Name/Title
Ring, MourningEntry/Object ID
1963.6Tags
Red, White, and "I do"Description
2 - Rings: Explanatory letter written by Nellie P. Draper, mother of donor. 2 rings engraved with deaths heads - since bride was in mourning for her father. 1 bears date 1760, also B. Bent - AE 44 - letter explains loss, finding of rings on "the old place under the hill" that had been in the Rutter family from John Rutter (1638) (now Eckler - Bow Rd.)Context
Between the two front windows are two mourning rings commemorating the death of Beulah Rice Bent in 1760. When her daughter, Elizabeth, married Micah Rice in 1762, she had in her possession two rings-a large gold one and a small copper alloy one, each engraved with a death head. Elizabeth’s daughter married Joseph Rutter and lived on Bow Road. Their daughter Eunice took them to the barn and lost them in the hay. Only one was found. The farm was sold and later Leonard Drury bought it. One day his daughter, Emma, (born 1844), wore a strange ring to school. Her teacher, Lydia Rutter Draper saw it and believed it was the one her mother had lost years ago. According to Hudson’s Annals of Wayland and Lydia Rutter Draper:
“One day Emma Drury stopped after school to work on the blackboard. As she reached her hand up on the board from the place where I was sitting, I noticed a ring with a skull on it, the facsimile of one my mother sometimes wore and the mate to which she had told me was lost in the barn. In an instant I had crossed the room and seizing it almost frantically took and claimed it as my own. She then told me the history…and how she had worn it to school that day for sport, but as it was no heirloom to her, she was quite willing to exchange it…and this is how after sixty years more or less the ring came again to its rightful owner.”
In 1963, the rings were donated to the Wayland Historical Society by John Rutter Draper.Cataloged By
Pollitt, FranAcquisition
Accession
1963.6Source or Donor
Draper, John RutterAcquisition Method
GiftRelationships
Related Person or Organization
Person or Organization
Draper, John Rutter, Bent, Beulah Rice, Rice, Micah, Draper, Lydia Rutter, Rice, Elizabeth, Drury Page, Emma Turner