Kerr proposed to sell 400 tickets at one pistole each and give 80 prizes worth, at “common saleable Prices,” a total of 400 pistoles. (A pistole was the old quarter-doubloon of Spain, or a similar gold coin, worth about four dollars.) The top prize in the lottery, a combination of a diamond ring, an amethyst pin, a heavily jeweled pendant, and an ornamented gold box, was to be worth 62 pistoles; the other prizes ranged down to 40 valued at two pistoles each. The list included rings, earrings, snuff boxes, toothpick cases, spoons, tongs, gold buttons, buckles, and boxes of various sorts.
After two postponements, probably in order to sell every last ticket, the drawing took place “at the Capitol.” This doubtless meant on the steps or portico or in the yard, rather than within the building itself. The outcome was recorded in a single sentence in the Gazette: “Yesterday Mr. Kerr’s lottery of Jewels and Plate was drawn; and the highest Prize came up in Favour of Mrs. Dawson.”
Kerr’s long list of prizes—and the items listed for sale in advertisements of other eighteenth-century Williamsburg silversmiths—reveal that the articles these smiths made in their shops, like the ones they imported, were of great variety but mostly of small size. Besides the silver buckles, sugar tongs, teaspoons, toothpick cases, and snuff boxes of the lottery list, other silversmiths advertised thimbles, soup and punch ladles, salt casters or shakers, watch chains, cream buckets or “piggins,” and plated as well as solid silver spurs. Among these, the soup ladles were the largest items.
If Williamsburg smiths made larger items on special order as they may have, no such pieces have survived, nor has any mention of them been found in shop records. Custom-made articles would not have been advertised, of course.
SILVERSMITHS AND GOLDSMITHS, BLACKSMITHS AND DENTISTS
Patrick Beech, as his advertisement suggested, was obviously a jeweler as well as a Silversmith. James Craig of the Golden Ball, who made a pair of earrings for Washington’s beloved stepdaughter, Patsy Custis, was primarily a jeweler rather than a Silversmith. James Geddy, Jr., combined the cleaning and repairing of watches and clocks with silver- and goldsmithing. John and William Rowsay, brothers and partners in a Williamsburg shop, sold not only plate and precious stones, but a wide assortment of general merchandise, to wit:
Advertisement appearing in Dixon and Nicholson’s VIRGINIA GAZETTE on October 16, 1779.
Just imported and to be sold by the subscribers in Williamsburg,
A NEAT assortment of cutlery, pinchbeck shoe and stock buckles, plated do. watch chains seals and keys, paper snuff-boxes, playing cards, pins and needles, ivory combs, linen, muslins, cap lace, corded dimity, ginghams, calicoes, silk and thread flockings, bohea tea, &c. Also a few hogsheads of good RUM, by the hogshead or quarter cask. (1) JOHN & WILLIAM ROWSAY.
This versatility of crafts was almost universal among colonial silversmiths, especially in the southern colonies. Not one of the Williamsburg smiths limited himself rigidly to the making and selling of silver and gold articles. Any who tried would probably not have enjoyed a large income in this essentially small town in an essentially rural colony.