I am pretty knowledgable about old American glass....can you post a picture?
If they really are from 1848 they are flint glass and will ring like a bell when tapped with your fingernail.
You say a "set"?
what pieces? It would be very uncommon to have a set of dishes all matching made that early.
PICTURES? pLEASE?
lINDA c

Thanks so much for your response. I didn't get an email telling me you'd posted. Luckily, I checked back. :)
Glass is not the easiest thing to photograph, but I did my best. You can view the photos at the attached link.
There are 4 matched bowls. They appear to have been molded or pressed. Most have the bubbles associated with old glass. One is cracked, the other three are undamaged.
As the family historian/genealogist, I was given these when my grandmother passed away last year. My aunts and I had always been given the same story as to their origins:
When my grandparents married in 1936, my grandmother was given these by her mother-in-law. She was told that they were given to m-i-l by HER mother-in-law when she married in 1902, and supposedly THAT m-i-l (in other words, my grandfather's paternal grandmother) received them as a wedding gift in 1849.
I would never part with them (and just hope I have a family member who will appreciate the history to leave them to one day), so value is not that important, but I would love to be able to confirm the date and learn more about them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pictures of the Bowls

I hate to be the one to tell you.,....but they are not from 1849. And while I am not sure of the size, they look to be nappies, which were smaller and earlier than berry bowl sets.
They are an example of American Pattern Glass. I don't know the pattern without some time spent with the books, but the characteristics are of glass made around the turn of the century, or possibly in the post Civil War period.
I suggest they were given to the bride in 1902 as new items and the story began because the MIL who gave them was given a set of bowls by her MIL...but not that set.
Pressed glass was invented in the 1830's by Deaming Jarvis and the early pieces were very different looking.
I am having a little trouble picturing the time line...the grandmother who married in 02....and her mil was married in 1849? fifty years earlier? Are you sure MARRIED in 1849? Perhaps that was the year she was born? They could be from the late 1870's...there were patterns that looked similar made during that era.
Any hints as to where in the US they might have been bought? They look a little like what they call "midwest glass" which was made in glass houses in Ohio and Indiana. That sound plausable?
When I get time, I'll search my books and we can tell the years that pattern was made and what factory made it.
Linda C

Yes, the timeline is confusing, isn't it? The 1902 bride was a second wife, and her husband was 49 at the time. (In fact, she was a niece of his first wife!) Her MIL lived to be 89, died in 1918.
I would totally believe that they were later pieces, either new in 1902 or purchased some earlier time, but not in 1849. (Although I would never have told my grandmother that!)While I hate to debunk a family myth, this is not the first or most disappointing. You can't ask questions without being prepared to not like all of the answers.
[The pieces I really coveted, but which went to one of my cousins, were 2 silver serving spoons which have been in my grandmother's family for generations. Each new owner had them monogrammed, so they can be definitively dated to right around the turn of the 19th century based on the monograms and documented family genealogy.]
As far as geography - the whole family has been born and bred in Virginia since it was a colony, so no question of where they were purchased. But Ohio is not that far, or they could have easily enough been mail ordered.
Thanks for your help!
CiCi

I am lol-ing at the "legend"...
There is my great great grandmother's sugar bowl, she was born about 1845 or so....so you just KNOW that sugar bowl was well over 150 years old! When my grandmother died, I got the sugar bowl....and got into antique glass. The pattern is Sunk Daisy...definitly after 1910 and more like 1920. I told my father that is wasn't so old and he said..."but It belonged to Grandma K...I know! I saw it at her house"...but he didn't stop to think that perhaps she got it when she was 65!
Linda C

lol :D

From my mom's family came the legend of the civil war general who was a great-great uncle or something. Except that, although he had the same last name, there is no documented connection. And both his family and mine have been traced back to Ireland (his about 100 years more recently, I might add) so if there was any connection it was long ago and far away and unlikely to ever be found. ;)

Oh, as far as nappies vs. berry bowls - I thought nappies were much flatter (what I call a relish dish), but then I don't know much. I posted 2 more pics with a measuring tape for scale, but the depth still doesn't show that well. They are just over an inch deep.
CiCi

A nappie could come with any set of dishes...china, ironstone or glass. It was the small dish to be used for fruit, vegetables or whatever.
A fruit bowl was part of a "Fruit bowl set" and contained a larger fruit bowl and 6 smaller fruit bowls or nappies.
When those little fruit bowls are sold individually, they are referred to as "bowls to a berry set" and the larger bowl is referred to as a berry bowl.
Confused? Yep...me too!

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1390216}}

Where I run into trouble is that everyone else online (except maybe you) is also confused. lol
My aunt is the one who tagged them berry bowls. I am very admittedly clueless. My grandmother generally referred to them as dessert dishes, or more often as Marena's dishes. You guessed it, Marena was my gg-grandmother who married in 1849. :-)