This is another piece in the collection I inherited, just looking for some info on the marks and anything else one can provide. Thank you.
Hi once again, Kittyno. The various Rogers silversmiths are confusing to say the least. One of the very earliest, William Rogers of CT, made coin silver items in the 1830s and 1840s and used a mark very similar to this one, but instead of the “9” he used a star. Much more modern Rogers folks used a mark similar to this on silver plated wares until the 1970s, but the “m” in “Wm” is lower case vs. yours that is upper case as did the early William Rogers mark.
So I’ll take a stab that its coin silver by William Rogers of Hartford, Connecticut and made between 1830 and 1841. The “9” probably denotes coin silver, which is 90% pure silver vs. the 92.5% that is sterling. One of my reference books states that this William Rogers made both sterling and coin silver tableware, thus he probably used the “9” to distinguish between the two materials and marked the 92.5% wares “sterling”, which is about the time American sterling began bearing that word. Prior to 1840 virtually all American silver tableware was coin silver and your William Rogers was one of the first to begin using sterling.
Very interesting stuff.
Regards,
Uncle Vic