Aside from such indications of a well-established mercantile trade, the entrenchment of North Devon interests in the colonies is repeatedly shown in other ways. Before 1645, Thomas Fowle, a Boston merchant, was doing business with his brother-in-law, Vincent Potter, who lived in Barnstaple.[11] In 1669, John Selden, a Barnstaple merchant, died after consigning a shipment of goods to William Burke, a merchant of Chuckatuck, Virginia. John's widow and administratrix, Sisely Selden, brought suit to recover these goods, which were "left to the sd. W{m} Burke, &c, for the use of my late husband."[12] Burke was evidently an agent, or factor, who acted in Virginia on Selden's behalf. In Northampton County, alone, there resided six Bideford factors, remarkable when one considers the isolated location of this Virginia Eastern Shore county and the sparseness of its population in the 17th century.[13] John Watkins, the Bideford historian, adds further evidence of mercantile involvement with the colonies, stating of Bideford that "some of its chief merchants had very extensive possessions in Virginia and Maryland."[14] Both in New England and the southern colonies, local merchants acted as resident agents for merchants based in the mother country. Often tied to the latter by bonds of family relationship, the factors arranged the exchange of American raw materials for the manufactured goods in which their English counterparts specialized. That there was a large and important commerce in North Devon earthenware to account for many of the relationships between Bideford, Barnstaple, and the colonies seems to have remained unnoticed. Indeed, the fact that the two towns comprised an important center of earthenware manufacture and export in the 17th century has hitherto received little attention from ceramic historians, and then merely as sources of picturesque folk pottery. Yet in the excavations of colonial sites and in the British Public Records Office are indications that the North Devon potters, for a time at least, rivaled those of Staffordshire. The earliest record of North Devon pottery reaching America occurs in the Port Book entry for Barnstaple in 1635, when the _Truelove_, Vivian Limbry, master, sailed on March 4 for New England with "40 doz. earthenware," consigned to John Boole, merchant.[15] The following year the same ship sailed for New England with a similar amount. After the Stuart restoration larger shipments of earthenware are recorded, as illustrated by sample listings (below) chosen from Port Books in the British Public Records Office. TYPICAL SHIPMENTS OF EARTHENWARE FROM NORTH DEVON (Sample entries from Port Books, verbatim) BARNSTAPLE 1665[16] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date Ship Master For In Cargo Subsidy --------------------------------------------------------------------- s d