The Tripp Silver Spoon Legend

This is an off topic for this blog, but I really don’t have a better place to post this. My hope is that by publishing this story… legend… folklore… rumor, we can find what slivers of truths we can verify.

Once upon a time…. (according to the oral history), my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, James Tripp, got on a horse and rode to the silversmith. There he commissioned five silver spoons and had the initials J. T. inscribed on the handle of each spoon. He had five sons, whom he each named James Tripp with a different middle name.

He instructed each of them to name their first-born son James Tripp. Once the son had been born and named, the spoon would pass from the grandfather to the father of the newborn. If there was no James, the spoon would be buried with the current owner.

That silver spoon occupied a place of wonder in my childhood. I remember begging my parents to go with them on errands to the old bank in town so I could go into the huge vault and peek into the family business safety deposit box and see the spoon that could someday be mine if only I could find a woman blind enough to marry me.

When our first child, James, was born, my father officially passed the spoon on to me. 

How much of that story is fact and how much is fiction, no one knows, but there is the spoon, and, in theory, there are four more out there. 

There are some holes in the story. For example, my great grandfather’s name is Walter, but his father was James Edwin LeBaron Tripp (1873–1957) and his son was James Edwin Tripp (1924–1994). Rumor has it the spoon skipped Walter and it was found in the unticil drawer before being unceremoniously handed to my grandfather, James Edwin Tripp (1924–1994).

Another hole in the story, our family tree doesn’t seem to back up the story. There are now James Tripps with five sons named James Tripp. Of course, there are plenty of inaccuracies in the Tripp family history, so it’s possible with some more digging, the legend may be confirmed, or altered, or further disproved. But… it can’t completely be disproved, because I have the spoon… while I go by my middle name, I am in fact, James Steven Tripp and I received the spoon when we had my first son, James.

My hope is that I can find another spoon… or maybe four. I hope the legend is true… I hope there aren’t four spoons buried with some short-sighted James Tripps! I hope this article is the answer to some James’ google search for some crazy legend that his father told him.