Shem Drowne

Shem Drowne (December 4, 1683 – January 13, 1774) was a colonial coppersmith and tinplate worker in Boston, Massachusetts, and was America's first documented weathervane maker. He is most famous for the grasshopper weathervane atop of Faneuil Hall, well known as a symbol of Boston. He was also a deacon of the First Baptist Church of Boston.

Drowne was born near Sturgeon Creek in what is now the town of Eliot, York County, Maine. He was the third son of Leonard Drowne and Elizabeth (ne Abbott). Leonard was a shipbuilder who came from Penryn, Cornwall, to what was then part of Kittery in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Leonard helped organize and build the first Baptist Church in Maine in 1682. During King William's War many Maine towns were raided and English settlements were massacred by the Wabanaki Indians in conjunction with the French. In 1696, 28 members of the Baptist Church moved to Charleston, South Carolina, and established the first Baptist church there. The Drownes moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1699 due to the ongoing war and violence.

Shem was a coppersmith with a shop on Ann Street (now North Street) in the North End.

According to the colonial diarist Thomas Newell, Shem Drowne "was the first tin plate worker that ever came to Boston, New England." He worked as a tin plate worker and a coppersmith. He is on lists of colonial silversmiths as a result of a silver beaker marked "SD," tentatively attributed to him. However, antiquarian Francis Hill Bigelow wrote "the attribution to Shem Drowne of Boston is probably erroneous. There seems to be no evidence that Drowne was a silversmith". This corresponds with Suffolk County deeds which lists Drowne's occupation as tinplate worker. Drowne's nephew, his sister-in-law's child Timothy Parrott, was a Boston silversmith. His grand-nephews, Samuel Drowne and Benjamin Drown, and Samuel's sons, Thomas Pickering Drown and Daniel P. Drown, were all notable practicing silversmiths from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

In 1716, he created America's first authenticated weathervane, a gilded American Indian archer, for the cupola of Providence House in Boston, which in 1716 became the official residence of the royal governor. In 1721 he created a rooster weathervane (also known as the weathercock) for the New Brick Church on Hanover St, the vane is now on First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1740 he made the 6-foot-long (1.8 m) copper swallow-tailed banner weathervane that is now atop Old North Church in Boston.

His most famous work is the weathervane on top of Faneuil Hall. Commissioned by Peter Faneuil in 1742, it was designed to complement the grasshopper weathervane atop the Royal Exchange in the City of London, and help symbolize the new building as the capital of finance in the New World. The grasshopper is copper gilded with gold leaf with glass eyes. The vane fell off the building during the earthquake of 1755 which shook Boston. He and his son Thomas repaired it and remounted it.

In 1768 Thomas placed a note labeled "food for the grasshopper" in the belly of the grasshopper. It read:

Shem Drowne made it, May 25, 1742. To my brethren and fellow grasshoppers, Fell in ye year 1753 (1755) Nov. 13, early in ye morning by a great earthquake by my old Master above. Again, like to have met with Utter Ruin by Fire, by hopping Timely from my Public Station, came of the broken bones and much Bruised. Cured and Fixed. Old Master's son Thomas Drowne June 28, 1768, and Though I will promise to Discharge my office, yet I shall vary as ye wind.