Shem Drowne

Deacon Shem Drowne (4 December 1683 - 13 January 1774) was a colonial coppersmith and tinplate worker in Boston, Massachusetts and was America's first documented weathervane maker. He is most famous for the grasshopper atop of Faneuil Hall.

Background

He was born near Sturgeon Creek in York County, Maine. He was the third son of Leonard Drowne, a ship-builder who came to what is now Kittery, Maine in what was then Massachusetts Bay Colony from Penryn, Cornwall. Leonard helped organize and build the first Baptist Church in Maine in 1682. During King William's War many Maine towns were raided and English settlements were massacred by the Wabanaki Indians in conjunction with the French. In 1696 28 members of the Baptist Church moved to Charleston, South Carolina and established the first baptist church there. The Drownes moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1699 due to the ongoing war and violence.

Shem married Katherine Clark on 18 September, 1712 in Boston, Massachusetts. Katherine was the daughter of Capt. Timothy Clark and sister of Boston brazier and pewterer, Jonas Clark.

Shem's older brother Solomon was the grandfather of Revolutionary War Surgeon Solomon Drowne.

Simeon Drowne, Shem's younger brother, was the fourth son of Leonard Drowne. Born April 8, 1686 and died in Boston, Massachusetts on August 2, 1734. Buried in Copps Hill Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts. He was a shipwright. It is believed that he crated the framework for Shem's Grasshopper weathervane.

Life

Shem [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~silversmiths/makers/silversmiths/48764.htm] was a coppersmith with a shop on Ann Street (now North Street) in North End, Boston. He was baptized in the First Baptist Church of Boston in 1713 along with the future pastor of that church. In May 1721 he was elected a Deacon of the Church and served this position until his death in 1774 [Wood, Nathan. "The History of the First Baptist Church of Boston (1665-1899)" American Baptist Publication Society, 1899. p201-206, p368] .

Career: Pioneering Metalworker and America's First Weathervane Maker

According to the colonial diarist Thomas Newell, Shem Drowne "was the first tin plate worker that ever came to Boston, New England." [Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for October 1877 xv 348] He worked as a Tin Plate Worker and a coppersmith. He is on lists of Colonial Silversmiths as a result of a silver beaker marked "SD" tentative attributed to him [Kane, Patricia. "Colonial Massachusetts Silversmiths and Jewelers." Yale University Art Gallery, 1998. p1039] . However, antiquarian Francis Hill thought, "the attribution to Shem Drowne of Boston is probably erroneous. There seems to be no evidence that Drowne was a silversmith". [Bigelow, Francis Hill. "Early New England Silver." Antiques 8 (September 1925), p156] This corresponds with Suffolk County deeds which lists Drowne's occupation as tinplate worker [Suffolk County Deed 34:205, 208; 47:311; 48:1; 50:207-08; 99:163-64; 118:215-16] . Drowne's nephew, sister-in-law's child [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~silversmiths/makers/silversmiths/129830.htm] , Timothy Parrott, was a Boston silversmith [Kane 1998, 764] .

In 1716 he created America's first authenticated weathervane, a gilded American Indian archer, for the cupola of Providence House in Boston, which in 1716 became the official residence of the Royal Governor. In 1721 he created a rooster weathervane which is now on First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1740 he made the banner weathervane that is now atop Old North Church in Boston.

The Grasshopper Weathervane

His most famous work is the weathervane on top of Faneuil Hall. Commissioned by Peter Faneuil in 1742 it was designed to compliment the grasshopper weathervane atop the Royal Exchange in the City of London and help symbolize the new building as the capital of finance in the New World. The grasshopper is copper gilded with gold leafs with glass eyes. The vane fell off the building during the earthquake of 1755 which shook Boston. He and his son Thomas repaired it and remounted it.

In 1768 Thomas placed a note labeled "food for the grasshopper" in the belly of the grasshopper. It read:

This weathervane is the only part of Faneuil Hall which remains totally unmodified from the original 1742 structure. In 1805 Charles Bulfinch expanded the building and moved the cupola from the middle of the building to the front. In 1974 the vane was stolen but recovered in less than a week.

The Drowne Claim of the Pemaquid Patent

In 1631 the Plymouth Council for New England granted two merchants from Bristol, England, Robert Aldsworth and Gyles Elbridge, 12,000 acres near what would become Bristol, Maine in a document known as the Pemaquid Patent. Gyles survived Aldworth and passed it to his son John who in turn passed it to his brother Thomas. In 1650 Thomas Elbridge mortgaged Monhegan Island and Damariscove Island to Richard Russell and sold half the Patent's land, half of his furniture, and half of his cattle for £200 to Paul White. In 1653 White and Elbridge conveyed the entire Moiety title to Russell and Nicholas Davidson who in turn became sole owner of the patents from Russell in 1657. [Otis, James. "The Story of Pemaquid". T.Y. Crowell & Co., 1902. p35-36] Elbridge continuted to live in Pemaquid (Bristol) and called himself the "Merchant of Pemaquid" [Cartland, John Henry. "Ten Years at Pemaquid: Sketches of Its History and Its Ruins". S.N. 1899, p56] After the Second Anglo-Dutch War the Duke of York claimed the land as his under a Royal Charter.

Drowne's wife Katherine Clark, was a partial heir to the Davidson claim of the Pemaquid Patents and Drowne acquired power-of-attorney from the other heirs. What became to be known as the "Drowne Claim" encompassed Bristol, Bremen, Damariscotta, and parts of Newcastle and Nobleboro [Greene, Francis Byron. "History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905: With Family Genealogies" Loring, 1906. p165] . Other claims of the time included the "Brown Right" and the "Tappen Right". Starting in the 1730s Drowne filed a number of depositions in order to gain control of the Drown Claim.

On 12 June, 1746 he bought Monhegan Island and its surrounding islands for £10, 13 shillings. His son later sold the island for £160. He died in 1774 and his estate bequested £6, 13s, 4d to the First Baptist Church of Boston [Wood 1899, 370] .

External links

* [http://benledwards.com/edwards/vane_history.shtml A History of the Faneuil Hall Grasshopper]
* [http://www.denninger.com/history.htm A Brief History of Weather Vanes]
* [http://magazines.ivillage.com/countryliving/collect/ar/articles/0,,284652_293943-8,00.html Weather Vane Trivia]
* [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~silversmiths/67/48764.htm Deacon Shem Drown]

References