Lot 86

So long as Boston shall Boston be, And her bay tides rise and fall, Shall freedom stand in the Old South Church, And plead for the rights of all. -- John Greenleaf Whittier, 1877 Old South Church in Boston has stood at the heart of American ministry for nearly 350 years, playing an integral role in the fight for American independence, the Abolitionist movement, and the founding of myriad charitable organizations. The roots of Old South Church reach to the 17th century, when dissenters broke away from Boston’s First Church, forming what became known as the Third Church in Boston in 1669. The congregation grew to include some of America’s most prominent thinkers and statesmen; Benjamin Franklin was baptized at the Church in 1706, and the patriots Samuel Adams and William Dawes were counted as members. In 1773, Adams gathered some 5,000 citizens in and around the Church, then situated at the Old South Meeting House, shouting out the Mohawk “war whoops” that signaled the patriots to storm the trade ship Dartmouth--thus starting the Boston Tea Party, the most iconic event of the American Revolution. Thomas Thacher, the Church’s first pastor, published the Colonies’ first medical broadside in 1678, specifically to treat “Small-Pocks,” and member, judge, and diarist Samuel Sewall not only presided over the Salem Witch Trials in 1692—later publicly recanting his verdict and repenting of his part in the hysteria—but also published the first anti-slavery tract in the Americas in 1700. Phillis Wheatley, enslaved as a child, became America’s first published black poetess and was a member of Old South in the 18th century. During the Civil War, Old South Church served as a Union Army recruiting center, and throughout the 19th century the church solidified its reputation as theological home of personal freedom and civil liberties in the United States. Church members have founded important American civic institutions including the YMCA, the Boston Seafarer’s Society, and the City Mission Society. Old South Church’s current building on Copley Square was designed between 1870 and 1872 by the firm Cummings and Sears, architects of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. With distinctive wrought iron ornamentation, large open porticos, and elaborately carved decorative fauna, the building is one of the most significant achievements of the Venetian Gothic style in North America, and is designated a National Historic Landmark. Old South Church’s storied past has also blessed it with some of its most important treasures, including silver objects by the earliest silversmiths in colonial America, John Hull and Robert Sanderson, and their successors Jeremiah Dummer, John Coney, and Paul Revere, among others. John Hull, the first working silversmith in New England, was a founder and deacon of the church, and his grandson Joseph Sewall, son of the diarist, served as minister from 1713 to 1769. A wine cup made for the Church by Paul Revere has been recently acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In addition to the silver, published by E. A. Jones in 1913, the church possesses 1600 volumes of rare books and manuscripts, including a copy of the celebrated Bay Psalm Book of 1640, the first printed book in the British colonies. At the base of Old South Church’s Boylston Street portico is the Latin inscription: Qui transtullit sustinet (“The God who has brought us thus far will continue to sustain us”). Indeed, perhaps no other congregation in America has figured so greatly in the American social fabric as Old South Church. At the forefront of social justice for more than three centuries, the church’s mission to serve the lost, the impoverished, and the marginalized continues to this day. PROPERTY OF OLD SOUTH CHURCH IN BOSTON

THE WILLIAM DAVIS SILVER WINE CUP

MARK OF JEREMIAH DUMMER, BOSTON, CIRCA 1676

Details

THE WILLIAM DAVIS SILVER WINE CUP
MARK OF JEREMIAH DUMMER, BOSTON, CIRCA 1676
The bell-form cup with baluster stem on splayed circular foot, the cup engraved near rim “The gift of a friend W:D.”, marked on cup and under foot with Kane mark A
7 ¾ in. (19.4 cm.) high; 13 oz. 10 dwt. (422 gr.)

Provenance

William Davis (d. 1676), church founder, donor

William Davis (d. 1676), an apothecary, was a prominent and wealthy citizen of Boston. He was a Captain of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1643 and commanded a company in the Pequot War. He was a Selectman of Boston for numerous years between 1647 and 1675, Representative of Springfield and Haverhill and served as joint Commissioner with Governor Leverett to the Dutch at New York in 1653. Davis was a member of Boston’s First Church in 1644 and a founder of the Third Church (Old South) in 1669 (Publication of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, March 1899, p. 124). A fellow member of Old South Church, Judge Samuel Sewell, noted Davis’s death in his diary: “Wednesday, May, 24, about 10 M., Capt. Davis dies, fever, he had been delirious severall times between while before his death.”

Literature

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, American Church Silver, 1911, p. 39, no. 343
E. Alfred Jones, Old Silver of American Churches, 1913, p. 49, illus. Plate XX
Hermann F. Clarke and Henry W. Foote, Jeremiah Dummer, Colonial Craftsman & Merchant 1645-1718, 1970, no. 49
Patricia E. Kane, Colonial Massachusetts Silversmiths and Jewelers, 1998, p. 395

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Lot Essay

In his will dated 17 May 1676, William Davis included a legacy to the church which allows us to ascribe an approximate date to this cup: “I give to ye South Church whereof I am an unworthy member five pounds for a piece of plate.”

Jeremiah Dummer (1645-1718) was America’s first native-born silversmith. In 1659 he began his apprenticeship with émigré John Hull, first mintmaster of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, creator of the famed “Pine-Tree” shilling. See lot 99 for a cup struck with both Dummer and Hull’s marks, along with the mark of Hull’s partner Robert Sanderson. Dummer himself trained John Coney, with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship.

A pair of wine cups by Dummer from the Church in Dorchester was sold Sotheby’s, 20 January 2012, lot 108.

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