Vanderbilt Silver Memorabilia

The McTyeire Tea Service is engraved to Amelia McTyeire from the Methodists of New Orleans, 1858 in gratitude for the McTyeire’s tireless ministry to the congregation in New Orleans during the years of the yellow fever epidemic. The McTyeires left New Orleans for Nashville where Holland Nimmons McTyeire became a bishop in 1866. Later in 1872, he and Cornelius Vanderbilt would be introduced by their wives, and their meeting would result in a gift to endow the founding of Vanderbilt University. In 1993 the tea service was given to Vanderbilt University by descendants of the McTyeire family.

[McTyeire Tea Service]
Edgar Eoff and Georg L. Shepard, Silversmiths
New York: c. 1858
Vanderbilt University Silver Collection

Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900
Arthur Quiller-Couch, editor
Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1926
Nettie Hale Rand Collection of Fine Binding and Printing
Vanderbilt University Special Collections

Using silver to design and enhance jewelry, coins and even books is a time-honored practice. The blue silk-covered book from the first quarter of the 20th century is richly embroidered with accents of silver wire and silver silk threads on its elaborate floral design.

[Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Brooch in Silver Plate]
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
c. 1968
Vanderbilt University Memorabilia Collection

The silver-plated brooch is a memento of the civil rights movement distributed by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The portrait head of Dr. King swivels to reveal text from his “I Have a Dream” speech of 1963.

[Silver Charm Bracelet: Vanderbilt University’s Lady of the Bracelet]
1928 – 1976
Vanderbilt University Memorabilia Collection

Every year from 1928 to 1976 Vanderbilt students elected a “Lady of the Bracelet,” the highest recognition awarded to a female undergraduate by her peers. Each charm on this silver bracelet is engraved with the name of the recipient.

[United States Silver Half Dollar]
New Orleans, 1861
Vanderbilt University Memorabilia Collection

On March 24, 2023, the 1874 time capsule in Kirkland Hall’s cornerstone was opened, as part of the university’s sesquicentennial celebration. Among the items preserved was this 1861 silver half-dollar, one of the last to be minted in New Orleans before the secession of the southern states from the union that resulted in the Civil War.