- Date: 1894
- Place: California Midwinter International Exposition, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
- Object: Small ruby-stained glass cream pitcher, engraved “K. Sharmer” on one side and “Midwinter Fair 1894” on the other
- Passed down: probably from Laura Sharmer Sager (“Aunt Larry”) to her daughter Catherine Sager Briscoe; Catherine to Jay Sharmer; after Jay’s death, from Nancy to Laurel Sharmer
From the family
“Have you seen this little pitcher? Nancy gave it to me after Jay died. Catherine Briscoe gave it to Jay. It says ‘K Sharmer’ on one side and ‘Midwinter Fair 1894’ on the other.”
Laurel Sharmer
Notes & context
The fair. The California Midwinter International Exposition, the “Midwinter Fair,” was San Francisco’s first world’s fair. It ran in Golden Gate Park from 27 January to 4 July 1894 and drew more than two million visits. Its art building grew into today’s de Young Museum, and its Japanese Village became the Japanese Tea Garden.
The glass. The pitcher is ruby-stained souvenir glass. It was pressed in clear glass, the top band was painted with a stain that turned red when the glass was fired a second time, and then a name was engraved through the red to the clear glass beneath. Personalized ruby glass had become the souvenir of the moment at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, and at the Midwinter Fair you could choose a piece and have a name cut into it. Museums hold near-twins from the same fair, such as a little cream pitcher in the Alameda Museum engraved “Mary Anderson, Mid Winter Fair, 1894.”
Who was K. Sharmer? In 1894 there were two in the family at Sidney: Katie, Joseph’s wife, then about thirty, and their daughter Kathryn, aged six. Souvenirs like this were often bought for children, and just as often for relatives who stayed home, so the pitcher alone can’t tell us whether any of the Sharmers made the trip to San Francisco. Joseph certainly knew California, having spent sixteen years there before he moved east.
Where it was kept points to Katie. Catherine Briscoe, who gave the pitcher to Jay, was Catherine Sager, born in 1910, the daughter of Katie’s eldest child, Laura (“Aunt Larry”). Laura was twenty-one when her mother died in 1907, and the pitcher came down through her side of the family, not Kathryn’s. That makes it most likely a keepsake of her mother’s that Laura took with her, first to Denver and then to San Francisco, where Catherine later lived on Octavia Street, the street where Aunt Larry had lived. It isn’t proof, but it fits.
How it survived. Laurel recalls that when Catherine Briscoe died, her will ordered everything of value sold for her Eastern Star sisters and everything else burned. The family memorabilia she held was lost with it; her executor later apologized to Laurel for their destruction. This little pitcher survived only because Catherine had already given it to Jay. The family remembers Catherine as a hard, unkind woman, and her decision to have the family’s history burned rather than passed on has never been forgiven.
See also: Katie O’Connor Sharmer: From Quincy to Sidney · Joseph Sharmer I · Aunt Kathryn
