A rare and large silver coffee pot, Peter Getz, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, dated 1796

The initials are those of Phillip Gloninger (b. 1762) and his wife Catherine Wolf, whom he married in 1787.  He was the son of Johann Phillip Gloninger, born in Germany in 1718 and a  Judge in Lancaster County, and Anna Barbara Schwab.  The elder Gloninger died in 1796, the date engraved on this pot.  Philip Gloninger appears to have served as Deputy Registrar in Lancaster from the mid-1780s, and then as pastor of the Salem (or New Salem) Reformed Church in Harrisburg.  Philip's brother John was a militia commander in the Revolution, signed the Pennsylvania Constitution, and served in both the Pensylvannia Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives.

The coffee pot is accompanied by a contemporary "Account of Silver Plate, etc. belonging to Philip Gloninger" which lists this:
coffe pott 53oz...   [£] 39-15-0
The pot is the most expensive of the twenty-three entries, totalling £226.13=3.

Peter Getz (1764-1809) is the best known of three silversmithing brothers.  He was a private in the Lancaster County Militia, a Mason, an engraver, a maker of fire-engines, and an unsuccessful applicant for Director of the U.S. Mint.  David Rittenhouse, who obtained the position, noted in his own memoires "Peter Getz was lately a self taught mechanic of singular ingenuity in the borough of Lancaster... and was remarkable for the extraordinary accuracy and elegance of the workmanship he executed" (see Vivian S. Gerstell, Silversmiths of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1730-1850).