I'm sure many here have seen mourning rings mentioned in wills, with varying values attached to them. A colleague of mine has excavated one dated 1775, which you can see pictured here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-27810231 and for real in his exhibition: http://www.divingintodurham.com/ We are trying to track down information about the lady commemorated, and I'm hoping that if I can work out the price of this type of mourning ring it might give a clue as to the family's social status. Does anyone have any ideas where to look to establish its value in 1775? Best wishes Andrew -- Andrew Millard - A.R.Millard@durham.ac.uk Chair, Trustees of Genuki: www.genuki.org.uk Maintainer, Genuki Middx + London: homepages.gold.ac.uk/genuki/MDX/ + ../LND/ Academic Co-ordinator, Guild of One-Name Studies: www.one-name.org Bodimeade one-name study: community.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/genealogy/Bodimeade/ My genealogy: community.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/genealogy/

What an interesting question While widespread mourning jewellery has always looked to me as a potentially specialist manufacture and I wonder if it was produced in the 18th century in London and other centres and distributed to Jewellers across the country (it would make sense being small light and valuable and probably essential as part of an 18th century jewellers stock). While I have several thousand of 18th century newspapers and while I've come across advertisements for mourning in general I've never seen a price quoted for jewellery - but it might be worth a look through the British Newspaper Archive. Other options ... do any account books survive (possibly traceable through A2A ?) And last but far from least another line of enquiry - there are collectors of funeral ephemera (I gave a talk for the Goons at Nottingham earlier in the year and touched on this then)- you might want to send an email to the Ephemera Society - with luck it would be printed in their quarterly magazine for if anyone knows or point where to look this would be a good place to start ! Very Best Regards and good luck Richard Heaton -----Original Message----- From: MILLARD A.R. Sent: Friday, June 27, 2014 2:47 PM To: 'sog-uk@rootsweb.com' Subject: [SOG-UK] the price of mourning rings I'm sure many here have seen mourning rings mentioned in wills, with varying values attached to them. A colleague of mine has excavated one dated 1775, which you can see pictured here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-27810231 and for real in his exhibition: http://www.divingintodurham.com/ We are trying to track down information about the lady commemorated, and I'm hoping that if I can work out the price of this type of mourning ring it might give a clue as to the family's social status. Does anyone have any ideas where to look to establish its value in 1775? Best wishes Andrew -- Andrew Millard - A.R.Millard@durham.ac.uk Chair, Trustees of Genuki: www.genuki.org.uk Maintainer, Genuki Middx + London: homepages.gold.ac.uk/genuki/MDX/ + ../LND/ Academic Co-ordinator, Guild of One-Name Studies: www.one-name.org Bodimeade one-name study: community.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/genealogy/Bodimeade/ My genealogy: community.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/genealogy/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SOG-UK-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message