posted 07-17-2008 04:35 PM            

Not that old, I hope--because they were lost during my cross-country move!

In a recent reply to Cheryl I accidentally misspoke. I said there was no silver from my GGGM who, as a widow worked as a cook in an 1860s logging camp in the Sierras. I forgot (conveniently for my conscience) that this lady did return to England to receive a modest legacy and returned with, among a few other things, 6 little matching spoons. The person who passed them on, wrote this saying the spoons were once the property of Susanna Avann (1727- 1801).

Ever since my cross country move I have not been able to find the spoons, which I remembered packing. A lost moving box perhaps?

Long ago I took photos of the spoons and the letter to put in the album about this ancestor.

I wonder if the gifter was perhaps mistaken about the antiquity of the spoons?

Can anyone tell from this photo of the photo when these spoons were made? there are English marks, though not all clear to me.

posted 07-17-2008 06:44 PM            

The spoons bare no town mark, suggesting they were made in London. The duty mark appears to be the head of George III. The shape of the punch and date letter correspond to 1801. Sorry you lost them, but they may yet turn up in a box. Good luck,

posted 07-17-2008 09:03 PM            

I feel *really* bad now. Perhaps this will spur me to go through the remaining moving boxes in the basement -- though they are now buried even deeper by the recent inflow of another household. The gifter was a little off-- if made in 1801, the spoons must've belonged to the daughter of the woman who died that year. Very nice to know the time period.

Thank you all for your replies. I am so glad I found this site with so many helpful and knowledgeable people!

posted 07-18-2008 11:32 AM            

In this case we do know that this immigrant ancestor (the lady who at one time cooked in summers for a logging camp at Snow Tent in Nevada Co, California), did actually return to England for a legacy after the death of her father. I have a very tiny book she carried with her into which she jotted brief journalistic notes. The granddaughter (writer of the 'provenance' note shown here which was passed down with these spoons), was age 32 when her grandmother died and running the office of a Dean at UC Berkeley. Hard to know if either woman had ever looked up hallmarks. So, yes -- I wanted the 'straight scoop' from this group. The brightest people can still make mistakes. With a date of 1801, though, I will have to correct the note. That was the year the recipient of the legacy's grandmother died, making the spoons much more likely to have belonged to the mother and not the grandmother. To have not known the spoons were her mother's rather than her grandmother's would have been very possible, as the girl married and went off to America at age 16!

posted 07-18-2008 12:18 PM            

Don't be too quick to dismiss the letter. Like all sources, it contains valuable information, even if that information may not be 100 percent accurate. Another possibility: do you have other evidence that proves the woman really died in 1801? The letter may be off on that point. It would also not have been impossible to receive a bequest of silver the same year she died. What you have is a puzzle with many missing pieces, which is what makes historical reconstruction fun and frustrating.

posted 07-19-2008 01:25 AM            

Yes, Tom, I do have other evidence that the alleged owner of the spoons, Susanna Avann died in 1801: photographs of her monumental inscription at the burial site St. Mildred's, Tenterden, Kent says she died 14 Aug 1801 aged 74, wife of John Avann, etc.

No evidence these spoons part of any formal bequest. No evidence Susanna had a will or owned anything in her own right. Her husband John Avann, however, lived to be 89 (d.1829), leaving a 10 page will, pertaining mostly to land, household goods only mentioned in broad terms & left to his only surviving descendants, four grandchildren, with "Grandma Reanier"'s father the eldest & receiving lion's share. It was in 1873, after his probate, that Grandma Reanier returned to England after 40 yrs. She still had several siblings living in Kent, one of them living in the family home, Bugglesden Farm (still exists!). So I thought these other siblings probably just gave "Grandma Reanier" some family mementos to carry home - these spoons, the 'gin bottle',etc.

agphile - Re buying things with the money -- Funny you mentioned it. She did buy one big splurge item-- must've been a lifelong dream: a gold watch! I still have it, in its presentation box which boasts the maker was "clock & watch maker to the Prince of Wales" :-) She could've bought the spoons, too, but there is also every reason to believe her family could have had silver to pass down. Other than the watch she was very frugal & an avid reader. No doubt she put most of the estate money into a farmhouse, built on land acquired through Homestead Act, where she and her son then farmed, sold butter and eggs, until he [no idea how!] got the job of running Capitola-by-the-Sea for 25 yrs when it was a privately owned resort/camp. After a lifetime of hard work, a husband dying at 35, raising 4 children on her own in pioneer conditions, she got to live out her days in a little beach town.