By ERIC C. RODENBERG
AntiqueWeek Associate Editor

FREEBURG, Pa. — The financial woes of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church may have been averted decades ago if two of its three pieces of pewter had not been stolen. The church is now selling its last remaining piece of pewter hoping the sale price will offset its debt.

However, it is unlikely the Johann Christoph Heyne chalice the church is now selling will bring anywhere near the record $248,000 that a William Will flagon the church once owned made at a 2007 auction.

Unfortunately, the church only received $2,834 for that flagon in a 1975 deal worked out by the attorney the church had retained at the time.

The other stolen piece – a William Will chalice — is now at Winterthur and the church received nothing for it. The problems for the church came about because no one knows exactly when the pieces were stolen, who stole them, or how many people the two pieces of pewter went through before finding their current homes.

What is known is that St. Peter’s once owned three of the most important pieces of Colonial American pewter in existence.

The two stolen pieces were donated to the church in 1795 by Andreas Morr, and Catharina Elisabetha Morr. The Morr chalice and flagon were used during church communion services until 1880.

From there, they were at some point “wrapped in rags and stored in an old steamer chest down in the basement,” according to Clayton Morr, an ancestor to the original donor of the pieces.

The communion set was not discovered missing until 1969 and while authorities were called in to investigate, little was learned about what happened or when. Church minutes reveal that in May of 1969, the congregation learned that the Will chalice was at the Winterthur Museum in Wilmington, Del.

The attorney said the DuPont family, founders of Winterthur, had purchased the chalice at some point for $6,000.

The minutes do not reveal who the DuPonts bought the chalice from or when the purchase took place.

In October of 1969, the church’s attorney advised them to forget about attempting to regain the chalice from Winterthur. In September of 1975, information on the flagon turned up. The church’s attorney William Koch of Milton, Pa., discovered the flagon had been sold to at least two different antique dealers, one in Ohio and one in Connecticut before being inherited by Charles Swain 1964. In November 1975, church minutes record, “Swain offered $3,500 for the flagon, but he (Koch) was holding out for $5,000.”

In an effort to have clear title to the flagon, Swain paid the church $4,250 in December 1975. After attorney fees, the church received $2,834.

In 2007, Swain’s collection of pewter sold in three sessions. As a pewter collector for 50 years, the series of auctions was a highlight among collectors, with several rare Colonial pieces crossing the block.

Still, it was the St. Peter’s William Will flagon that brought the most record-breaking thunder when it sold for $248,000 at an auction conducted by Northeast Auctions in Portsmouth, N.H.

Morr and another family member had hoped to buy back their ancestor’s flagon and return it to the church. They raised $50,000 for the purchase.
“We didn’t stand a chance,” the 74-year-old Morr said.

“Why, they had gone beyond our $50,000 in about three bids. Before we knew it – it went really fast, maybe 20 seconds or so – the piece was sold.”
An anonymous phone bidder bought the flagon. Morr wrote a letter to the auctioneers to see if the family could find out who was the successful bidder.
“We were hoping a museum might have bought it, so at least the family could see it,” Morr said.

“In return, we could present them with the provenance of what the family knows about the flagon.”

However, they never received a response.

Morr, and his contemporary family members, have never seen the flagon.
“For us, it’s a historical part of our family,” he said.

“But, it doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to St. Peter’s. Andreas Morr gave it to the church as an act of charity … We see it as an unfortunate situation. For someone to pay such a price for it, he must have a lot of money. Maybe he bought it for an investment … but to think that its standing in a private collection, of someone who probably has little historical interest is a sad situation … for us, the pieces go beyond money.”