Silver, Spoons, & Souvenirs

Dad, Mom, and Me traveling with 
our station wagon in the background.

 Souvenirs

When I was a little girl, my parents loved to take my sister and I traveling. We usually drove to our vacation destinations using our trusty Chevy station wagon with the fake wood paneling sides (there was more than one!). This was the time before seatbelt laws and if we were traveling late at night (or through the night!) the back seat folded down and we could unroll our sleeping bags and sleep prone in the back. It was also before air conditioning, but the windows rolled down (using our arm muscles to rotate the knob) all the way flush with the door to give us plenty of wind!! 

Souvenir shops were a big thing and you could buy pencil cases or t-shirts, things that won’t really last the test of time. I’m not exactly sure who gave my mom the idea, but for each place–mostly states, but some cities–she encouraged me to buy a spoon as my souvenir. I collected them well into my 30’s and filled two huge spoonracks which later included countries and European cities.  I don’t display them anymore, but I still own them. There are a few special and really interesting ones, but most of them are still pretty cheap souvenirs. 

Spoons

A friend of mine shared with me that she has started taking 10-15 minutes each day to purge 3 things from her house. She goes to a drawer or cabinet everyday and finds at least 3 things to donate or toss. That sounded like a great idea to me and while I will not commit to doing this everyday, I’m happy to do it on the weekends. One weekend a couple weeks ago, I chose a cabinet in our built-in china cabinet. I quickly and easily found 3 items to donate and toss, to be honest I found lots more than 3!! 

I did also find a bag of silver trinkets that had been passed down to me from my grandmother through my mom. What a find, and what fun I had!! The internet is an incredible resource and it was well used that day as I was tracking down companies, dates, and patterns. There were some unique items, like my grandmother’s Japanese Sterling Silver 950 Demitasse Bamboo Spoons Set. I don’t know for certain, but I’m going to guess that these were purchased in the 1950’s when my grandfather was stationed in Japan and my grandmother and mother were with him. My grandmother talked about the entertaining she would do (usually with the military families) and how far the American dollar went in Japan at that time. 

The real fun for me  began when I came across….my great-grandmother’s (Florence Stoddard Leach) souvenir spoon collection!  (Note: This 15 minute task became an 8-hour funfest, the real reason why I’m not going to commit to this everyday!) I remembered seeing, years ago, a silver spoon engraved with “Flossie” (her nickname) and 1901. You might remember from an earlier post about the Buffalo Pan-American World’s Fair, that my great-grandmother graduated from Reed City High school in 1901, so I imagine this was to commemorate that occasion. 

Reed City High School c. 1900

What I didn’t remember is the approximately dozen other silver spoons from different places and times in her life. I’m not done cataloging and researching all of them, but in the process I’ve learned a few things that might be helpful to others with their silver identification.

Silver

Fish slicer

My great-grandmother, Florence, was born in 1882, so I imagined that most of the spoons were collected or given to her early in life. Her husband died in 1919 and I can believe that her traveling days with two young children were over and resources a little slimmer. This does still create a 40 year window to date them. Unlike my souvenir spoons, these were all sterling silver!

I found an incredibly robust website that was helpful because not only does it provide a catalogue of companies and their histories but also images of many of their maker’s marks. Quite honestly, anything that was ever made from silver from most countries in the world can be found here, including flatware patterns, egg boilers/coddlers, fish slicer, tankard (became a beer mug), waste bowls, and, yep, even nipple shields!  (I will leave that last one for you to look up, or just imagine.)

(Some examples of maker's marks).

It was fun to search the images and look for which company produced which spoons to help date them. Here’s one from Saginaw Michigan. It is identified as having been produced by the Alvin Co, using the silver marking emblem. Created as Alvin Mfg. Co. in Invington in 1886. Moved to Long Island NJ in 1895. Name changed in Alvin Silver Co. in 1919. Now a division of Gorham Corporation. 

One, which is from Buffalo, NY was not an official Pan-American souvenir spoons, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t purchased at that time in Buffalo.

And this one from Toronto. I’m thinking this one might be from their honeymoon in which they spent 6 weeks traveling to New York City and probably went through Canada on the way.

Or this one, was engraved with “L” for Leach in 1907 on a Reed & Barton sterling silver Parisienne pattern spoon. They were married in 1905 and had their first child, Virginia, in 1906 who died in 1908. I have no idea the significance of the date.

Or this one, which is haunting me because I have no idea what it could mean. It says “Ireland” and also “1000 Islands”. I don’t see how they are related, but I’m pretty sure that this was during their honeymoon that they stopped to the 1000 Islands! I’m fairly certain that they were still British islands and maybe there was an island named Ireland? The Islands were a popular tourist attraction in the Victorian era and has inspired me to plan a trip for my husband and I this summer to see 2 of the castles still on the islands.

But the most fun one was this spoon. Not so much because the spoon is beautiful, but because I have discerned where it was from. At first glance, I saw “mining” and assumed it was another spoon from the Michigan College of Mines, where my great-grandfather attended. But on closer inspection, I found that it was labeled “Mines & Mining Building”. I learned from my research on the Pan-American World Fair that a mines & mining building was a common feature at a World’s Fair. So, was this a spoon from the 1901 Buffalo Pan-American World Fair? After much research and searching, no!! It is from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair!! I have no idea who went to that World Fair or how this spoon came to be in Florence’s collection, but maybe it was what sparked her curiosity in the World Fairs? 

Mines & Mining 
Building at the 1893 Chicago World Fair

Depiction of the Mines & Mining Building

This provided me with a day's worth of fun and learning about the history of silver, spoons, and souvenirs! Investigating the history of the spoons and my great-grandmother's collection is providing a glimpse into her travels and her life around the turn of the last century!!! I guess if I can't have photos to chronicle her life, souvenir spoons isn't such a bad substitute. 

The Amazing Power of Newspapers: Part 1

Edward J Leach and Olivet Athletes

One summer, during college, I read Irving Stone’s very thick The Agony & Ecstasy, a biographical novel of Michaelangelo’s life. I now don’t remember much of the book, but there’s an image and description that has stayed with me for over 30 years. It was about Michaelangelo’s philosophy of sculpting. It went something like this, a masterpiece already exists inside the marble and his job was to remove the bits of marble surrounding it in order to allow the masterpiece to emerge. Sometimes he would be in a rush and hit it just wrong so that the piece of marble just fell apart into pieces, but other times as he was delicately and patiently chipping away, the masterpiece would emerge and be revealed in its full glory. 

 I see a parallel to this in my family history search. I think too often I approach with the smash and grab because I’m not patient enough to follow through on a research plan. So I end up with lots of broken marble (or lots of paper and boxes strewn about my room) that can’t easily be put back together in a useful way. And I have nothing really valuable to show for my time and effort. 

 Newspaper Resources 

 This week was a little different and my patience has paid off! And some true treasures were found in newspaper articles. (I found so much that this is going to be the first of several blogs!) The March/April 2023 edition of familytree Magazine included a Special Edition on Historical Newspapers. This is a keeper issue! It highlights FIVE newspaper websites (some free and others require a subscription): Newspaper.com: https://www.newspapers.com/ 

(familytree Magazine, March/April 2023) 

Library of Congress: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ 

Genealogy Bank: https://www.genealogybank.com/ 

NewspaperArchive: https://newspaperarchive.com/ 

Fulton History: https://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html 

 For research in Michigan, though, I want to recommend another site, and that is Central Michigan Digital Newspaper! I was following a path for some research related to the Bailey family. In a search for articles about a Hazel Ione Bailey who married a man with the last name French I was trying different permutations of her name (always very important in newspaper searching, sometimes women are only referred to with their husband’s names like, Mrs. Herbert French or even Mrs. HR French) and I came across a woman named Hazel French but she was in Osceola County. Now, “my” Hazel Bailey never lived in Osceola County but the hits that came up were in a newspaper that I did not know existed and it WAS the place where my grandmother and her mother lived! 

 Chipping Away 

 For three consecutive nights, I chipped away in my search process and what emerged was beautiful and amazing…and such a surprise! My great-grandmother, Florence Mary Stoddard married her husband Edward James Leach in 1905. I have written about both of these people in previous blogs (A Journey in the Making, “Notions and Fancy Goods”, and Names and Naturalization). I personally knew my great-grandmother Florence because she lived to age 91, but I never met her husband E. J. Leach. He died in 1919 when my grandmother was 5 years old. My grandmother, Elizabeth, barely remembered him and piecing his life together has been a big part of my family history journey. His father is one of my Brick Walls and I continue to yearn to learn more. 

 I spent a concerted effort to search through the Osceola County Democrat found on the Central Michigan Digital Newspaper Repository and I have been rewarded!! Osceola County is not a heavily populated county in Michigan, in fact if you’ve seen the movie or heard the story “Jerry and Marge Go Large”, the town where Jerry and Marge live is Evart, Michigan in Osceola County and is the next town to the east of Reed City (about 13 miles), you might then understand the size of these communities. 

Reed City is where my great-grandmother was born and her father and uncle owned Stoddard & Bros hardware and mill supply store in the town, so they were well known and local celebrities. As such, they were big fish in a small pond and their names graced the society columns of the newspaper. I thought I had searched the newspapers, but with this new newspaper, I learned I had only just begun. 

 Most Exciting Find 

While I was searching through permutations of my great-grandmother’s name, “Florence Stoddard”, I came across things I knew, like she attended Olivet College after her graduation from Reed City High School in 1901. I also knew that she met my great-grandfather, Edward James Leach at Olivet College and they married in 1905. I had no idea, though, that EJ Leach attended any other colleges other than Olivet and possibly Michigan College of Mines, so when I read the following newspaper, I couldn’t believe my eyes! 

Earlier (in A Picture is Worth MORE than 1,000 words!”) I shared how I found a photo of him as a student at Olivet and later learned through a search at the Olivet Archives a variety of activities he was involved in, including the Track & Field team, where he won 1st Place (there is a story there!) in the MIAA Tournament. So when I saw that he was visiting my great-grandmother on his way down from Houghton (in the Upper Peninsula) to Lansing (Reed City is right on the way!) where he was attending the Michigan Agricultural College, I was gobsmacked! 

He attended MAC, now known now as MSU (Michigan State University). The next morning, I checked with the Michigan State Archives and they confirmed that he was an Engineering student in his freshman year for the 1903-04 years. He apparently doesn’t show up again in their rosters after that, but I currently have a query with the Registrar’s Office. Tonight I did also search and found the Class of ‘05 MAC Yearbook, in which he is listed as a Freshman (Class of ‘07) and I found a picture of him as part of the Eclectic Society (a literary society nicknamed “The Tic” which later became Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. 

 After searching her various permutations (like Flossie, her nickname) and also Edward’s name, I could see their courtship unfold and eventually by paging through (don’t know why the search didn’t work!) I found their wedding announcement. I have no photos from their wedding, so these descriptions are precious! 

 And unfortunately after just 14 years of marriage, Edward’s Obituary. 

And Florence's return to college at Central Michigan University to earn her teaching certificate in 1922. Old Newspapers are definitely worth the time and effort, especially if you know your relatives had financial resources, standing in the community, or were infamous (that’s another story for another time!).

This is truly an amazing opportunity to fill in gaps for some members of my family!

“Notions and Fancy Goods”, Jobbers, and Heirlooms

This is me with my great-grandmother, Florence Mary
Stoddard Leach (c. 1973). I am called Lynn, but my first name
 is Mary, named after my mother, her grandmother,
and her great grandmother, Mary Bedell Stoddard.

In the fall, as I was cleaning one of my bureau drawers, I came across a small collection of heirloom pocket watches I have been entrusted to keep safe. They are all originally from either my great-grandmother, Florence Mary Stoddard Leach, or her parents, Henry Clay and Mary Bedell Stoddard.

Florence Stoddard, (unnamed seamstress), and her mother Mary Bedell Stoddard
in front of their home in Reed City, Michigan (c. 1905)

One week, after listening to a GenealogyGems Premium Podcast (199) Heirlooms–Capturing their stories and passing them on, I was inspired to really look at these watches. I gingerly figured out (with Jim’s help) how to open them—did you know that it kind of opens like a butterfly and has an inner cover that can be inscribed? Well, one of them is inscribed…it says “Mrs. H. C. Stoddard from Her Husband. Dec. 25th 83” (Obviously this is 1883, not 1983– they were married in 1872).

How sweet, I cried! I was overwhelmed with emotion as I held this pocket watch that was almost 140 years old my great-great grandfather, Henry Clay Stoddard, had given to my great-great grandmother! On the inside front cover was a photo of my great-great-grandmother, which I hypothesize my great-grandmother put inside so that she could have her own mother close to her heart after her mother passed away in 1909 (my great-grandmother lived until 1974!).

I have created a googleform to catalog the family heirlooms and I plan to catalog most of the family heirlooms this year. I would like a photo to go along with each description (of course!), so I asked for a ShotBox for Christmas so that I can take professional looking photographs with good lighting without shadows (hard to do in my Victorian House!). It wasn’t a beautifully inscribed pocket watch, but I love the fact that my husband shows his love for me by supporting me in this crazy hobby! Thanks, honey!

One thing that the special guest on GenealogyGems podcast shared was the importance of including background information, whatever you know and can find about the items. The companies that made the heirloom can be interesting in and of themselves! (I know, just one more thing to research, but the rabbit holes are fascinating.)

Pyrography of Gibson Girl by
Edward James Leach (bef. 1919)

This week, as I was packing something up in the guest bedroom, I looked to another heirloom hanging on the wall. It is a woodburned wooden plaque of a Gibson Girl, my grandmother identified as something her father EJ Leach (Florence's husband)

Edward James Leach

had made. It was not my intent to sit down and catalog this heirloom at that very moment, but I was intrigued. Because my grandmother had written “Gibson Girl” and “woodburning tool” on the back, I started by googling those words. 

Saturday Evening Post Advertisement

• I learned that woodburning is actually a craft called “pyrography” (maybe you already knew that?!) and have done some of your own during the 1970s craze. 
• I learned that the Flemish Art Company in New York held the market on creating pyrography kits

and that they tool all forms, wooden boxes, wall hangings and even leather items. In my search,
I came across an article about a 91-year old collector of Gibson Girl pyrography she’s found in antique stores and e-bay. 

• It also took me down the path of Charles Dan Gibson, the creator of the images of a Gibson Girl and to an exhibit on the Library of Congress page (an amazing resource for me on my journey for other reasons).

• In my search of a Catalogue of the choices of kits, I came across advertisements by the Flemish Art Co. in the Saturday Evening Post and also a fascinating magazine called “Fabrics, Fancy Goods and Notions: A Journal of Information for Jobbers and Retailers of Dry Goods, Fancy Goods and Notions”.

(Thanks to Google Books)  Okay, it took me a moment to figure out what this meant and who the audience for this journal would be! Maybe you ready know what a “Jobber” is? Or maybe you know the contemporary meaning? But in 1903, a “Jobber” would be a wholesaler or distributor. Learn something new every day!

1904 Issue of Notions and Fancy Goods

I think my great-grandfather did a great job with this project and I appreciate that I have learned something more about him and the craft of pyrography. I know this was a “kit” and I can not yet be certain that it was put together by the Flemish Art Co, but I’m tracking down leads and imagine someday I might even find a picture of the kit in some catalogue for Jobbers that has been digitized!