59. Cut Crystal Bowl

This pair of silver-rimmed colorless cut glass bowls was made in America in the “Brilliant Cut” style of deeply cut geometric motifs popular from 1876 to 1917. They were a wedding present for Julia Prout Vinson (1864-1950) when she married George Minor Anderson (1857-1927) in Rockville on November 19, 1901. Julia was the daughter of a judge, George was a lawyer.

The bowls were donated by the estate of their grandson. Julia Vinson was the daughter of John Thomas Vinson, a judge of the Montgomery County 6^th District Circuit Court from 1882-1895, and his wife Rachel Prout. Julia’s initials, “JPV,” are engraved on the interior of the rim.

George Anderson was a Justice Department attorney in Washington, commuting from Rockville, most likely on the streetcar line which opened in 1900. He was the youngest child of James Wallace Anderson and his wife Mary Minor. George’s father, who owned a farm north of Rockville (site of Montgomery College), was also a lawyer and a delegate to the Maryland Constitutional Convention in Annapolis in 1850. He worked as a Post Office Department auditor in Washington from 1854 to 1861, living in a city boarding house, but coming home often. He was dismissed for refusing to sign an oath of loyalty to the Union at the start of the Civil War. The family’s Southern sympathies were also demonstrated when George’s eldest brother, James, joined the Confederate cavalry.

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