“I give and bequeath unto the Church of Christ in Lexington:” Rachel Butterfield’s Silver Tankard
April 22, 2025
In April of 1778, a Massachusetts woman named Rachel Butterfield (1697-1779) made out her will. Born in Lexington in 1697, Butterfield later moved to Arlington, then Bridgewater. In her will, completed in Bridgewater when she was eighty-one years old, she left 13 pounds 6 shillings 8 pence to the “church of Christ in Lexington” to purchase a silver tankard. This object is on loan to the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library from Lexington’s First Parish, the successor to the church named in Butterfield’s will. The tankard is now on view in the museum’s newest exhibition, “Protest & Promise: The American Revolution in Lexington.”
After Butterfield’s death in May 1779, thirteen months after writing her will, her executor Simeon Leonard paid the money intended for this tankard to church administrators in Lexington. They then commissioned silversmith William Homes (1716/1717-1785) of Boston to create this object, the only piece from the 1700s in First Parish’s collection given by a woman.
This collection came to the museum in 1999 and contains beakers from earlier in the 1700s than Butterfield’s. Some of these objects were in Lexington on April 19, 1775, when British troops swept through the town. Thanks to the forethought and preparation of women like Lydia Loring (1745-ca. 1845), the daughter of the church deacon in whose home the silver was stored, the valuable components of this collection were saved from potential theft or destruction. Four of these silver pieces are also on view in “Protest & Promise.”
In addition to the money for this tankard, Butterfield gave the church £50 in unrestricted funds and an additional £50 to the town of Lexington for the use of the school. In total, she bequeathed more than $25,000 in current value to her hometown. Between 1775 and 1783, Lexington’s taxpayers had to shoulder the extraordinary expenses of the Revolutionary War on top of regular operating expenses. Rachel Butterfield’s will, completed three years after the events that made her hometown famous, provided not only this lovely tankard, but also sustained support for the community where she used to live.