Description:
Silver teaspoon with a downturned spatulate-end handle with feather-edge decoration along both edges of the shaft front and a short midrib on the back, and a oval bowl with a rounded drop and five-lobed shell on the back. The spoon is marked "BOYER" in a conforming rectangle for Daniel Boyer (1725-1779), and engraved with the block initials "S / I . M" in block letters on the front of the handle. This spoon was part of a collection of silver spoons from the Viola Wilby estate. An attached paper tag reads "Spoon belonged to Joseph and Mary Stebbins of Deerfield, MA, c. 1750" and "Hollister copied & sold as Dfld spoon." According to a handwritten list of family objects in the file by Elizabeth Hawks Wells (1845-1938), the wife of George Merritt Wells (1839-1883) of Deerfield: "The small old teaspoon marked "S / I. M." meaning Joseph and Mary Stebbins must have seen years of use in the yellow house - which was the old Stebbins home." Joseph Stebbins (1718-1797) of Deerfield married Mary Stratton (1725-1797), the daughter of Ezekiel Stratton (1689-1756) and Elizabeth Hawks Stratton (1697-1789) of Northfield, in the early 1740s, and were the grandparents of Elizabeth Hawks Wells. Sheldon describes him as a "farmer, tanner, currier, and shoemaker, doing a large business; lived on his father's homestead; selectman and much in town business."
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2009.26.4 |
