! ! ")! homes and businesses in Southwark, situated so close to the Delaware River and the heart of Philadelphia’s shipbuilding industry, strongly suggest that William McMullin’s endeavors in carpentry involved the maritime construction trades. By January 2, 1777, Captain William McMullin was assigned to lead nearly one-hundred men in a militia company of Philadelphia’s “City Guards of the Southern District under the command of Lewis Nicola, Town Major.”95 The muster roll record also lists the name William McMullin, Jr., by then age fourteen, as a drummer. The senior McMullin’s name appears in the member rolls of the Carpenters Company for just two years, from 1768 to 1770.96 His two eldest sons names, Robert and William, Jr. both appear in the Philadelphia City Directories as either ship joiners or ship carpenters, trades they most likely learned from their father. William McMullin and his adult sons lived within blocks of one another. All except John were employed in Philadelphia’s ship building industry that burgeoned before and immediately after the Revolution, so close to their homes. The name McMullen’s [sic] Wharf appears as a location in the City Directory of 1811 and existed still earlier. An announcement of “The ship George Washington. Now lying at M’Mullin’s Wharf,” appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette of February 27, 1782.97 In a notice dated 1778, William McMullin offered the return of an assortment of men’s and women’s clothing and household textiles, “FOUND in a den of thieves (supposed to have been stolen)…. Any person having lost any of the above articles, are desired to apply to the subscribers or to William McMullin, Esq.”98 This is the first known mention of the term “esquire” attached to his name. ! ! #+! During 1779, America’s economic woes reached a crisis. To finance the Revolution, the Continental Congress and individual states repeatedly issued paper money. Without tax revenues and with the expense of its military forces, “…by 1779 the nation was awash in public paper,” and the value of a Spanish milled gold dollar was a hundred Continental dollars.99 In the spring of 1779, more than seven-hundred American men sent to Congress a petition expressing their grave concerns over … the Decay of Credit and the Depreciation of Money emitted on the faith of the United States. We have long viewed the melancholy Approaches of this Evil in silent Agony, but the rapidity with which it has lately increased and the threatening Aspect which it now bears to everything valuable and precious to us, constrain us to speak. That if possible this Torrent which is sweeping away our Liberties, Happiness, and Integrity in one common Ruin may be stopped.100 Among those Philadelphians whose names appear together as subscribers with William McMullin, are his relatives, colleagues, and neighbors John Ord, brothers Jehu and Manuel Eyre, George Ord, William Linnard, and Stephen Beasley, all engaged in either house carpentry, building ships, or maritime trade. The signatures of silversmiths William Hollingshead, William Ball, Abraham Dubois, and Richard Humphreys appear in proximity to William McMullin’s, perhaps because they all lived in Southwark. The silversmiths’ names in this document could also suggest clues to the master of the young John McMullin who would have been apprenticed in 1779 at the age of fourteen. Consideration of Possible Masters: Born in 1728 in Rocky Hill, New Jersey, William Hollingshead worked from 1754 to 1785, the year that McMullin likely sold a dish cross to General Washington. Hollingshead retired to Bucks County in 1785, where he died in 1808. His shop was ! ! #*! located at the corner of Arch and Second Streets. Hollingshead and William McMullin were the same age within one year.101 William Ball was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1729, the same year as William McMullin. ,-!./0!/!.123456!0478-2094:;!<219!*'%$!:1!*'("!45!=;47/>-7?;4/! <219!;40!0;1?!/:!@125-2!1<!A215:!/5>!B/23-:!C:2--:0D!E<:-2!*''%F!;-!2-71@/:->!:1!:;-! 512:;!04>-!1<!B/23-:!C:2--:D!,-!died in 1810. It’s unlikely that he would have taken on John McMullin as an apprentice due to his retirement four years before McMullin would have been fully trained.102 Abraham Dubois is thought to have been born around 1751. Though trained as a silversmith, he carried on an extensive business in trade goods in the West Indies. Dubois is listed in the city directories from 1785 to 1793 and from 1798 to 1802. He trained his son Abraham Dubois, Jr. as a silversmith and left him all of his tools when he died. Dubois’s papers stored at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania likely would have yielded any additional apprenticeship indentures. Dubois died in 1807.103 Quaker silversmith Richard Humphreys was born February 13, 1750 on the Tortola.104As a boy, his parents sent him to apprentice in Wilmington, Delaware with another Quaker, Bancroft Woodcock (1732-1815), from approximately 1764 to 1771. Humphreys’s ad that ran in 1771 in the Pennsylvania Gazette still places him briefly in Wilmington after completing his apprenticeship though by 1772 he and his first wife Hannah Elliott had moved to Philadelphia where she died the following year. When an ad in the September 23, 1772 Pennsylvania Gazette announced Philip Syng, Jr.’s (1703- 1789) retirement, it also introduced Humphreys as successor to both Syng’s business and his residence at 54 High Street.105 He married Ann Morris in 1774. ! ! #"! Certainly old enough to have been McMullin’s master, Humphreys’s influence does not appear evident in McMullin’s work, in particular since Humphreys had begun making silver in the neoclassical style before the Revolution. Both Humphreys and McMullin were ardent abolitionists; Humphreys’s estate earmarked a $10,000 gift to establish The African Institute in 1837, a school for African American young people to offer them training in mechanic arts, trades, and agriculture in Philadelphia. It is known today as Cheney University, the oldest historically Black college or university. Silversmith John Myers completed an apprenticeship with Humphreys that began in 1773 and then plied his trade in Philadelphia from 1785 to 1804 the years that his name appeared in the city directories.106 Among these four silversmiths William Hollingshead may be the closest choice to possibly be considered McMullin’s master. He and McMullin’s father were virtually the same age and likely would have been acquainted in Philadelphia before the Revolution. Hollingshead retired in 1785; the year John McMullin began his working career. Hollingshead could easily have trained young McMullin, but without a great deal of silver to be compared, this is simply a calculated guess. John David (1736-1794) could be another silversmith to be considered as McMullin’s possible master. Three clues point toward this relationship: the location of David’s shop on Front Street was within two shop fronts of McMullin’s shop throughout his life after 1794; David’s date of death in 1794 and burial in the graveyard of Third Presbyterian Church where the McMullins worshipped until 1814; and David’s French Huguenot ancestry and partnership with his brother-in-law, fellow Huguenot Daniel Dupuy from 1763 until 1772. A French master may have influenced McMullin’s use of ! ! ##! the rivets that appear frequently as a step in a soldering technique in a good number of pieces he produced after 1800.107 (Explanation of the technique appears on pages 53 and 54.) To date, no records have been discovered that shed any definitive light on who trained McMullin. A handful of Philadelphia silversmiths placed advertisements during the Revolution including William Ball from 1752 to 1782; Henry Guest Brown in 1777; John David between 1763 and 1777; George Dowig from 1770 to 1778, Abraham Dubois in 1778; John Jenkins in 1777; William Pinchon in 1779; William Seal, Jr. in 1775; and Thomas Shields from 1769 to 1776.108 By the end of the Revolution in 1781, John McMullin had reached the age of sixteen and would produce his first datable piece of silver by 1785. One further possibility can be considered. Since he died prior to the publication of the first city directories, the trade of George Hutton, son of John Strangeways Hutton and John McMullin’s first father-in-law, is unknown. Within the cemetery at Third Presbyterian Church, the burial plots of John Strangeways Hutton and William McMullin are nearly side-by-side. The senior Hutton, who worked with Joseph Richardson, Sr. when he first arrived in Philadelphia, could have assisted in arranging an apprenticeship. William McMullin’s Appointment as Agent for Confiscated Estates: On March, 1, 1780, the Pennsylvania Gazette announced William McMullin’s appointment as, “… Agent for confiscated estates for the county of Philadelphia, in the room of Thomas Hale.”109 In this capacity he is mentioned in three actions, two involving the forfeiture of land and one to secure a tenant for a large and grand estate of historic note. In the case of the two forfeitures, both notices state, “…to prevent all difficulties ! ! #$! with respect to payment, the Agents will attend at the house of William McMullin, Esq.; below the New Market,” thereby agreeing with the location of his residence shown in the 1790 Census. William McMullin was listed at dwelling 19 on Vernon Street. His home was not far from the waterfront and below the New Market, built in 1745 on South Second Street between Pine and Cedar Streets, six blocks south of Philadelphia’s earlier market on High Street.110 In November of 1780, William McMullin announced in the Pennsylvania Gazette, “TO BE LETT, THAT elegant Seat called MOUNT PLEASANT, about four miles from Town, on the Wissahickon road, with or without the Farm belonging thereto.