Parker Melvin estate sale

[Dharner84]

I went to a rare estate sale from Parker Melvin. I picked up quite a few clay pipes that he had dug up. There were thousands of pipes at the sale, from his dig at Point Pleasant. I plan on going back tomorrow and getting the pipes that had melted together from the original fire in the kiln (pic provided).

 

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[diggummup]

First of all, Welcome to Treasurenet! Lucky your so close to that sale, I would have definitely went myself. Since you named the person, I hope you don't mind me posting the estate sale ad. Looks like many great items at that sale- https://www.estatesales.net/OH/Dayton/45429/1206966

Here is a little info for others who may be interested, here is an article from the Enquirer 1980-
Packy’s Pipes
By David Hunter
The Enquirer Magazine
Sunday, March 16, 1980

Packy’s prodigious Point Pleasant pipe collection, consisting of thousands of so-call¬ed "Indian pipes." is truly amazing. It goes far beyond what anyone would expect any amateur archaeologist to unearth.

His Mount Lookout home is crammed with crates and boxes and baskets full of clay pipes and shards of broken pipes, along with other relics— such as two complete Indian skeletons, the skulls and remains of some 23 other Indians, as well as arrowheads, pot¬tery, tools and tomahawks. In sum, it represents 25 years of digging and collecting.

Packy is Parker Melvin, 73, former gas station operator and investor, who semi- retired at the age of 28, and in the mid 1950s, re¬turned to his boyhood interest in Indian artifacts. His discoveries — first an Indian burial mound on the Turpin farm near Newtown and then a long-lost 19th-century clay pipe factory on the banks of the Ohio River at Point Pleasant, Ohio — has earned him a place in "Who's Who in Indian Relics.”

The Smithsonian Institution has authenticated the pipes, which were made by settlers for trade with the Indians. Eleven samples are now on file in the Smithsonian collection of American ceramics and glass. Others are in a museum in Owensboro, Ky., at Indian trading posts in the West, and at the Heritage Restaurant on Wooster Pike in Plainville, owned by Packy Melvin’s son, R. Howard Melvin.

Packy Melvin often sells or trades pipes at flea mar¬kets. The more common varieties go for as little as $4.50 each. In all, he has identified 65 distinct pipe designs, many of them quite rare.

Melvin and his brother, Elliott Melvin, who now lives in Florida, ran a thriving gas station in East Hyde Park in the 1930’s. It was so successful that the brother’s took turns running it while the other took a year’s vacation with pay. Later, the station was sold to Sohio. But the idle life became a problem, and in the mid-1950’s, Packy Melvin renewed his interest in archeology.

He began digging at the Turpin farm in Newtown, where the Museum of Natural History had uncovered an Indian buri¬al mound. Melvin search¬ed areas that appeared un¬touched and soon shoveled into a second mound. Most of the human remains in his col¬lection come from this site, including the complete skeleton of a VI.P. Indian brave who wore river-shell beads. The arrow¬head that killed him at 24, was also found.

Melvin bought relic col¬lections and dug for more out West. He joined archeological groups to meet both professionals and amateurs. "That." he said, "Is where you get the tips." And he kept hearing about "Indian pipes" that “washed out of the river-bank" during floods near Point Pleasant, Ohio. There also were skimpy accounts of an old pipe factory there Finally, in 1965, a fisherman friend gave Melvin a pipe bowl he had found near Big In¬dian Creek at Point Pleas¬ant.

"I decided to go up there and scratch around to see if there was anything to it.” he said. “Almost immediately I found some pipe pieces and I knew I was on the right track. I came back the next day with shovels.”

Aided at times by an assistant and his son, and at other times by his own son, Monty, and grandsons, Stuart and Scott, Melvin began what came to be a five-year dig.

They began digging each spring, as soon as flood-waters subsided. Digging, however, had its perils. Workers had to toss old throw rugs on the mud to gain a foothold after floods, and cave-ins always posed a threat. Once the assistant's boy emerged from a tunnel just minutes before it collapsed. Another time, part of a ceiling gave way and a heavy crockery jar full of melted pipe bowls fell, clipping Melvin on the shoulder.

"It could have broken my neck." he said.

But by then, Melvin was certain he had hit upon the original site of the factory, and evidence indicated it had burned down.

The crockery jars, which Melvin calls "saggers." were perforated with holes to permit heat to circulate inside them. They were filled with newly molded pipe bowls and placed inside a kiln to bake.

"The wood fires were hard to control.” Melvin said. "If a breeze fanned the fire, the pipes would get too hot and would fuse together inside the pot.”

No traces of lumber were found; only objects such as fired clay, that would have withstood the heat of a burning building. These included handmade square nails and spikes, all of them bent as if twisted when walls fell. Also found was a hand-forged metal shaft with two of four blades intact at one end. This paddle device was used to mix the clay.

Melvin eventually found a Mr. Clark, then in his 90s, who had worked at the pipe factory in the 1880s as a lad of 16. He described how mules turned the bladed shaft to mix clay in a huge vat. When pliable, it was rolled and cut into two-inch lengths which were pressed into a mold. Wooden plugs were inserted to form the bowl and the fitting for the stem.

The clay dried rapidly (soft clay dug up at Point Pleasant hardened within the hour). Bowls thus formed were put into saggers and baked white-hot in a kiln for four days. Then. Mr. Clark told him, "river salt" was shoveled onto the fire. The salt ex¬ploded immediately into a fine mist which settled upon, and glazed, the pipes.

"It is a lost art," Melvin said. "I saw copies of my pipes at an Indian trading post in the Northwest, and by comparison, they were crude in workmanship and very poorly tempered." Still it was difficult to find whole, usable pipes at the Point Pleasant dig. “It seemed that I was always finding bits and pieces, and broken sections of saggers with melted pipes fused together inside.” Melvin said.

"A lot of pipes were broken in manufacture and simply discarded on the riverbank. Many whole pipes, buried a century or more, became permeated with water and were close enough to the surface to freeze and crack in winter."

More whole pipes were found with deeper digging. Many were embedded in (and preserved by) a coarse, gray crust. possibly salt from an errant glazing. Muriatic acid removed it easily.

One find appeared to be a load of new pipes that had been readied on the river-bank for shipment, then caught by rising water and eventually buried by silt. They were in perfect condition.

Early colonists used pipes much like the ones made in Europe soon after Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first tobacco back from Virginia in the 16th century. They were made of kaolin, a white clay relative of porcelain. But they were made with clay stems, which broke easily. Americans soon were making their own pipe bowls, using durable natural reeds as stems.

Indians, whose rare attempts at baking clay pipes in campfires resulted in a brittle article, prized hand-ground stone pipes decorated with chisel work. They often took a year or more to make. To an Indian, a good pipe thus was harder to come by than, say, a beaver pelt.

So it was that some unknown but enterprising settler, in the 1820s, built a pipe factory on the banks of the Ohio that turned out thousands of pipes over six decades for trade to the Indians for valuable furs. To enhance their value, the factory produced a new pipe design almost every year.

The only mention of the operation ever found in 19th century writings says a pipe factory at Point Pleasant was owned by a Nathan Davis between 1848 and 1865 and that he acquired the business from a Mr. Peterson. The Smithsonian was particularly interested in one of Melvin's pipes: a relatively plain bowl with the initials N on one side and D on the other.

In his fifth year of the Point Pleasant dig. Melvin's finds diminished. Soon he quit, except for a brief return when the properly was being bulldozed. "I didn't find another single thing." he said, "but my wife, Hazel, found two more pipes.” He and Hazel have been married 53 years and she has never complained about the houseful of relics, he says, except to say "they make it hard to dust."

When the dig was complete, Parker Melvin's score was astonishing. He had found more than 100 pipes in mint condition, at least another 1000 in whole and usable condition, and the broken parts of tens of thousands of others.

A display at The Heritage groups 63 pipe bowls of different design. Since they were mounted, two other types have been found. Melvin is working on a new display of 130 pipes, consisting of all 65 types in perfect condition and the same 65 in which some irregularity occurred in manufacture.

Packy, who now spends his winters in Florida, says he has no future archaeological plans . . . except for an excursion this spring to Kentucky's Red River Gorge to collect reeds for new pipe stems.

 

[kingskid1611]

Love that article and wish I too was close to this sale. Very interesting man and wonderful collection.

 

[Indian Steve]

Brings back memories. As a kid, I dug pottery dumps in Mogadore Ohio a dug thousands of clay pipes. I was 16 when we moved and I carried a lttle over 5,000 pipes with me to Greensboro NC. I started selling at flea markets in 1972, sold out , went back and dug more and eventually sold a little over 18,000 pipes. I kept at least one of each type from Mogadore and ended up with 65 types from there. I started buying different types at the same time as I started selling. I have somewhere around 170 different types in my collection. I have 5 different pipes from Point Pleasant.

 

[arrow86]

Really cool story thanks for sharing ..... I couldn't imagine finding the type of artifacts that came out of the mounds.

 

[austin]

Great history lesssom diggummup. Thanks...

 

[Dharner84]

Thanks for the welcome and I def did not mind you posting up the sale. Boy he had a lot of artifacts in that house.