This is the silverware that almost made me miss my flight. See, I was a little worried about shipping it, or even putting it in checked luggage, so I thought I’d just have it in my carry-on on the plane. Well, I went through security, and it set off the alarm, and they pulled it all out, and at first, I thought it was going to be fine — they were only checking the knives, and the supervisor decided the regular table knives were fine — they didn’t have a serrated edge, which would’ve been a problem.
But then there was one knife they pulled that was quite a long, sharp knife (first pic), and they said that one couldn’t go through. So then I had to put all the silverware back in my bag, go back to check-in (which was a LONG walk), check that bag ($50, ouch.), and then race back to security.
Luckily, I’d allowed 90 minutes instead of my usual 60, so I had enough time, but if I hadn’t, I would’ve missed my plane, because I wouldn’t have gotten that second bag checked before the cut-off.
Whew.
Today I put away the silver and did some detective work. Most of the silver I put away was simple enough — it fell into one of two categories.
Category 1 — the regular knives, forks, and spoons, all engraved with a ‘W’ for Whyte — Kevin said that was almost certainly a wedding gift for Ann von Weise when she married Ron Whyte.
Category 2 — silver with no additional engraving, which probably were wedding presents from guests, or possibly pieces Ann had just picked up herself because she liked them.
The tricky one was category 3 — pieces with engraved initials, but not a simple ‘W’. There were L’s, and B’s, and some others that were hard to make out.
Kevin and I did a little poking around, and we were able to figure out that:
• ALvW was probably Ann von Weise — Kevin looked for his mother’s high school yearbook to confirm, and yes, her middle name was Lee. She dropped that when she got married, and became Ann von Weise Whyte.
• Her christening cup had her name and birthday date, in ’44.
• The B was Ann’s mother, Marjorie Boettler von Weise, Marjorie Boettler as was.
• The L was almost certainly Ann’s grandmother, who she referred to as Grandmother Lee. Ann’s middle name came from her, and we’re thinking that Lee must have been her last name. Some of the pieces have the initials R.M.L., so the next thing to figure out is what R actually stands for. I’m betting on Rebecca. We’ll see if we can figure it out.
• those pieces are a matching spoon, fork, and knife — my theory is that the family set was broken up and distributed to the children or grandchildren at some point. Kevin thought maybe those were just the only pieces that survived, but I think I’m right and he’s wrong. We may never know!
• There’s almost nothing from Ron’s side of the family, but he did have a napkin ring with RW engraved on it, so that’s nice.
• the last pics are of a peacock knife / server, which I mostly include because it’s got an awesome peacock on it. 🙂
Fun piecing together some of the history. I need to get back to my actual work tomorrow, as I have various things due and overdue, but I’m hoping to come back to some of this before too much time passes, maybe in the summer.
