Is this the stewart pelican in her piety crest on a silver spoon chicks under mother and one face to face by john sheilds 1788
I think you have forgotten to add the images.
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https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/136168331734
As my esteemed colleague red6 has already mentioned, without photographs we’ll be groping in the dark…
It may well be.
Tablespoons made by John Sheils, also known as Shiels, a Dublin spoon maker, frequently appear. They all have decorative work on the handles and an oval space on the top of the spoon, into which the Stewart Badge of the pelican in the nest, probably without a motto, would have been displayed.
The spoon was probably the property of the Stewart family, who were living in what is now Glen Lodge, southeast of the village of Leighlinbridge in County Carlow, at the time. Carlow was a day’s ride from Sheils’ workshop in the Christchurch area of Dublin.
William Alexander Stewart will have ordered the spoons while he was still living in County Carlow, before he emigrated to Tennessee with much of his extended family. He and his wife Elizabeth are buried in a non-sacred location.
He may have brought it over if you acquired the silver in the US.
If you’re looking to expand your collection of former Stewart family property, Glen Lodge is up for sale.
Your addition of the extraneous D to Sheil’s name is understandable. Indeed, it appears that way in Jackson’s. ‘Silver Makers Marks’ corrects it in his listing of Dublin goldsmiths.
Just by way of update Glen Lodge aka Stewart Lodge is now sold.
Those who wonder what would have induced a family man with a substantial estate in County Carlow to forsake it and presumably sell up and head for first Maryland and then Tennessee in the last years of the 18th century may I tender some thoughts?
By 1788 the US fight for Independence was over and the newly sovereign country’s vast land banks were attracting many Irish seeking relief from the harsh Penal Laws, Westminster lawmakers imposed upon it. Today we think of the mass emigration triggered by the famine of 1844 and the years following, but the potato famine was only symptomatic of the problem.
And the problem was, unlike the English who adhered to the rule of primogeniture and entailed inherited land for decades, sometimes centuries, the Irish divided land between children and agricultural units upon each family death became smaller and eventually unsustainable.
This constant land subdivision affected the tenant farmers immediately but it also impacted rent-earning capability of the land owners – the smaller ones like William Stewart first and eventually them all triggering the fight over Corn Laws inthe next century.
Another County Carlow man who followed the example of William was Pierce Butler from Garyhundon, County Carlow. He is one of the 40 men credited with the creation of the electoral college system currently causing us so many headaches today.
William Stewart traded a small estate with a pleasant Georgian house for a two bedroom log cabin and land to grow tobacco.
Now the Stewarts, like many of the resident land owners of County Carlow, were catholic, – the Stewart’s notoriously so following the failure of the 1745 rebellion in support of a return of a Stuart Catholic king to rule the UK.
It is noteworthy he and his new world protestant wife were buried on what had been their own land rather than land consecrated by any church and one wonders to what extent the Stewarts of the New World had abandoned the Roman religion completely.
The land swop, log cabin and river side tobacco acreage for tenanted land in the lee of the Wicklow Hills, was fortuitous enough to sustain the family through two more moves and the abolition of slavery in the south fifty years later.
And would have certainly allowed for a household budget to purchase Tennessee-created coin silver spoons to replace or supplement the Celtic point spoons which prompted this speculative inquiry.
Mr Wilson, you have reappeared. As always nice to read your missives
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