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Description
In early America, a family of Protestant faith might commission a baptismal bowl to be made of silver or pewter. This deep bowl was engraved to preserve the silver's lineage from the donor, Mary Ten Eyck Brown to her niece's eldest child, Maria Susannah Decatur. Maria S. Decatur, in turn, left instructions about the bowl in her will so that her sister Anna Pine Decatur Parsons would treasure it: "our parents having had the holy rites of Baptism administered from it, to their children." Maria S. Decatur and her younger siblings, children of John Pine Decatur and his wife Maria Susanna Ten Eyck, were raised in Newark, New Jersey and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This baptismal bowl was a revered silver relic from a family whose naval and military service to the nation added further luster to its history.