1777 Battle of Germantown Medal

Battle of Germantown
BRONZE MEDAL, 1777

GERMAN / TOWN / OCTr. 4. 1777, in three lines, within wreath; engraved above inscription, 40 Rgt., rev., aerial view of the battle, a battery of cannon firing on Cliveden; engraved above, REWARD OF MERIT, in exergue, I.MILTON.F, 44.4 mm; pierced for suspension, the edge somewhat battered, otherwise fine

PROVENANCE
Glendining, 17 April 1964, lot 383 — John J. Ford Collection (Stack’s, 23 May 2006, lot 164)

LITERATURE
Betts 556; Tancred 332; Eimer 772

CATALOGUE NOTE
This is an English medal commemorating the occupation and defense of Benjamin Chew’s house Cliveden in Germantown, Pennsylvania, by troops of the 40th British Regiment under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Musgrave. Under withering fire, the regiment resisted Washington’s troops which ultimately withdrew; the interior of the house was later described by a Hessian officer “as looking like an abbatoir.” Chew (1722–1810) was a close friend of Washington whose 6th daughter, Harriet, married Charles Carroll of Homewood (the son of the last surviving signer of the Declaration, Charles Carroll of Carrollton).

The dies for the medal were cut by John Milton, who became the third engraver of the Royal Mint. Examples of the medal exist in both silver and bronze; the latter intended for enlisted men, some are engraved, as here, but more often not. The medals were struck into the nineteenth century as a regimental award medal, and this medal may date from that period.

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Lafayette's George Washington Mourning Ring

(The Marquis de Lafayette)
MOURNING RING FOR GEORGE WASHINGTON

Pink gold and black-and-white enamel ring with engraved profile portrait by Saint-Mémin under glass

LITERATURE
Miles, Saint-Mémin 920; see fig. 5:21 for an illustration of the ring in the Smithsonian

CATALOGUE NOTE
A sacred relic, worn by Lafayette in memory of his "adopted father," George Washington. The bond between Washington and Lafayette and the nations they helped to make was perhaps best expressed by President John Quincy Adams in a farewell address for Lafayette delivered at Washington, 7 September 1825: "We shall look upon you as always belonging to us, during the whole of your life, and as belonging to our children after us. You are ours by that more than patriotic self-devotion with which you flew to the aid of our fathers at the crisis of our Fate; ours in that unshaken gratitude for your services which is a precious portion of our inheritance; ours by that tie of love, stronger than death, which has linked your name for the endless ages of time with the name of Washington."

This unusually small engraved oval portrait (ca. 16 x 13 mm) was accomplished by Saint-Mémin in 1800, and while loose copies are known, it must have been intended to be set in mourning rings. Ellen G. Miles records seven other mourning rings in Saint-Mémin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America (1994). At the time of publication their locations were Yale University Art Gallery; a private collection (sold by Sloan & Co., 20 November 1977, lot 1444); Frank S. Schwarz and Son, Philadelphia; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Smithsonian Institution, Museum of American History; Dr. Joseph E. Fields; and unlocated.

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