American Silver Cann, Nathaniel Hurd, Boston, Circa 1760

The arms are those of Stoddard. The name engraved on the base is that of Colonel John Stoddard (1682-1748), Chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas for the county of Hampshire and Colonel in the Colonial militia. His name has been added probably by proud descendants, who did not realize that this piece dates from the next generation of this prominent family. A tankard by Nathaniel Hurd with the Stoddard arms for Prudence Stoddard is in the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum and a teapot with the same arms in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Tablespoons and teaspoons with the Stoddard crest are listed in Patricia E. Kane, Colonial Massachusetts Silversmiths and Jewelers, pp. 620-621. A coffee pot by Nathaniel Hurd engraved with the arms of Chauncy impaling Stoddard within similar cartouche as this cann is illustrated in Hollis French, Jacob Hurd and His Sons, 1939, p.101, plate XXII.

John Washburn Stoddard (1826-1889) married Mary Ann Goodwin in Burlington, CT. Among their five children was Nathan William Stoddard, ancestor of the current owner.

For more information on Stoddard, see George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 2003, p. 14 and 115; Rachel Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope: Mohicans and Missionaries in the Eighteenth Century Northeast, 2013, pp. 22-25; Brooks, The Common Pot, p. 30-31, 37, 41; New York State Library, Calendar of Council Minutes, 1668-1783 (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1903), 290, 294, 345.