Description:
Silver cann marked "Henchman" in a rectangle for Daniel Henchman (1730-1775), and engraved with a later 19th-century Gothic style inscription, "John Odin, M. D. / from his Mother, / Obt. Oct. 14th 1847. Aged 71 Years." on the front below the lip, over the engraved Lynde family crest and coat of arms within a rococo style cartouche of ruffled shells, s-scrolls, and foliage. A prominent Boston silversmith, Daniel Henchman created this cann for Benjamin Lynde, Jr. (1700-1781) of Salem, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Lynde, Sr. (1666-1745), the chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature from 1728 to 1745. Benjamin Lynde, Jr. was a representative, councilor, and justice of the Superior Court after his father's death. Most famously, Lynde served as one of four judges during the 1770 trials of Captain Thomas Preston and the other British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Hutchinson was chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court at the time, but declined to preside at the trials so Benjamin Lynde, Jr. became the acting chief justice. Lynde tried to resign his position twice before the trials began, but was refused. Lynde was described as a "nervous" man and a political moderate who served less than three years as chief justice. Some of the papers of Benjamin Lynde, Jr. are in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In 1731, Lynde married Mary Bowles Goodridge, and they had seven children. In 1766, their daughter, Lydia Lynde (1741-1798), married Rev. William Walter (1731-1800), Rector of Trinity Church, Boston. With their six children, Lydia and her Loyalist husband fled to Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in 1777 and returned to Boston in 1792 when Walter became Rector of Christ Church. The New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut, has a portrait of Lydia Lynde done by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) about 1762-1764. The Walter's daughter, Harriet Tynge Walter (1776-1847), married John Odin (1774-1854) of Boston in 1804. On her death in 1847, Mary Lynde Walter passed the cann to her son, Dr. John Odin (1808-1864), and Lynde's great-grandson (see data file for complete geneology). The engraved Lynde family arms (three mallets in chief, crest, a griffin holding a mallet), which is the same as arms carved on a Lynde family gravestone, featured three mallets on a dotted or pricked field, above a field of vertical dashes, and the rampant griffin crest facing left also holds a mallet. It is possible that Nathaniel Hurd engraved the arms on this piece. The cann itself has a wrought or hammered body with a pronounced belly, cast stepped and molded foot, and flaring and applied lip; the cast handle has a foliate thumbpiece and is composed of a c-scroll and reverse c-scroll, there is a small, split terminal at the tip of the handle. Benjamin Lynde, Jr. owned a large quantity of silver; in his 1776 will, he gave his "best Tankard" and "half the Plate and Books, to be accounted six hundred pounds; " to his wife; and "to my grandson Lynde Walter a La. flowered Silver Beaker that was my great Grandmother Elizabeth Digby's, which piece of Plate is near two hundred years old," and "and to my Grand daughter Mary Lynde Walter ... my small silver Tankard." This cann was not mentioned in his will. The cann was at one time on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston by Judge Robert Walcott; and later sold through Eldred’s Auction House in East Dennis, Massachusetts, to the donor's father, John S. DuMont of Greenfield, Massachusetts.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2012.17 |
