The saucepan is believed to have once been the property of Colonel William Preston, a burgess from Augusta County for a time before the Revolution. Preston is known to have purchased other articles from Geddy, and this particular piece of hollowware has come down through his descendants. One of the teaspoons marked "I·G" was found as long ago as 1930 at the site of the Palace kitchen, but its attribution to Geddy remained uncertain for nearly forty years. Then, in 1968, five more silver spoons were unearthed in the yard behind Geddy's house, two of them having the identical maker's mark. Another of the excavated group, a tablespoon, lacks any mark to show the maker, but does have the initials I^GE engraved on the handle, almost certainly those of James Geddy and his wife Elizabeth.
The teaspoon found at the Palace site is also engraved on the handle in the same fashion but with the initials C^AA. Christopher Ayscough was gardener at the Palace in the time of Governor Fauquier; his wife, Anne, was the governor's housekeeper. Fauquier thought so highly of Mrs. Ayscough's stewardship that he bequeathed her £250 sterling, a very generous sum. Possibly the silver teaspoon found beneath the brick floor of Anne Ayscough's kitchen was also a gift from the governor to her and her husband. How it got under the floor can only be guessed at.
St. Paul's Church in Edenton, North Carolina, possesses a silver chalice and paten bearing the inscription: "The Gift of Colonell Edward Mosely for the use [of] the Church in Edenton in the Year 1725." They show the initials AK and are of American make. George Barton Cutten, author of _The Silversmiths of Virginia_, does not hesitate, therefore, in ascribing them to Alexander Kerr of Williamsburg.
Two theories are at hand to explain why these and a few other articles are the only ones still in existence that can be attributed to Williamsburg craftsmen. One is that marauding Union soldiers carried away in their knapsacks all the Williamsburg silver they could lay hands on. This theory is most often advanced south of the Mason and Dixon Line and has some truth in it, to be sure. But not the entire truth, apparently. Cutten declares that there is little silver of southern origin in the northern states today--less than might be expected had there been no Civil War.