Mystery in the Silverware Drawer

I’m not a very faithful silver polisher. I put that chore right up there with other chores I don’t like to do like dusting and ironing. But as I opened the drawer holding the silverware I inherited from my mother and grandmother I sighed. I couldn’t bear to pack this treasure without first cleaning them. I set out to clean and polish every piece and then wrap them properly and put them in their own box to be set aside until I could use them in the proper setting in my own home down the road.

The felt-lined silverware boxes these pieces had originally come from disintegrated in the flood waters of the mobile home four years ago. The day we packed up I just wrapped them all in a towel or two for transport to our new place later on. The two sets were mixed together in a designated drawer in the kitchen until I packed them yesterday. I couldn’t tell you which belonged to mother and which to my grandmother. I do know the main set belonged to my mother and there is enough to set a proper table with serving pieces from other patterns. All the pieces are not pure silver, however. (See the markings listed below)

You may be wondering where the mystery comes from in this story and I’ll tell you in due time. It’s a story waiting to be told if only all the details can be known. Perhaps you can help me, but let’s keep that story for later on.

In researching for this story I came across some interesting facts about silverware making in America. If you’d like to research the subject further, check out the sites I’ve highlighted in the separate blog, “The History of Silver in America.”

One thing I couldn’t find in my research is the fact that silverware sets became such a status symbol that those of means tried to outdo each other by the sheer size of their collection. Pieces for every imaginable use were made, some of which would be hard to visualize in everyday life today. Eventually, as I remember reading about it, a meeting of the minds came to the conclusion that there was a big waste of silver and that silverware collections should be limited to just so many pieces. It was probably a decision of the Silver Guild or some other organization of authority. If you know the details of this development, or if I even have my facts straight here, I would love to hear about it.

As I turned over each piece to polish it, I wondered how many other female hands had handled this silver in the same way, perhaps in preparation for a holiday event. I know my own mother was very diligent about doing just that. In the big houses of the 1800s it was the butler’s chore to keep the silverware and other silver pieces in good condition and to polish them often. If a common household of later years were fortunate enough to own silver, they also took very good care of it.

I also wondered why there were so many different patterns in the two sets. By sheer design I could guess which probably belonged to my grandmother and which to my mother. The six ice-tea spoons, therefore, probably belonged to my mother; and the handful of butter knives probably belonged to my grandmother.

I suppose that during the course of a marriage; my mother’s being over 60 years and my grandmother’s over 50, a woman could accumulate more pieces in her collection. It could be that the girls in the family were given pieces of silver from an older female as an heirloom to pass on to the next girl in the family. This is only a guess, however, as I can’t really see how any woman would split up a set of silverware.

There was one piece I assume belonged to my grandmother that was a real head scratcher to me. It could fall into the category of unnecessary utensils as described above. It was a long handled spoon that was separated in the middle to form a small oblong oval. On the very end of this oval were two small sharp prongs. The only thing I could possibly imagine it being used for would be to break an egg sitting in an egg cup and then scooping out the egg itself with the rest of the spoon. Very odd indeed. Who would bother to do that today?

After I polished all the silver, I wrote down the markings I found on the different sets. I came up with 14 different markings most of which were from the Rogers company:

W.M. A Rogers A1 Plus; 1947 Rogers Bros. 1S Flair; Rogers AA; W.M. Rogers PAT. Mar. 13, 1921; 1881 Rogers ONEIDA LTD.; COMMUNITY PLATE; 1957 WELCH-ATKINS; R.C. Co Plus; 1947 Rogers Bros. IS; New England Silver Plate; Sep. 11, 1906 W. M. Rogers & Son AA; W. Rogers Mfg. Co., Original Rogers; ONEIDA New Era; PAT. Apr. 17, 1917 Simon & George W. Rogers Co. XXII.

From some of these dates you can decipher further which were acquired by my grandmother and which by my mother.

The Mystery in the Silverware Drawer

Now for the big mystery, one I wonder about every time I look into this drawer.

Among all the pieces are two silver coins which have been made into small spoons. The markings show a picture of a German in one of those spiked hats. The inscription reads: GUILELMUS, which probably means William in German; IMPERATOR, or emperor; DUTCH E. AFRICA.

What about that, huh? Any ideas? How did these two pieces dated 1914 and 1911, end up amongst my grandmother’s silver? Did a ship’s captain collect them somehow in one of his travels and bring them back to my grandmother or another female member of the family? Was it a war memento of WWI? They didn’t fight that war in East Africa did they? It’s a real mystery.

The coins themselves are probably worthless for two reasons. It is my understanding that when you deface a coin in any way to make something else out of it, it becomes of no value monetarily. The other reason is that Dutch E. Africa no longer exists. It was given over to three different countries after WWI: Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Rowanda.

Can you solve this mystery? I welcome any and all suggestions. Please email me at:

southendstories@aol.com.

Maybe it would make a good romance novel. What do you think?

Thanks for listening.