Thomas Best Family of Silversmiths

The Best Family of Silversmiths
By Jane Sikes, Antiques magazine, July 1974

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Englishman Thomas Best and his family settled in the Western Territory, where four of them were silversmiths, jewelers, watchmakers and clockmakers.Between 1802 and 1859 members of the family advertised extensively in the newspapers of Cincinnati and the nearby towns where they lived and worked.

Following the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which ended the danger of Indian attacks, settlers began to move in great numbers into Cincinnati, then the gateway to the West.Thomas Best Sr. immigrated from Ilminster, England, in 18011 with his wife, Sarah Greenham, whom he had married in 1775 2, their five children, and his nephew, Henry Best.He was evidently a man of some prosperity, for when he left England he sold his house and garden and a good deal of household furniture 3.He lived for a while in Philadelphia with his wife and youngest son Robert before coming to Cincinnati in 1803 4.Best died there on May 13, 1813, at the age of sixty-six 5.Sarah Best died in Lebanon, Ohio, in 1828.

The Bests had three sons, Samuel, Thomas Jr., and Robert; and two daughters, Ann and Sarah.Ann married James Dover in Ilminster and they lived in Cincinnati.After his death, she married Joshua Lawton and lived in Lebanon, Ohio.Sarah Best married John Prell and also lived in Lebanon.

In March 1811, Robert Best advertised that he had begun watchmaking in Hamilton, Ohio 6.By 1812, he was back in Cincinnati, working first with his brother Samuel, then in the latter part of the year with Jacob Deterly 7.In November 1813, Robert and Enos Woodruff went into business together 88, and in 1815, they were joined by Jacob Deterly and the firm became known as Robert Best and Company 9.This partnership lasted until May 1817, when Robert Best once more went into partnership with his brother Samuel 10.In 1818, he sold his business to the Cincinnati firm of Jeffrey Seymore, Othneil Williston, and G. L. Benson.Having always been interested in the natural sciences, he accepted the position of curator of Cincinnati’s Western Museum, a collection of wildlife, minerals, fossils, and antiquities of the Western Territory that had been formed in 1819.During his three years at the museum he continued to advertise that he could “repair all kinds of Philosophical and Mathematical Instruments – all the higher order of Time Keepers” 11.In 1823, he went to Transylvania University in Kentucky to lecture on pharmaceutical chemistry, and in 1826 he became a licensed physician and surgeon 12.He died at the age of forty, having practiced medicine for only five years.

When Thomas Best Sr. immigrated to Philadelphia in 1801, his sons Thomas Jr. and Samuel and their cousin Henry traveled on to Bourbon (now Paris), Kentucky.There Samuel went into partnership with Thomas Phillips, who lived on high Street between Fourth and Fifth streets 13.It is possible that Samuel and Thomas Jr. had joined the rest of the family in Cincinnati by 1802 14.At all events, in 1806 and 1807 Thomas Jr. and Isaac Van Nuys were in partnership as silversmiths and clockmakers 15.In 1808, Thomas moved to Lebanon, Ohio, where he continued to make and repair watches and clocks, silver, and jewelry.He last advertised in the Lebanon papers in 1826 16 and died in 1844.His descendants later had a jewelry shop at 33 Main Street in Dayton, where several generations of the family continued the business until 1924.

Thomas Jr.’s eldest son, Samuel, was the most prosperous of the three.When he first came to Cincinnati from Bourbon, Kentucky, in 1802, he lived and worked in a log house at the corner of Front and Walnut Streets 17.There he repaired watches, assembled clocks, and made silverware.On December 13, 1804, Samuel Best married Eunice Winkley 18, and for that occasion he made a number of spoons marked S. BEST on the back of the handle and inscribed on the front ESB, for Eunice and Samuel Best.



The following year Best began advertising weekly in local newspapers, noting that he was “next door to Mr. Anderson’s Tavern on Front Street. 19”At the beginning of 1806, he advertised for “a smart active lad of about 12 or 14 years of age wanted as an apprentice to the clock and watch making and silversmith business.A boy from the country would be preferred. 20”At the same time, Best was also mending seals, rings, and thimbles 21.

Samuel did not advertise between 1808 and July 1812, at which time he announced that he and his brother Robert were going into partnership and would be located on “Main Street, next door to T. C> Barker and Co.’s Drug Store” 22.Their inventory included furniture locks and keys, a patented silver watch made by Litherland, Whiteside and Company of Liverpool, England, as well as other timepieces and silverware 23.However, as we have have seen, their partnership was short lived, for it was dissolved in November, 1812.

In 1814, Cincinnati was no longer a small pioneer town, but had entered a time of prosperity and inflation.French classes for men wer eheld in the evenings at Samuel Best’s house at the corner of Fourth and Cider streets; for ladies who wished to learn “this useful and fashionable language” the lessons were given in the afternoon from two until four 24.The town’s first formal theater, the Shellbark, opened in 1814, and in that year Samuel Best is known to have played the violin there 25.In the advertisements he ran from January 22 to August 13, 1814, Best mentions that he is once again at his Front and Walnut streets establishment and he apologizes for having been so often absent from his business while making engraving plates for the banks 26.The variety of silver forms he offered indicates that Best was a rich man by this time, to have been able to buy the objects in the East of buy the silver and coin to make them.The military equipment he offered reflects the continuation of the War of 1812:“Silver Tumblers and Rummers / Milk and Soup Ladlers [sic] / Sauce and Cream do / Mustard, Marrow, Table and/ Tea Spoons, Sugar Tongs, etc. / also / Swords, Dirks, Mounting for Belts / and other Military Equipement, / Clocks, Watch Seals and Keys together / with Saddle mounting of every / description, Silver or Plated.” 27

Another indication of Cincinnati’s growing prosperity is the fine clock Samuel Best assembled for Casper Hopple, who came to the city in 1806.

From May 1817 until October 1818, Samuel and his brother Robert were again in partnership 28.Samuel does not appear in Cincinnati’s first directory, issued in 1819.He died in 1859 and his gravestone may still be seen in Rising Sun, Indiana, where he lived for many years with his third wife, Mary Crouch 29, while continuing to practice silversmithing and clockmaking. 30

The Bests were among the first and certainly the finest silversmiths and clockmakers in the Western Territory.It is hoped that more examples of their work as well as that of others working at the same time and place will turn up.


Author’s Notes/Bibliography:

1.       Samuel Best’s diary, in the possession of Doris Duprez of Vevay, Indiana.
2.       Best family records compiled by Mrs. Wilbur Shuey, a direct descendant of Thomas Best, Jr.I would like to express my gratitude to Paul Brunner of Dayton, Ohio, for these records.
3.       Advertisement for an auction held July 31, 1801, now in Warren County Historical Society, Lebanon, Ohio.
4.       Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences, ed. Daniel Drake, M.D. and James Finley, M.D., Cincinnati, 1831, p. 612.
5.       Cincinnati, Western Spy, May 23, 1813.
6.       Cincinnati, Liberty Hall, March 27, 1811.
7.       Western Spy, September 4, 1813.Several delicate coin-silver spoons made by them are in a private collection in Dayton, and one is in the Cincinnati Art Museum.
8.       Liberty Hall, October 19, 1813.
9.       Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, May 26, 1817.
10.       Western Spy, May 9, 1817.
11.       Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, June 22, 1822.
12.       Western Journal,p. 614
13.       Noble W. and Lucy F. Hunt, The Silversmiths of Kentucky, Louisville, 1954, p. 72, and information provided by Mrs Wade Hampton Whitely of Paris, Kentucky.
14.       The evidence for this is a spoon, now in the Ohio Historical Society, which as marked T and S BEST.It was made for John Johnston around the time of his marriage in 1802 and was found in his home while it was being restored in 1970.
15.       Western Spy and Miami Gazette, September 23, 1806.
16.       Lebanon Western Star, September 2, 1826.
17.       Edwin Henderson (pen name, Conteur), “The Modest Origin of a Great City”, Cincinnati Enquirer, December 12, 1910, p. 2.A license to make silverware issued to Samuel Best in 1815, now at the Cincinnati Historical Society, states that the log house on the corner of Front and Walnut belonged to the horticulturist Nicholas Longworth (1782-1863).However, Cincinnati Courthouse records indicate that the property was owned by Samuel Best until 1838.
18.       Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Mercury, December 15, 1804.
19.       Ibid., February 19, 1805
20.       Western Spy and Miami Gazette, Cincinnati, January 1, 1806.
21.       See receipts made out to James Findlay, Torrence manuscripts, Cincinnati Historical Society.
22.       Western Spy, July 11, 1812.
23.       Liberty Hall, November 3, 1812.
24.       Ibid., December 6, 1814.
25.       Charles Theodore Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati and Representative Citizens, Chicago, 1904, p. 468.
26.       A note pressed from one of these plates is in the Rowe collection at theCincinnati Historical Society.
27.       Western Spy, January 22, 1814.
28.       Ibid., May 9, 1817.
29.       Samuel Best’s will states that he had five children by Eunice Winkley, three by his second wife, Mary Green, and a stepson by Mary Crouch (Will Record 2, pp. 70-77, in the clerk’s office of Ohio County, Indiana).
30.       History of Dearborn County and Ohio County, Indiana, Chicago, 1885, pp. 364, 371, 375.I am grateful to Mrs. Fletcher Hufford of Patriot, Indian, for bringing this book to my attention.