What Treasure do I Possess?

By Brenda Bowen Wright, Jan 2019

            A wash bowl and a pitcher, pure white and very big are what I treasure most. At least I thought it was big when I first spied the set as a small child. The combination basin and pitcher sat on a dresser of the small bedroom at the end of a scary long hallway at my father’s family home.

            My father’s parents had a basement home until they could build another floor above ground on top of the basement house. It was a scary, dark basement with rough white-washed plaster walls. The small room housed all three of my aunts through most of their growing up. But, when I began spying into the hidden room, it had become a guest bedroom. 

            Through all my childhood years the wash basin and pitcher sat on the dresser like a glorious pure beacon. I was transfixed by its simple beauty and of course, its huge size. It was much larger than any milk or Kool-Aid pitcher I had ever seen.

            Over the years, it became a secret obsession to sneak into the forbidden basement and glance at the set. I played Mission Impossible and hoped to look at it every time I visited my grandparents. The basin and pitcher were always there. Also, I gave myself the task to spot all the wash sets in western shows or movies of the olden days that I would watch. I needed to compare Hollywood bowl and pitchers to the one in the scary bedroom. I never spotted another one of pure white like my grandma and grandpa’s. 

            When I was college age and older, there really was no time or opportunity to spy on things in grandpa’s basement. But the pure white set were enough on my mind that I described them to my husband. I must have brought them up many times because eventually my husband bought me a replica. He presented me with a basin and pitcher, very much like the ones I described to him but they were only half the size of the ones I craved. I loved the set he gave me and they are still on display in my own home.

            When my grandmother and then lastly my grandfather died, I found myself wondering what ever became of the gorgeous giant basin and pitcher. I asked every cousin from that side of the family, whenever we got together, but no one knew anything about what happened to them.

            My own mother was the first to pass away, my dad followed her three years later. It was now time to go through their house and claim or throw-away all the items my parents left behind.

            I had no children so taking mementoes of my parents’ life to pass on to posterity was not a reality for me. I took very little of what was left in the house—maybe a few books and pieces of jewelry I had given my mother. 

            My youngest sister had inherited the house so when everyone figured they had seen or taken all that they wanted, the job was declared finished and everyone began to leave. My older brother had traveled the farthest to accomplish this house cleaning and he seemed reluctant to leave the memories. He finally pulled me aside and said before you leave, please come back tomorrow morning with me to the house for one last look. So I did. We met early in the morning and Rex wanted to look in one last cupboard that appeared to only have old blankets in it.     As we pulled out the blankets to see if there was anything worth salvaging, I felt something hard inside the roll. I opened the blankets up and nearly fell down upon the shock of seeing my childhood dream. There before me were the pure white basin and pitcher set. They had magically reappeared after all these twenty-five years of figuring they had been destroyed.

I had no idea, nor did anyone else in the family, that my father had taken them after attending the death of his father. 

            On the bottom of the wash basin was written, “Ross’ – once his grandmother Bowen’s.”

That would be Edith Ellen Simmons Bowen, the third wife of Joseph Leonard Bowen. Joseph had buried his first and second wife, with only one surviving son. He then married Edith Ellen who was only nineteen years old at the time. Joseph Leonard was forty-two years old. 

            Edith Ellen had been born in Sussex, England, coming to America to join the Mormons in Utah in 1869 when she was only eight-years old. But I doubt it being purchased on their way out west.

            The bowl is marked, W.S. George on the bottom. This company was purchased by William Shaw George from the East Palestine Pottery Company and the Sebring Brothers in 1904. In 1910 the company opened a manufacturing facility in Canonsburg, PA. In 1955, the company went bankrupt. Edith Ellen Bowen died in 1929 after giving birth to nine children, the youngest of which was my grandfather, Clark Simmons Bowen. 

            The bowl and pitcher must have been mail ordered out to the west sometime between 1904 and 1910. I can’t imagine it was a wedding gift as they were married in 1880. My great grandfather, Joseph Leonard died in 1910 at age 60 so I am assuming that it was purchased sometime between 1904, the companies beginnings, and 1910, Joseph Leonard’s death. I doubt the widowed mother of nine children could have afforded to purchase it after her husband’s death. 

            My brother could see my joy at discovering the basin and pitcher, probably because I was screaming and crying. I explained how I was always sneaking to get a peek at it. He reminded me we weren’t allowed in the basement. 

“I had to be very sneaky, probably why grandma didn’t seem to like me, right?” I said. 

“Well I wasn’t supposed to climb down into the creek either, but I always did.” He replied. Rex then told me to just take them, he certainly did not want them and probably no one else even knew or cared about the set. 

So dang it—I took them without approval of any other sibling. I had not taken anything else of any sentimental or dollar value in my parents home so I figure we were all even. 

            The wash basin and pitcher, along with a pure white ceramic chamber pot my husband was given by his grandmother, are among the most treasured of all my possessions. I’m not really sure why they mean so much to me, probably their age, their simplicity or just the connection to a childhood obsession. But the fact that my wonderful father must have also connected in some way to the pure white wash set is actually enough to make them a treasure to me.