Excerpt from American Silver of the XVII& XVIII Centuries: A Study Based on the Clearwater Collection Several years devoted to the searching of Colonial news papers and archives of various sorts established the fact that literally hundreds of silversmiths lived in the Colonies. In the meantime Francis H. Bigelow of Boston became greatly interested in the possibilities of Colonial silver; his enthusiasm and energy enabled him to locate in New Eng land churches and households a large number of pieces of plate the origin of which had been supposedly English but which Mr. Bigelow believed to be American. His sugges tion for the holding of an exhibition of Colonial silver was adopted by the management of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and through their foresight Colonial silver was introduced in 1906 to the knowledge of the American public by a magnificent exhibition accompanied by a catalogue. The historical matter of this was based on data gleaned during the previous five years. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.