History of the Silver Plate
Silver Plate
The monogram on the front of plate is my grandmother’s Sarah Charlotte Clement or SCC. The back of the plate includes two inscriptions. The first reads “Sarah Salome Clement, To her dear little granddaughter Sarah Charlotte Clement, Christmas 1897”. The second reads “To her dear little granddaughter, Sarah Carmel Pease, Christmas 1959”.
I received this silverplate from my grandmother, Sallie, on my 2nd Christmas. As a child, my parents insisted that I eat my desserts off it. We treated this and all the other sterling silver as any other dish. It was used every day, thrown in the dishwasher, etc. Hence it is dented and worn, but now it has character.
Sarah Salome Clement was my 2nd great grandmother. This portrait of her was painted by W.R. Wheeler in 1880. She was born in Sherburne, VT on August 13, 1832. She died in Rutland, VT on November 23, 1906. She was 48 when this portrait was painted. At age four (1836), her family moved from Vermont to Washington, Illinois. Her future husband and her first cousin, Wallace Clement moved to Illinois in his early twenties. He and Sarah married in her parent’s home in 1858. They moved to Rutland, VT in 1861. They had 5 children, the first born in Washington and the rest born in Rutland VT. Sarah was very interested in genealogy which has carried on through multiple generations. She traced her family back to the Mayflower and those who settled in Rhode Island in 1642.
Salle and my Dad, 1932ish
Sarah Charlotte Clement, my grandmother was born in Rutland, VT in 1897. She attended Wykeham Rise, a college prep school for girls in Washington, CT. After which, she attended Smith College in Northampton, MA. During WWI, she went to a nursing school in New York City. After the war she returned to Smith College and finished out her degree graduating in 1919. In 1920 she married my grandfather, Alfred Morgan Pease. She had three sons, Alfred, Clement and William. During the 1930s, she and Katherine Hepburn, the famous actress' mother, were opening birth control clinics in Connecticut. These clinics were limited to married women with health concerns. They served low-income women who were unable to see a doctor or did not want to see a doctor. The patients were largely Catholic women with already large families. In the 1940s, she spent a lot of time corresponding with her sons who were in the service during WWII. Her two oldest sons, Alfred and Clement, were in Europe for some of the war and her youngest son William stayed stateside. She and my grandfather divorced in mid 1940's. For the rest of her life, she enjoyed her large social circle, escaping to Florida to avoid the cold Connecticut winters and summering in her house on the Connecticut shore. In the late 1950s and through the 1960s she had a romantic relationship with a judge from Kentucky. She died in Hartford CT on May 24th, 1983. Her personality was enormous; she filled every room she stepped into. She was truly one-of-a-kind and will always be remembered that way.
I still have the plate. As of yet, I do not have a granddaughter to pass on to. We will to wait and see. May have to adjust the tradition.
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