Silver from the First Church of Deerfield, Massachusetts

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2003 by Donald R. Friary

In 1810 the members of the First Church of Deerfield, Massachusetts, voted that "a new blank book be procured for the use of the church" into which the church records would be transcribed. The Reverend Samuel Willard (1776-1859) noted that the donations of silver should be recorded in the book

Particularly of a silver tumbler given by Mr. Samuel Barnard in 1723; of a small silver cup with two handle by Mrs. Hannah Beaman; of a silver tankard by Thomas Wells Esq. in 1750; of a silver tankard by Samuel Barnard Esq. 1765; of a silver tankard by Mr. Ebenezer Wells in 1758; of a silver tankard by Lieut. Elijah Arms 1802; & a christening basin & two cups each with two handles plated with silver by Mrs. Abigail Norton in 1806; Voted that as an expression of our gratitude to the pious & liberal donors, & a suitable memorial for future generations, the aforesaid memoranda be entered on the records of the church. (1)

Except for one two-handled cup by the Boston silversmith John Dixwell (Pl. IX), which had apparently been purchased by the church, Willard listed all the silver in the possession of the church in 1810. And so it remained until its sale to Historic Deerfield in 1997 (see Pl. I).

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Historic Deerfield's decision to buy the twelve pieces of communion silver was motivated primarily by a desire to keep these documents of the town's history in Deerfield. It also represented an opportunity to add major pieces by several Boston and one Philadelphia maker to the museum's already strong collection of early American silver. Finally, it enabled Historic Deerfield to interpret to the public some of the distinctive characteristics of Puritan worship in New England in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

Like other New England churches, Deerfield's first used pewter at the communion table and continued to do so even after the introduction of silver. The church records reveal that on

   January 3, 1757 at a ch[urc]h meeting Voted
   that Major Elijah Williams Deacon Eleazer
   Hawks & Lieut. David Field were desired to
   Dispose of the pewter Vessels belonging to chh &
   provide Some other pewter ones in their room
   Since they were Judged not to be decent. (2)

Despite this, some early pewter survives, including the flagons shown in Plates II and IV. (3) Flagons were used to pour wine into cups and other vessels in the Puritan communion service. In domestic use a flagon was used to pour cider, beer, or wine. (4) The First Church of Deerfield retains two large plates, or chargers, marked by the London pewterer Samuel Ellis I (see Pl. III). Such chargers were used to pass pieces of bread in the communion service.

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At Deerfield, silver soon replaced pewter as the preferred material for holding communion wine, although, as in most New England Puritan meetinghouses, bread continued to be passed on pewter plates. In the lifetime of the Reverend John Williams (Pl. V), (5) three silver wine cups were acquired by the Deerfield church. They attest to the Puritan practice of using domestic vessels in the communion service to express not only their general iconoclasm, but their specific view that communion was a commemorative meal, not a transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Some Puritan communion vessels had actually been used at home and were subsequently given to a church. It may be that the two-handled silver cup shown in Plate VII was used in the home of Simon (1656-1711/12) and Hannah (c. 1646-1739) Beaman before she gave it to the Deerfield church. It is mentioned neither in the church records, which are incomplete for that early period, nor in Hannah Beaman's probate record. (6) It is unlikely that it was made after her death, or even after 1738, when its maker, William Pollard, was a resident of Charleston, South Carolina, where he died in 1740. (7) It may have been given to the church prior to 1723, when Hannah Beaman wrote her will, "being Old & Dayly finding the Symptoms of Mortality In my body but being of a Sound mind & of a disposeing Memory. (Thanks be to God...." It is likely to have been given prior to February 14, 1730, when she is cited in a probate court document as "non compose and hath been for a considerable time." (8) It could be the earliest piece of silver presented to the First Church of Deerfield.

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The handsome beaker in Plate VI by John Edwards of Boston was donated to the church in 1723 by Samuel Barnard (1684-1762), a Deerfield merchant and farmer who was soon to move to Salem, Massachusetts. It was probably made for church use, but its simple form suggests that it could also have been used in a domestic environment.

The third of the earliest pieces in the Deerfield communion service is not a domestic item. It is a new form of communion cup introduced by Dixwell for his own New North Church in Boston about 1714 (Pl. IX). He added two scroll handles to a footed beaker so that the cup could be passed easily from one communicant to the next. Dixwell used the new form for several churches, including those in Milford and Norwich, Connecticut, and Charlestown and Medford, Massachusetts. (9) The Deerfield cup must have been made between 1714, when Dixwell introduced the form, and his death in 1725.