MARK OF NATHANIEL HURD, BOSTON, CIRCA 1760

According to family history in the 1989 auction, this cann was presented to Captain John Huston, a merchant of Chignecto, Nova Scotia, by Brook Watson of Boston, Nova Scotia and London. The cann descended within the Huston family. Brook Watson is best known as the subject of J. S. Copley's famous painting, Watson and the Shark of 1778, which depicts his attack by a shark off Havana in 1749. Captain John Huston subsequently employed Watson, who became a successful merchant in his own right. In 1759 Watson centered his trading business in his native England, where he was appointed Lord Mayor of London in 1796.