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By David F. Wood, Curator, The Concord Museum.
Samuel Bartlett, raised and trained in Boston's North End, worked as a silversmith and sometime dry goods merchant in Concord, Massachusetts during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Bartlett's most active period seems to have been the decade 1785 to 1795. At the beginning of that time, he bought the old jail from the county (Concord was a half-shire town for Middlesex County) to use as a shop. Over the next ten years, with the aid of journeyman silversmith Joseph Lasinby Brown (1753-1804), he executed communion silver commissions for three towns in Middlesex County (Weston, Groton, Concord) and produced domestic silver. At the end of the period, he was elected register of deeds for Middlesex County and moved to Cambridge.
The museum's three most recent acquisitions are a creampot (at top right), a cann (below right - click on image for larger view) and a teaspoon. The creampot is engraved on the bottom (at right), "TA Hubbard" for Thomas and Abigail Hubbard of Concord -- a Concord family who can properly be termed Bartlett's best customer for domestic silver. Thomas Hubbard was probably at the North Bridge on April 19th; he was elected captain of one of Concord's three militia companies in 1776. A porringer that belonged to the Hubbard's youngest daughter is already in the Museum's collection. The cann is a large one, a quart size, and has a decoratively chased handle grip. The cann is engraved with two sets of unidentified initials; one set may represent the original owner. The teaspoon with its rounded bowl and handle end is earlier stylistically than the other Bartlett teaspoons in the collection. These acquisitions add to the Museum's ability to interpret the career of Samuel Bartlett, "an influential and useful man," during the period that bridged the colonial era and the new Republic. The Museum's Bartlett silver is on view in the exhibition galleries.
by David F. Wood in New England Silver and Silversmithing 1620-1815 edited by Jeannine Falino and Gerald W. R. Ward The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2001
by Patricia E. Kane Yale University Art Gallery, 1998
edited by David F. Wood Concord Museum, 1996
Photos from top:
Cann,
Samuel Bartlett (1752-1821),
Concord, 1775-1795,
Silver,
H: 6" W: 5.75" D: 4"
Underside of Creampot, Engraved "T.A.Hubbard" above the center punch and marked "S.BARTLETT" below.
Photos: Courtesy of The Concord Museum
 
 
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In 1986, the Concord Museum noted their acquisition of a creampot that represented a number of "firsts." It was the first piece of silver hollowware by Samuel Bartlett (1752-1821), the first piece of hollowware by any Concord maker, and the first silver creampot to be added to the collection. 
Twelve pieces of communion silver with Bartlett's mark are known, including eight pieces made for the First Parish Church, Concord, through the bequest of John Cuming (1792). About twenty-five pieces of Bartlett's domestic hollowware are known, including canns, porringers, creampots and a unique miniature teapot. The other forms with Bartlett's mark include teaspoons, tablespoons, ladles and shoe buckles. 
