Cheever
Meaders, the youngest son of John
Milton and Mattie Lambert Meaders, was born January 1,
1887, in White County, GA. Growing up in the pottery shop, he
learned to turn from his older brothers. By the age of 15, Cheever
was a master potter. In 1914, he married Arie
Waldroup. They had 8 children. After his older brothers
married and left home, he took over the running of his father's
pottery shop.
Cheever is credited for keeping the traditional ways of making
ware alive. Times became hard during the Great Depression. With
the introduction of glass and tin on the market, pottery was not
as widely used as it once had been. Before this time, a potter
was just as important to the community as a blacksmith or a wagon
maker. Without the pottery, there was no way to preserve food.
The potters would trade their wares for whatever that person had
to trade, such as beans or meat. At one time potters would sell
their churns for a nickel a gallon just to sell them.
In
the late 1940s, a fellow potter named Will Hewell began working
in the area and taught Cheever to make face jugs. He felt the pieces
were a waste of time, but they were making money. Cheever's customer
base was changing. The road in front of the shop had become a US
highway making it the main road from Canada to Florida. Most buyers
were tourists on their way to the beach. Word spread about a potter
in Georgia who made pottery using the old ways, but with a twist.
In 1967, the Smithsonian Institute took an interest in Cheever's
work and filmed a documentary about him. This occurred shortly before
his death.
No longer
able to do most of the work, his son, Lanier,
took over. Cheever still worked in his shop until the day before
he died, on Thanksgiving Day, 1967, of a heart attack. He passed
his talent onto his children. All of his sons and one daughter
have operated shops of their own.
Cheever once
said that one of these days someone would see a piece of pottery
and wonder how it was made. He thought there wouldn't be any working
shops to visit. My family is trying to make sure that never happens.
Click
to enlarge.
