Site update and Artifact of the Day — Albert Parker’s Silver Signet Ring??

Our lovely new signs are up, welcome to everyone who has stopped by the blog to see what the heck is going on behind the Trent sign!

---

Site visitors today included Dr Hugh Elton, Michael Obie and Dan Smith. Michael and Dan make appearances in the 2017 and 2018 and 2023 seasons of our project!

---

“Hey, we found a ring!”

We had found one other ring at this site before, so I headed over to the midden crew check it out. Immediately through the dirt I could tell it was silver, with some sort of design on the front and when I turned it over there were some hallmarks suggesting a silver piece as well. A careful wipe down revealed:

The front was fascinating, an icon of a logging saw, the initials A. P., and underneath a felling axe. How cool is that, to have a piece of jewelry that directly reflects the mill activities, located in a domestic context from a house on the property of a major sawmill complex?

So cool!!

I started with the hallmarks, as they usually give you an assay mark (city based), maker’s initials, an assay date (initial letter in a particular font), and a location (city mark) where it was made, and maybe an indication if duty was paid (portrait). But it was puzzling to me, as although I could see three marks, they didn’t fit this model. The lion passant suggested an assay in London, UK, but why were there two of them? The centre mark was covered in dirt, and even when cleaned it was hard to see with the naked eye., and appeared to be two letters instead of a single date code.

I couldn’t wait until the end of the day, when I could finally peek through a microscope and see the initials “J.O”. A couple of British silver hallmark sites on the web suggested this could be a J. Oliver in Clerkenwell, London. But I was still thrown by the weirdness of the hallmark elements. Then James reminded me about pseudo-hallmarks. The Canadian silver market did not create a standardised hallmark systems like the UK one until 1985, however, it is evident that the idea of a silver object needing to have British-style hallmarks to make it “real” did certainly apply. So our marks suggest a domestically-made ring that needed some trappings of British silver.

So this is likely why we have a kind of bizarre set of hallmarks which on first glance seem real, but have no real meaning behind them. I did a quick search to see if there were any 19th century Canadian silversmiths who used the initials J.O and found a couple potential names mentioned (John O’Gorman/Toronto, John O’Donahoe/Quebec, and John Oakes/Montreal) but couldn’t find any more beyond their names — that might be a future research project.

So once that area of investigation has come to an end, the next step was to see if we could figure out who A.P. was! It seemed reasonable to assume that this ring was worn by someone who was involved in the lumber industry in some way. My first thought was to scour the city and county directories but then I remembered as part of the background research for our Nassau Mills report, I had already done a partial listing of census and directory research I had summarised to list possible inhabitants of the parcel of land. At the time we wrote the license report for our excavations, we were excited to maybe link Charles Perry to the beginning of the life of this house, but never did we dream that we would be able to link to someone else in the past!

One name immediately jumped out at me, Albert Parker, who in the 1891 census is 44 years old and listed as living in Smith Township (check) in a wooden 1.5 story 4 room house (seems plausible) with his wife Margaret (34), son William Allan (11), and daughters Ethel I. (8) and Olive R. (5). So the fact that we have some toys in the midden is supported by the census recording children in a household. This is all great so far.

Albert’s occupation is listed as sawmill labourer (check!!). The other families in the 1891 census list that cluster before and after the Parker family also have some members listed as sawmill labourers, and no one else has the initials A.P. We know there were at least four dwelling houses on the parcel, so it is possible that in the 1880s-1890s, our house was occupied by Albert Parker and family, and at some point he lost his silver ring.

I decided to see if I could trace Albert’s life back through the census and if we could learn a little more about him. A brief foray suggests:

In 1881, Albert is 34, Methodist, married to Margaret (25), and they have a son, Allen (1). I found a listing for Varnum in the 1887 Farmers’ and Classified Business Directory as a tenant on Concession 18, Lot 27, Smith.

The 1891 census I have detailed above.

The 1897 Farmer’s and Business Directory suggests that Albert moves away from Nassau Mills in the late 1890s, as his address is listed as freehold at Concession 10, Lot 10 of Smith.

In 1901, Albert was 55, a widower, occupation mill labourer, and living in Ashburnham in a lodging house with William Allen Parker (20), (also listed as mill labourer), Ethel Parker (18) and Olive Parker (15). I found a mention that William Allen Parker married a Lilian Ethel Bartley November 6, 1907. I didn’t check in to what happened to Ethel and Olive, but the last mention in the census for Albert is in 1911. By this point Albert was 65 years old, and living on his own in a rooming house at 186 George St. Peterborough. His religion is listed as Baptist, and he still working as a labourer, but this time for Canadian General Electric ($450 a year)! I wonder if he was incorporated into CGE as they took over the mill property?

I think I found his death notice, which suggests he died in 1914 and is buried in the Lakefield cemetery. It was so cool to find an artifact that we can likely trace back to its owner. I wonder how upset he was to lose this ring, it seems as though it would have been a treasured item.