Silver from the First Church of Deerfield, Massachusetts

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2003 by Donald R. Friary

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Revere was still living and working in 1802, when the executors of Elijah Arms (1727-1802) secured a tankard for the Deerfield church. It is curious that they did not call on Revere himself rather than Joseph Loring, because it is clear that Loring produced a replica of the Revere tankard shown in Plate XIV. The Loring tankard (Pl. XIII) lacks the cast grimacing mask piece and has a slightly shallower domed lid than the Revere example, but otherwise it shows every indication of having been made to match it. An inscription in an oval foliated shield recognizes the bequest, "A Donation/from Lt. Elijah/Arms to the/Church in/Deer-/field 1802." Arms's will specified, "I will & bequeath to the first Church of Christ in Deerfield one silver Tankard the value of fifty Dollars." (16)

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A year before Loring crafted the Elijah Arms tankard to a forty-year-old design, his Deerfield neighbor, John Williams Jr. (1751-1816), was given a tankard in the latest style made by Samuel Williamson of Philadelphia (frontispiece and Pl. XV). It was made using the latest technology--the body of sheet silver seamed, rather than forged, as the earlier Deerfield pieces had been. It is less tapered than earlier Boston tankards and is visually bound by applied ridged hoops. The domed lid has a cast eagle finial, and the handle has a pierced thumbpiece.

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The tankard had been given to Williams by the directors of three banks to thank him for his part in apprehending a ring of counterfeiters. It passed to the Deerfield church on the death of Williams's second wife, Eunice Woodbridge (c. 1764-1832). (17)

By the early nineteenth century, tankards were considered less appropriate for the communion table. Refined worship called for matched sets of flagons for pouting communion wine, and cups or beakers for drinking it. Across the Connecticut River in Sunderland, Massachusetts, Nathaniel Smith (1759-1833) in 1811 presented to the church for the communion service a pair of flagons and four beakers made by Henry Farnam of Boston (see Pl. XVIII). In Deerfield the church returned to using beakers almost one hundred years after Samuel Barnard had presented the example by John Edwards shown in Plate VI. When George Arms (1781-1819) died, he included in his will money to make "two drinking cups of Silver" for the Deerfield church

   to hold about one pint each, made without handles;
   and I direct that my Executor cause to be
   inscribed on each, the words, "The gift of George
   Arms"--& also, in figures, the year of our Lord
   when presented--which my Executor will perform
   within one year after my decease. (18)

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The two beakers were made by Lewis Cary in 1819 and apparently won approval in Deerfield, for the church ordered a third "Silver Church Cup" from Cary in 1820 (see Pl. XVI), as attested by a receipt in the church records (Fig. 1). (19)

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George Amy's pointed requirement, "without handles," differentiated them from two two-handled cups of fused silverplate, or Old Sheffield plate, that were acquired with a baptismal basin of the same material (Pl. XVII), thanks to a bequest from Abigail Norton (1745-1806), who also left funds for the purchase of silver to the churches in Greenfield, Shelburne, and Conway, Massachusetts, and Brattleboro, Vermont. (20)