1. Deacon Shem Drowne was a colonial coppersmith and tinplate worker in Boston, Massachusetts, and was America's first documented weathervane maker.
11 Facts About Shem Drowne
1. 2.
Shem Drowne is most famous for the grasshopper weathervane atop of Faneuil Hall, well known as a symbol of Boston.
3.
Shem Drowne was born near Sturgeon Creek in what is Eliot, York County, Maine.
4.
Shem Drowne was the third son of Leonard Drowne, a shipbuilder who came from Penryn, Cornwall, to what was then part of Kittery in Massachusetts.
5.
Shem Drowne was a coppersmith with a shop on Ann Street in the North End.
6.
Shem Drowne was baptized in the First Baptist Church of Boston in 1713 along with the future pastor of that church.
7.
Shem Drowne is on lists of colonial silversmiths as a result of a silver beaker marked "SD," tentatively attributed to him.
8.
Shem Drowne's nephew, his sister-in-law's child Timothy Parrott, was a Boston silversmith.
9.
Nathaniel Hawthorne credited Shem Drowne for being the inspiration for his retelling of Pygmalion, Drowne's Wooden Image, in his collection of shorts in Mosses from an Old Manse.
10.
Shem Drowne's wife Katherine Clark, was a partial heir to the Davidson claim of the Pemaquid Patents, and Shem Drowne acquired power of attorney from the other heirs.
11.
Shem Drowne is mentioned in the video game Fallout 4, and the grasshopper weathervane atop Faneuil Hall and the note Thomas placed within are central to the sidequest "The Gilded Grasshopper", in which the player is tasked with finding Shem Drowne's grave to recover his treasure and a unique weapon.