Now, I want to tell you of a day in late Summer in the waning years of the 19th Century.

Great Grandfather’s livelihood: the hop plant.

In those days the fortunes of my branch of the family in America, descended from Richard Wrisley, one of thirteen men who founded Hartford, Connecticut and who, himself, claimed the Earl of  Southhampton,  Sussex, intimate of Shakespeare, as an ancestor, were centered in Waterville, New York, “The Hop Capitol of the World” — hops, humulus lupulus, being an important ingredient in the fermentation of beer and ale, imparting a bit of bite to the brew’s taste.

On this important day, my Great Grandfather rose before dawn, without waking his wife.  He dressed for the day,  as any man would who had important business to transact, and boarded the milk train bound for New York City, now as then 166 miles distant by railroad.

The purpose of his mission was inside the one quart shiny metal milk pail he carried.  Therein a spray of hops, picked the evening before, and packed in ice for the trip, was sealed with a round metal lid.

Arriving in Jersey City, the railway terminus, Great Grandfather took the Erie-Lackawanna ferryboat across the Hudson River and then made his way to Tiffany & Co, Jewelers, then located a 15 Union Square West in downtown Manhattan.

Here in Tiffany’s shop the jewelers unpacked the precious spray- stem, leaves, and strobiles.   they interpreted the plant’s shape into a  design and created wonderful earrings and a brooch with stem and leaves of yellow gold and the strobiles  fabricated in white (platinum.)  As a celebration of the hop harvest these tokens of affection were meant to be a surprise for his wife.

The hop plant as a symbol of affection

Tiffany’s custom designed the earrings and a brooch for my great grandfather’s wife, Rena

Many years later, nothing much is as it was back then.  But for some reason those earrings and brooch in their original ‘Tiffany blue box’  and the story that went with them, came down to my father from Aunt Lillian.

And one hundred years from the time my Great Grandfather had the hop jewelry made my father gave them, still in the ‘blue box,’ to my Cousin Jay’s wife when both were East on a visit.  She now wears them on appropriate occasions back home in Lubbock, Texas.