Antiques Roadshow Detours

Adam: Are you proud of the work we do on Antiques Roadshow?

Marsha: You know it Adam. You know how proud I am. I am beyond proud

Adam: Are you proud of the fact checking we do?

Marsha: Most of the time. (laughing)

Adam: Alright, good answer.

 Adam Narration: As a fact checker on Antiques Roadshow, it's my job to make my boss Marsha Bemko proud, or mostly proud, by making sure everything our fans hear during an appraisal is right. But for our appraisers, saying things right, on set, in front of the bright lights and expensive cameras, can be a tough challenge. It’s a pretty intense job.

Crew:  Now that's the last time either of you're gonna look at the camera at all.

Appraisal 1 - Guest: It’s hard to remember not to look at the camera.

Appraisal 1 - Appraiser: Now I feel hot all of a sudden. I know these lights don't kick out in any heat. Maybe it's just mental.

Crew: Okay, great. Standby, please.

Adam Narration: You're up early assessing dozens and dozens of objects that pass by your table.

 Appraisal 2 - Appraiser: Do you want me to just describe the whole thing?

Appraisal 3 - Appraiser : Oops. Uh, this just fell off. Chris?

Nick Dawes: And they don't stop coming often until six 7:00 PM at night.

Appraisal - Nick: Can I de-mic?

Appraisal - Crew: Uh, I'm not sure yet. . We're gonna let you go soon.

Adam Narration: Appraising everything on the fly like that takes deep knowledge, decades of experience, and passion - as Nick Dawes of Heritage Auctions will tell you.

Nick Dawes: I've worked with Roadshow since the very first season, 30 years this year. And I love it. I tell people my specialty is anything breakable. Glass, ceramics, decorative arts, and silver.

Adam Narration: And it’s that shiny stuff we’re interested in today.

Nick Dawes: On a typical day at the silver table, we see a great deal of silver that has no value beyond the value of the metal itself. There's quite a lot of disappointment at the silver table.

Adam Narration: That's usually when people bring in the more common British silver. But every so often, if you’re lucky, something far harder to pin down turns up.

Appraisal - Guest: This silver is from my aunt's family. I think it's American.

Nick Dawes: American Colonial Silver, which we see rarely, and is typically unmarked or very simply marked.

Adam: Which is why in 2023 in Akron, you were very excited to see some pieces.

Nick Dawes: I'd never seen anything like that at Roadshow. It was a pair of what we call canns, spelled C-A-N-N. Cann is an old English word. It means a container or drinking vessel. It looks like a tankard. Beautifully engraved. The kind of thing that collectors dream about.

Adam Narration: But when collectors and appraisers start to dream, the objects' creation myth can take on a life of its own.  

Marsha: We have had the best of our best appraisers, who passionately believed what they were saying that day was true, come back and tell us, “oops, I was wrong.”

Adam: But sometimes they leave themselves no wiggle room. They're adamant that they are correct.

Marsha: They believe it.

Adam: They fell in love with a story. And today we have a doozy.

Adam Narration: I'm Adam Monahan, and this is Antiques Roadshow Detours. Today:  Not What you Hurd.

Adam Narration: In this episode we're going to unpick the many stories, half-truths, and wishful legends wrapped around two tricksy tankards. Nick takes us through the initial clues.

Appraisal - Nick: There is a date on the bottom you can see is 1811, but they predate that. both of them have the same little discreet stamp and it just says Hurd, H-U-R-D. And Hurd is the surname of a family of silversmiths who were active in Boston throughout most of the 18th century

Nick Dawes: One of the best known, if not the best known silversmiths in Boston.

Appraisal - Nick: started by Jacob Hurd over 300 years ago. These are the work of his son, Nathaniel Hurd, who operated until the late 1770s.

Adam Narration: Nathaniel was known as a master engraver.

Nick Dawes: And engraved on the front opposite the handle was an armorial device.

Appraisal - Nick: There's a cartouche with symbols inside it, which reference the family. An American family, in this case. A British family would have a coat of arms.

Appraisal - Guest: Mm-hmm.

Appraisal - Nick: Above the cartouche on both of them is a sailing vessel, and on this one, the flag flying on the foremast of the sailing vessel is a British flag. It's the Union Jack.

Appraisal - Guest: Mm-hmm.

Appraisal - Nick: An American family doing business with a British family in the Colonial period. This was a period of course when there was massive transatlantic trade,

Adam Narration: Mainly fish, rum, molasses, lumber, and yes - people. By the early 1700s, Boston was a major Atlantic port - nearly 200 voyages in and out of Boston were directly tied to the slave trade, and this money made the town rich. But it also made people restless. Merchants and workers alike, were fed up of giving the Brits a slice of the pie. So let's dig into the seed of that discontent, because  to grasp the story of these Canns, we need to understand the  mood of the century they were cast in. And I know just the guy to do it.

Joel Bohy: My name is Joel Bohy. I work for Blackstone Valley Auctions and Estates. J. Bohy Historical consulting. And, I'm an appraiser of Arms and militaria, for Antiques Roadshow.

Adam: And for all extensive purposes, you're our “Revolutionary War guy.”

Joel Bohy: I'm wicked into the American Revolution.

Adam: Very much so.

Joel Bohy: I grew up in Concord. I lived right off the battlefield. As a 7-year-old, I'd be sitting up all night with my toy musket and little tricornered hat.

Adam Narration: That's cause’ this small town an hour from Boston was the tinderbox that sparked the American Revolution. Every year the locals - including little Joel - proudly celebrate their rebellious past. There's battle re-enactments, parades - it's really worth checking out. But how did it all start?

Joel Bohy: From 1765 up until 1774, the people of Massachusetts and other colonies, are getting upset about laws that are being imposed upon them from England…

Adam Narration:  No taxation without representation was the rallying cry, meaning the colonists were none too pleased about having no say on taxes being levied on them.

Joel Bohy: …and, by late 1774, they decide to break away and form their own illegal government, the Massachusetts provincial Congress, and they start to, stockpile stores…

Adam Narration: Not just any stores -they were gathering artillery, ammunition - and enough food to feed an army of 15,000 men -

Joel Bohy: …so the British marched out to concord to destroy those things on the night of April 18th.

Adam Narration: But the militias knew they were coming.

Joel Bohy: The first shots were fired at Lexington Green, sunrise on April 19th.

Adam Narration: The redcoats - as the Brits were called - are halted when local militia block the path to Concord. Shots ring out.Eight militia men are killed.The redcoats press on, upond arrival to Concord, they burn supplies that hadn’t been moved in time. Then, at the North Bridge, the fighting explodes into open battle.

Joel Bohy: And as the British are leaving Concord, they were attacked all the way back to Boston. And that basically begins the American Revolution. That's a quick and dirty version.

Adam: So it starts in Concord…

Joel Bohy: April 19th, 1775.

Adam Narration: Now remembered as Patriots’ Day, this moment made the divide unmistakable: Patriots pushing for colonists' rights, and Loyalists still backing the British Crown. Needless to say, in the lead-up to 1775, the colonial unity symbolized by the Union Jack on these Hurd canns was rapidly crumbling. Yet we didn't get to the other flags engraved on the canns. And, as appraiser Nick Dawes suggests, that detail may tell a very different story.

Nick Dawes: I looked very carefully at the armorials and the sailing vessel on one of them was flying the British flag, but the other one was not. It was flying flags that were simple horizontal stripes. And I wondered about this, and I didn't have a lot of time to think about it. This was happening more or less as we were taping it.

Appraisal - Nick: Can we look at it more closely?

Appraisal - Nick: I'm not sure about that exact date. How confident are you on that record?

Appraisal - Crew: I mean it, it's dot gov.

Nick Dawes: I discussed it with one colleague. I had a few minutes to do so.

Appraisal - Nick: It's not the British Ensign.

Appraisal - Crew: But, my gut was like, ah, I don't know. There's no stars.

Appraisal - Nick: No, no. But it's, it's,

Appraisal - Crew: But it's definitely American

Appraisal - Nick: It's 'cause it's basically someone saying up yours to the British, it's fabulous.

Nick Dawes: We identified that flag is potentially an early, patriotic American flag. A predecessor, in fact, to the Stars and Stripes.

Appraisal - Nick: That's it. That's what it is.

Crew: Yes. Let's say that.

Appraisal - Nick: The other one, somewhat intriguingly, has a flag on the foremast which looks suspiciously like, and I would be very surprised if this is not it, is a Sons of Liberty flag.

Nick Dawes: Who were a Boston group, the guys who threw the tea into the harbor

Adam Narration: Ah yes,  the infamous Boston Tea Party. That's when in 1773, hundreds of chests of British East India Company tea were dumped into the harbour in protest, about $32,000 worth back then , close to $2 million dollars today... probably the most expensive cup of tea ever refused. Many of the men behind it were members of the Sons of Liberty.

Nick Dawes: These were staunch patriots, as early as the late 1760s and they developed their own flag, which was flown on some American merchant ships.

Appraisal - Nick: Red stripes on a white background with no stars. That appears in 1775. So given all this intriguing information, I'd like to suggest a date of circa 1776. They were made in the Dawn of American independence, or you might say, in the Twilight of British colonial rule.

Nick Dawes: It's tiny, you know, it's a couple of millimeters, this flag. Not surprising that no one really noticed it.

Adam Narration: We know collectors love a good story - so will this little twist in the tale of our silver canns make them even more valuable?

Appraisal - Nick: Have you ever had them valued? Any idea? Gimme a wild guess.

Appraisal - Guest: 5,000.

Appraisal - Nick: If they were a conventional pair of Nathaniel Hurd Boston colonial silver canns, they would still be really valuable, but because of the engraving that they've got, the British flag on one and the Sons of Liberty on the other, I'm gonna say at least 10,000 and up to $15,000, as an auction value.

Appraisal - Guest: Fantastic. It's a lovely gift to me.

Appraisal - Nick: I agree.

Adam Narration: But what if our appraiser got it wrong? What if it isn't a Sons of Liberty flag? Does that throw our dating to the wind?

Nick Dawes: It's only gonna affect the dating of the engraving, possibly. There's no question that the tanker is of the colonial period. There's no question that the engraving is of the colonial period.

Adam Narration: Hmm, well, I’ve got a load of questions. We need to test this theory further and gather more clues to date our fancy tankards more precisely - are they really as rebellious as Nick thinks? After the break, we put our appraiser's theory under the microscope.

Adam Narration: On the show, our appraiser Nick Dawes didn’t have time to identify the family crest which was engraved on our canns, but I have a hunch that knowing who they were made for, will help unlock their secrets. And I’ve not one, but three revolutionary war buffs to help me weigh up all the evidence about our canns. Back to our fellow Roadshow appraiser, Joel, American revolution buff number one.

Joel Bohy: That is definitely the Vassall family crest.

Adam Narration: Boom! We have the family.

Joel Bohy: The Vassalls were from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also Jamaica.

Caitlin DeAngelis: It's a big, big, big family that's in Barbados and in Jamaica and in London. They owned plantations. They enslaved tens of thousands of people between the 1660s and the 1830s. But one branch of the family, came back to Boston. A guy named Leonard Vassall and his family who came back around 1720.

Adam Narration: That's  Caitlin DeAngelis a historian of early American material culture  - revolutionary war buff number two.

Caitlin DeAngelis: When I was a graduate student, I did an internship at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I got to know a lot about early New England silver.

Adam Narration: Bingo.

Caitlin DeAngelis: And, if you've noticed, the crest, the beautiful engraving on these canns , has all these puns in it, right? They're the Vassall family. So there's a vessel on the seal that's a pun for Vassall. And then there's also a cup, and a sun. The cup of “VA,” and the sun, a “SOL”... VA-SOL. So there's a pun in the seal.

Adam: Really? Oh my gosh. That's great to know. So an enormous family of wealth with descendants that just spread everywhere, almost like a royal family, but without being royals, just being rich slave owners.

Caitlin DeAngelis: Right.

Adam Narration: And just to give you an idea of how wildly rich they are - one of the possible owners of these canns…

Caitlin DeAngelis: William Vassall has a mansion in Boston and then he buys up all the property around him just to preserve his view of the harbor. Like, they're not rich like Dukes, but they're rich for Boston.

Adam Narration: OK so now that we know who the Vassalls are, how likely is it that they would own something marked with a Sons of Liberty flag? Joel?

Joel Bohy: The Vassall family were loyalists. Loyal to the King of England, and they were gonna stay that way. They left Boston. They skedaddled when things started to heat up here. I believe the Vassalls ended up in England.

Adam Narration: Let's see what revolutionary buff number three thinks - enter  JL Bell.

J. Bell: You are welcome to call me John.

Adam Narration: Owner of the Boston 1775 website, and author of The Road to Concord - he knows this stuff inside out -

J. Bell: They would not have had anything to do with the Sons of Liberty flag. Many of them, left, what would become the United States as early as possible, in the fall of 1775.

Adam Narration: Ah. Well that puts a pin in Nick's story - but I have an idea to run by Joel -

Adam: Is this a case where somebody might have gotten the Vassall as a gag gift?

Adam Narration: I mean, I'm clutching at straws here!

Adam: They got em’ a cann that had the Union Jack and a cann that has the Sons of Liberty?

Joel Bohy: No. They were not friendly to each other. You gotta remember, this is a time where the inevitable war is building . There's a lot going on in Boston, British soldiers are garrisoning the town. Blood's being drawn. People are being hurt.

Adam Narration: Ok ok, I suppose that was a dumb hypothesis. But if they aren't Sons of Liberty flags - what do Joel and John think the markings are?

Joel Bohy: It was just a way of filling in the flag at the time.

Adam: He probably like did the first one and like “that was a pain in the butt, on the second one, I'm just doing lines.”

J. Bell: That's what I think, that in an engraving, you can't really do a solid area, you can only do hash marks. Especially if it's so tiny. I would be dubious that this had any symbolic importance.

Adam Narration: Joel again -

Joel Bohy: I'm not trying to undervalue his work because the engraving on those canns is amazing. But you see some of the same techniques over and over again when you look at them enough. So I can understand why Nick would've thought that. But when you also look at powder horns of the period, they're carving them the same way.

Adam Narration: and there's one more thing -

Joel Bohy: With Jacob Hurd dying in 1758, the engraving was done prior to the formation of the Sons of Liberty. There's no way. They were the Sons of Liberty.

Adam: Yeah

Joel Bohy: It's the, Jacob Hurd, mark on the…. Nathaniel Hurd, I believe his mark is an N. Hurd. So they look like they were made sometime around 1758, before his death.

Nick Dawes: Not necessarily.

Adam Narration: Nick isn't convinced -

Nick Dawes: Nathaniel Hurd was primarily an engraver. Yes, there are silvers, pieces made by him marked, N. Hurd. But as an engraver, he wouldn't have identified his mark at all. He could well be Nathaniel Hurd engraving a piece of silver made earlier by his father.

Adam Narration: Curiouser and curiouser - so we haven't really moved forward with this one - but Joel has one more piece of evidence to give credence to his theory.

Joel Bohy: John Vassall, who lived in Cambridge, he built his house there about 1759. So the dates kind of fit together. Again, it would've been really hard for Nick to realize all of that in the very short amount of time.

Adam: It's not like we give you a week to research these things.

Nick Dawes: Uh, no. Quite the opposite. I had seen those canns for, maybe 10 minutes. I was very familiar with Hurd, but there was a lot of holes to fill in still.

Adam Narration: By the time we're ready to film the appraisal…

Nick Dawes: You've sort of forgotten what it was. It looks, I think, to the viewer, as if we've spent all day researching this thing, but we haven't.

Adam Narration: Eventually, unbeknownst to Nick, the canns end up at the same auction house he works for - Heritage Auctions - another appraiser there also dates them earlier to circa 1745, and lists them as canns made by Jacob Hurd with an estimate of $3000 - $5000.

Nick Dawes: We estimate everything very conservatively, which helps to get a good price. I suggested at the time that they were made in the late 1760s…

Adam Narration: That's in the original roadshow appraisal

Nick Dawes: I stand by that in terms of the engraving.

Adam Narration: Nick is not giving himself any wiggle room here - and he has one last suggestion for why Nathaniel Hurd could be covertly putting patriot flags on the Vassall family's silver -

Nick Dawes: Nathaniel Hurd, unlike his father, was a big patriot. He was very much a supporter of the American revolutionaries.

Adam Narration: The plot thickens…

Nick Dawes: He had a history of having run-ins with the red coats, in fact there was an incident where he was bayonetted by a red coat in 1770 in Boston. So

Adam: Really?

Nick Dawes: that would give him a good reason to be a patriot, by the way.

Adam: Definitely. Oh my gosh. So Nathaniel Hurd's father Jacob, was he a loyalist or…

Nick Dawes: Yes, he was a loyalist, yeah. From all accounts.

Adam: He was probably listening to all sorts of music his father didn't appreciate too.

Nick Dawes: I don't think it's beyond credibility that he added his own little touch to it. Especially considering it was commissioned by the Vassall family. It's a real sort of stick the knife in to put an American flag on a royalist family.

Adam Narration: But is this a case of letting the story we hope for take over what the object really has to say?

Nick Dawes: I'd like to think that that's what happened.

Adam: I've heard it as a filler device. But I do love the theory of Nathaniel Hurd, you know, like, covertly, I'm gonna do an homage to my guys, the Patriots.

Nick Dawes: Yeah, those two theories to me both hold water.

Adam Narration: I think I’m going to have to go back to John Bell on this one - is it possible that Nathaniel engraved the design after all, complete with his own subtle “up yours” to the Loyalists?

J. Bell: Nathaniel heard engraved a book plate for John Vassall showing the Vassall crest. So Nathaniel Hurd was definitely aware of this crest. There's another time they intersect in 1774.

Adam Narration:  The Brits had closed Boston's port until the East India Company was paid back for all their tea stewing in the harbour. So in retaliation, the  Committee of Correspondence - an organisation set up to gauge revolutionary feeling in the area - called for a full boycott of British goods.

J. Bell: A few dozen of the Boston merchants protested saying that the Committee of Correspondence was outta control, that this had never been approved, that this was an incendiary measure.

Adam Narration: And guess who two of the signatories against the boycott were?

J. Bell: John Vassall and Nathaniel Hurd. That is practically the only time Nathaniel Hurd's name appears in connection with politics of the day. And he was on the loyalist side.

Adam Narration: But what about being bayonetted?! Surely that would be enough to make him switch sides?

J. Bell: There is a moment in 1770 around the evening, in fact, of the Boston Massacre, March 5th, 1770, when soldiers and civilians in Boston were having fights. So there were, small gangs of men, roving the streets, looking for trouble

Adam Narration: here we go -

J. Bell: A witness said that a soldier's bayonet had touched the hat of somebody he thought was Hurd the engraver. This would be Nathaniel Hurd.

Adam Narration: Touched the hat? That's not quite bayonetted.. Plus after the Boston Massacre, when British soldiers fired on a mob of unruly Bostonians - killing five and wounding six - even the more conservative colonists started complaining about the soldiers. But not our Nathaniel.

J. Bell: Nathaniel Hurd doesn't make a complaint. He was not one of the people who was protesting against the British soldiers, even if his hat was touched. And honestly, we can't be certain that it was. So calling Nathaniel Hurd a patriot, I think is a big stretch.

Adam Narration: Sounds to me like Nick ended up on the wrong end of a game of telephone - and John has one last piece of evidence to lay the flag theory to rest once and for all.

J. Bell: I have never found a reference to a striped flag being used as an emblem of the Wigs or Patriots, or the resistance to the British taxes until the end of 1775 when the Continental Congress comes up with a Continental Navy flag and that has the 13 red and white stripes that we still have on our flag in America today.

Adam: Is that just stripes or does it have, a thing in the corner too

J. Bell: That has a canton, which is the British Union Jack. And again, that is saying in late 1775, we are still fighting for our rights as British citizens.

Adam Narration: Now that flag obviously wouldn't cut it once Independence was declared.

J. Bell: So in the following year, Francis Hopkinson came up with the Stars and Stripes. I think there are just too many iffy links in this chain of evidence, so that really, there's no chain at all.

Adam:  It sounds, uh, not right to me.

Adam Narration: And that’s all we can really do: weigh up the fragments and follow the evidence. The people who knew the full truth are long gone.  I can't help but feel a little disappointed that Nick’s rebellious-son tale doesn’t quite hold up. But now, with a clearer sense of when these canns were made, I'm looking for an even better story. And that’s where Caitlin DeAngelis comes in again.

Caitlin DeAngelis: I just finished working on a big project with the Longfellow House about the black history of that site.

Adam Narration: Longfellow House - built by one…

Caitlin DeAngelis: John Vassall.

Adam Narration: So Caitlin is the perfect person to help us try and guess which of the Vassalls could have owned the canns. The family patriarch, Leonard Vassall, returned to Boston  around 1720.

Caitlin DeAngelis: With their many, many, many, children. Something like 18 children.

Adam: So one of 18 kids might have had these canns?

Caitlin DeAngelis: Yeah, we can probably narrow it down a little bit more.

Adam Narration: Thank heavens. That's just too many Vassalls.

Caitlin DeAngelis: There were four sons who survived to adulthood and became prominent men in Massachusetts.

Adam Narration: One went back to Jamaica immediately after graduating so we'll discount him.

Caitlin DeAngelis: If they were made in the 1740s, there were three adult Vassall men who might have been the owners. Possibly William, possibly John, and possibly Henry. And all three of these brothers spent so much money. They spent tons and tons of money , right? 'cause they're getting income from their huge sugar plantations in Jamaica.

Adam Narration: The Vassall brothers were pretty notorious rakes - as they used to say.

Caitlin DeAngelis: They're always playing cards or racing or gambling or dancing.

Adam Narration: And we know this because it's all documented in their Harvard student records - they were in trouble a lot - the rowdy frat boys of their day.

Caitlin DeAngelis: Harvard actually changed a lot of its rules as soon as they graduated to reign in this group of very rich West Indian sugar planter boys who were totally out of control.

Adam Narration: So which of these rabble-rousing Vassall boys does Caitlin think could have owned the canns?

Caitlin DeAngelis: I think, if I had to guess, these canns probably belong to Henry Vassall, the youngest brother. He died in 1769. So after these canns were made, if they were made in the 1740s.

Adam Narration: Henry never made it to Harvard, but he definitely inherited his older brothers' wild ways.

Caitlin DeAngelis: Henry was a spendthrift. His brothers had to bail him out all the time. He died in such debt that his wife was completely penniless. And I went and I checked his probate inventory from when he died in 1769, ‘cause it has a list of his silver. And he had a lot of silver. And among those there is a pair of canns.

Adam Narration: Mic drop! What?!

Caitlin DeAngelis: It only says two canns. It doesn't describe them. It doesn't say with the Vassall crest. He definitely did own two canns and so since we know that the canns got out of the Vassall family I think it's possible that this silver might've been sold off in this financial catastrophe of Henry Vassall's death.

Adam Narration: Wow, Henry Vassall sounds like a strong contender for the owner of our silver canns. And there's one more reason why the Vassall’s story is so fascinating - Joel Bohy..

Joel Bohy: When George Washington arrived at the beginning of July, 1775, John Vassall’s house became his headquarters.

Adam Narration: Later, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lived there, it was where he wrote the famous poem 'Paul Revere’s Ride.' So the house built by the Loyalist John Vassall ended up as a patriotic landmark. He must be turning in his grave.

Adam: With that said, does that create an interest in this type of item?

Joel Bohy: Oh, certainly, yeah. Tying all of that history together, into the object, helps make it worth more money. It's got more of a story. Collectors are buying the object, but they're also buying the history with it.

Adam Narration: So even though the Sons of Liberty flag seemingly fell through, I still think these canns tell a story strong enough to stand on its own. Especially with the quincentennial on July 4th, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Adam: And have you seen from a market standpoint, an uptick in value of Revolutionary War material?

Joel Bohy: Yeah, there is an uptick in the market. And I think it will continue to do so for a while.

Adam Narration: That brings us neatly back to the money - so, Nick, what were our Hurd canns sold for?

Nick Dawes: They ultimately sold for a little over $10,000, as I recall. So my original estimation, was on the money.

Adam: He was spot on, on Hurd canns, colonial era, $10,000.

Marsha: Which I don't think is enough, for a colonial silver from the Hurd family. I'm surprised it's not more.

Adam Narration: I'm filling in my boss, Marsha Bemko.

Adam: It's when he started chasing stories around, that it got a little muddy.

Adam Narration: I go into all the red herrings, half-truths and  rabbit holes I've been down trying to fact-check these canns - the Sons of Liberty flag and Nathaniel Hurd the alleged Patriot.

Marsha: You know what I love about this story, Adam?

Adam: What?

Marsha: God bless you, Nick Dawes. I love you, but it's such an appraiser move to make up a whole fact to back up your theory. It's so appraiser-like. (laughing) Sorry out there, but you know…

Adam: In his defense, it was a story that got twisted along the way. The problem is there's no way to be a hundred percent certain 'cause anybody who really knows the answer died a couple hundred years ago.

Marsha: I’m tellin’ ya’! It's very inventive.

Adam: It’s a very inventive story that he fell in love with.

Marsha: He fell in love with it. You write it down enough times and somebody makes it true.

Adam Narration: Antiques Roadshow Detours is a production of GBH in Boston and distributed by PRX. This episode was written and produced by Louise Morris; edited and mixed by Tyler Morrisette; our Assistant Producer is Sarah Roach. Our senior producer is Ian Coss and Devin Maverick Robbins is the managing producer of podcasts for GBH. Marsha Bemko is the Executive Producer of Antiques Roadshow Detours, and I’m your host and co-executive producer, Adam Monahan. Our Theme music is “Once In A Century Storm” by Will Dailey from the album National Throat. Thank you all for listening, have a good one.