incised Elizabeth Harpster / Flat Rock / Seneca Co. / O.
Height 6 inches.

Elizabeth Beck was born on September 25, 1829, in Center County, Pennsylvania, one of at least nine children of Daniel (1799-1863) and Juliana Margaretha Crouse Beck (1795-1875). The Beck family moved to Seneca County, Ohio before 1840, and Daniel and one of his sons are both listed as carpenters in the U.S. Federal Census of 1850. On June 16, 1850, Elizabeth married Lewis Harpster (1827-1902), a laborer and farmer who had relocated to Flat Rock from Wayne County at some point between 1830 and 1840. The couple had several children together, including son Franklin, an oil dealer in Tiffin, Ohio, with whom Elizabeth lived following the death of her husband.

The pottery of Samuel Routson in Wooster, Ohio, the county seat of Wayne County, was the closest to Flat Rock, where the Harpsters lived and farmed. His pottery was active concurrently in the 1850s and 1860s, and his wares are often marked by the same Albany slip glaze utilized on this rare vessel, the only known example of a Harvest jug identified to a woman.