertical dotted lines. Clearly, glass styles were in use at Fort Amherst in the period of their vogue in England.

Table 1. Periods of Popularity for the Identified Styles of Table Glass

(click on image for a PDF version)

In addition, the glass found at Fort Amherst must be considered nothing less than fancy. During the 1760s, English glassmakers were making undecorated or plain glass, and glass of the sort which has been discussed was necessarily more expensive. For example, an air-twist glass cost about 25 per cent more than its plain counterpart, an opaque-twist glass 40 per cent more than an air-twist, and a facet-cut glass still more by a quarter than the opaque-twist (Hughes 1956: 99, 111; Elville 1951: 104). The occurrence of such glass is not in itself surprising since there are precedents on other sites such as Fort Beauséjour (McNally 1971); however, the table glass from Fort Amherst seems to present a different view of the use of table glass during this period than does that from Fort Beauséjour.

The Fort Amherst collection is remarkable, in contrast to the Fort Beauséjour collection, for the relative frequency of fine tablewares. Using decorative features, either intrinsic or extrinsic, to make a categorical distinction between plain and fine wares, it is evident that at least nine of 16 table glass artifacts represent fine wares—English filigree and cut glass of some fashionability and high cost. Without asserting this ratio to be statistically reliable in so small a sample, it is reasonable to acknowledge a tendency in the collection toward elegant rather than simple functional wares. In studying a much larger collection from Fort Beauséjour and applying a similar distinction between elegant and utilitarian wares on the basis of decorative attributes, it was found that 77 per cent of the Fort Beauséjour collection was plain or utilitarian (McNally 1971: 37).

Coupled with the apparently close parallel between deposition dates of artifacts and dating of styles in England, the elegance of the Fort Amherst table glass appears to profile a site population who had close metropolitan ties and who are readily divided into those possessing little glass and those possessing fine glass; that is, the small collection suggests that not very much glass was used and, given the expensiveness of the glass recovered, one is led to the not-revolutionary conclusion that officers alone used table glass. It is also possible that some of the table glass was deposited during Duport's short stay at the site.

Checking these observations with the ceramics found at Fort Amherst reveals a similar profile of ceramic wares in use — a high proportion of decorated and expensive pieces including creamware with over-glaze transfer prints or with low-fired enamel decoration, and high quality oriental porcelain. Once more, there is considerable contrast with Fort Beauséjour in terms of the fineness of wares, especially when the fine wares are represented as a portion of the total ceramics collection from each site.

The extremity of this contrast is mitigated when the Fortress of Louisbourg collections of table glass and ceramics are considered. Both the quality of the fine pieces from Fort Amherst and their relative quantity approximately duplicate the quality and relative quantity of fine table glass and ceramics recovered from the Fortress of Louisbourg, of which the Prince Edward Island fort was an outpost. Fort Beauséjour, during its first period of British occupation (1755 to 1768), was no less an outpost of the fortress, but Fort Beauséjour was considerably less bucolic than Fort Amherst. While the early history of Fort Beauséjour under British control is characterized by the animosity of Acadian subjects in the Chignecto region and operations against the French and Indians, Fort Amherst's history is characterized by nothing so much as dull routine, broken only by the arrival of provisions in the fall and a relief garrison in the spring, and by a brief mutiny in 1762 (Hornby 1965). Fort Amherst may also have been easier to supply because there was a direct sea link between the Fortress of Louisbourg and Fort Amherst.

It is difficult to conceive that such historical differentiation of the two forts fully accounts for a rather dramatic contrast between their table furnishings. Even if Fort Amherst afforded a relatively more retiring existence than did Fort Beauséjour, it is doubtful that it afforded greater opportunities for conviviality — there were only five officers at the fort and they had little contact, social or otherwise, with other forts. Therefore, a marked difference between lifestyles at the two forts is not supportable as an explanation for difference in table glass collections.

As mentioned above, Ivor Noël Hume's observation of anachronisms in glass styles in use in the colonies does not apply to sites such as those which have been mentioned in this report. Glass styles on these sites quite accurately reflect styles in England in the mid-18th century. They are enlightening, moreover, in that they help to reconstruct the economic availability and social use of table furnishings through the period. The contrast drawn between table glass at Fort Amherst and at Fort Beauséjour, for instance, points up much more widespread use of glass for utilitarian purposes at the latter site than at the former, a disparity for which lifestyles at the two forts in the 1760s can hardly account. The contrast devolves especially from the occurrence of tumblers at Fort Beauséjour in immense quantities along with very ordinary stemware. Since plain tumblers, on the basis of style, must be taken as nearly ubiquitous in time and space through the second half of the 18th century, it is impossible to establish from external evidence that they were more used at one time than at another. But since Fort Beauséjour was re-occupied by the British in 1776 and again in 1809, while Fort Amherst and the Fortress of Louisbourg remained essentially unoccupied after 1768, it is possible to conclude, from the contrast in proportionate representation of fine and utilitarian wares on the sites, that the availability and use of glass had expanded greatly by the fourth quarter of the century and had probably extended much lower on the social scale. Such a conclusion suggests that the burgeoning of common table glass wares was a relatively sudden and comprehensive phenomenon during the 1770s and 1780s.

It is argued, then, that the table glass (and, presumably, ceramics) in use at Fort Beauséjour and Fort Amherst in their concurrent occupations — up until 1768 — may have been roughly equivalent at each fort; not numerous and tending toward decorative and elegant pieces. At Fort Beauséjour the occurrence of plain wares, which are difficult to date out of archaeological context, apparently sharply increases during subsequent occupation periods, presenting a misrepresentative picture of table glass in use during the 1760s. The Fort Amherst collection, much more discrete in time, may reveal more truly the nature and quantity of table glass to be found on relatively unimportant British forts in North America during the Seven Years' War and immediately after.