William Bogert and his family

Magazine Antiques, July, 1996 by D. Albert Soeffing

An unpublished family account reveals that Nicholas Bogert was apprenticed to William G. Forbes, and that upon the completion of his apprenticeship he worked as a silversmith in New York City for a few years.(4) He abandoned the city during one of its periodic epidemics (probably the yellow fever epidemic of 1803) and moved upstate to rural Saint Andrew's (now part of Montgomery) in Orange County, New York.(5) There he built a shop attached to his house and raised a large family. In a most unusual arrangement, he made silverware in Saint Andrew's for sale in New York City, twice a year sailing down the Hudson River to deliver his goods. His success can be judged by the fact that tea sets marked by him appear regularly in the marketplace today, and by the records at the Surrogate's Court of Orange County, which show that at the time of his death in 1843 he was owed a substantial amount of money by the prestigious New York City retailers Ball, Tompkins, and Black (1839-1851).(6) Nicholas had at least eight children, three of whom are known to have become silversmiths: David G. (b. 1802), James, and William.(7) According to family tradition, all three were trained by their father. David, whose mark "D.G. BOGERT" is recorded in the Darling Foundation's New York State Silversmiths but without further information,(8) worked in the Saint Andrew's-Montgomery region. Under the terms of their father's will, he and William divided Nicholas's "Silver Smith Tools."(9) By 1855, however, farming was listed as David's principal occupation in the New York State population census. James [ILLUSTRATION FOR PL. II, FIGURE 1 OMITTED] moved to Newburgh after his father's death, and took on as apprentices John Gordon and John Lawson Westervelt (1826-1905), whose training had begun under Nicholas. Both went on to establish themselves as silversmiths in Newburgh, and Gordon subsequently married James Bogert's daughter Sarah.

William Bogert was born on October 5, 1811.(10) In the early 1830s he married Julia Ann Denmon (1808-1872), by whom he had two children, neither of whom appears to have survived him: Joseph is recorded in Galatian family records and in the 1850 Federal population census, where he is listed as fifteen years old, but nothing further is known of him. Sarah Julia Ann was born on August 6, 1839, but died shortly after her second birthday. Bogert's wife died in 1872, and he subsequently married one of her cousins, Maria Cooper.(11)

William appears in Albany, New York, directories beginning in 1839, but it is not known if he was in business on his own on working for someone else. It is possible that he was joined in Albany by his father, for Nicholas Bogert appears in Albany directors between 1840 and 1844, although he is listed without an occupation and at a different address from William's. In 1842 William signed an Albany silversmiths' petition favoring the proposed tariff measures that were to prove so important to the history of American silver manufacture [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 6 OMITTED], and his signature appears on a document of 1843 regarding his father's will.(12) He last appears in the Albany directory of 1844-1845, and sometime later he moved to New York City, where he first appears in directories in 1849. The 1850 Federal population census shows him living with his wife at 277 Spring Street, the same address given for William Forbes (b. 1799), a grandson of William Garret Forbes. By this time the younger William Forbes was himself a successful and established silversmith in New York City, and the fact that the Bogerts lived at his address suggests that William Bogert was in Forbes's employ. This presumption is further supported by the fact that while Bogert does appear in the New York State population census of 1855, he is not listed in the Federal census of the products of industry for 1850.

In 1856 William Bogert left Forbes and moved to Newburgh, where he joined William R. Eaton and John Gordon (his father and brothers former apprentice and the husband of his niece Sarah) in the partnership of Eaton, Gordon, and Bogert, silversmiths. Their wares, marked "E G & B," were largely supplied to the retail jewelers Ball, Black and Company (successor in 1851 to Ball, Tompkins and Black) in New York City [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED]. In 1860 Eaton retired from the partnership, which became Gordon and Bogert (with the mark "G & B"). That firm is listed in the 1860 Federal census of the products of industry as makers of silverware with nine male employees and $3,800 in capital, annually utilizing forty-five hundred ounces of coin-standard silver (900/1000) and an equal amount of pure silver (999/1000). Interestingly, the average fineness of their silver, 950/1000, was the standard required by Ball, Black and Company for their silverware from the late 1850s to the early 1860s, suggesting that a great proportion, if not all, of Gordon and Bogert's production was for Ball, Black and Company Surviving examples suggest that the bulk of it was hollow ware.