WHAT MASSACHUSETTS CONTRIBUTED
Mr. McPhearson had no chance to forget his promise even had he been so
minded, for promptly the next morning, almost before his tools were laid
out on his bench, Christopher presented himself, announcing with a
mischievous smile:
"To-day, you know, you are going to tell me the clock history of
Massachusetts."
"Indeed I'm not," growled the Scotchman, who although flattered by the
demand, was unwilling to admit it. "History of Massachusetts! The very
idea!"
"I said the clock history," corrected Christopher, not a whit abashed.
"Did you? Well, even that is bad enough. What do you think I'm here for?
To play school-master?"
"Oh, no, indeed. Merely to serve as my private tutor," was the teasing
reply.
"That's your belief, is it! Egad, I begin to think it is," laughed the
clockmaker, amused at the lad's audacity. "Certainly your demand would
seem to bear out the theory."
"But you made the promise yourself--you can't have forgotten that."
"Forget it! Would I be likely to forget--would I so much as get the
chance, with you pestering me almost before my hat is off? Well, if I
was rash enough to make a promise like that, I see no way but to keep
it; so the Massachusetts clock story it shall be. It happens, too, that
you have asked for it at just the right moment, for to-day I am going to
work on as fine an old Willard clock as ever you saw. She is the real
thing!"
"Was Willard the first of the Massachusetts clockmakers?"
"Among the first; and undeniably one of the best and most important of
them. Oh, of course there were other men--some of them excellent. But we
know less about them because they left no such long trail of clocks
behind as the Willards did. Gawen Brown was a splendid workman; and so
was Avery, who in 1726 made the clock for the Old North church. Then
there was Benjamin Bagnall, who located in Charlestown about 1712 and
remained there almost thirty years. His two sons, Benjamin and Samuel,
also went into the clockmaking business and did very commendable work.
In addition there were the Munroes of Concord--Daniel and Nathaniel; and
Samuel Whiting, Nate's partner; not to mention the Popes, Robert and
Joseph; and Daniel Balch of Newburyport. All these men were well
established in or near Boston either before 1800 or shortly after that
date."
"Evidently the Massachusetts people must have known what time it was,"
grinned Christopher.
"If they didn't it was their own fault," returned his companion, "for
this list probably represents only a part of those engaged in the
business. A good many more, like our friend, John Bailey, moved to
small inland villages where they modestly plied their trade, selling
their wares to only a limited circle of purchasers. Of these scattered
craftsmen we have, as I told you, scant information. It is merely when
we chance upon their names in early town records or a clock turns up to
testify to their knowledge of their craft that we have tidings of them.
But with the Willards it was different. They have left behind them a
collection of clocks that speaks in no mistakable terms for their skill
and industry."
"How many of these Willards were there?" Christopher demanded.
"Well, old Benjamin, the father, who was located in Framingham somewhere
about the year 1716, had twelve children and three of these--Benjamin,
Junior, Simon, and Aaron all became crackajack clockmakers, especially
Simon. The family, I take it, went to Grafton, a small town near
Worcester, later on. At any rate Benjamin, Junior, was born there. We
afterward hear of him in Lexington and are told that in 1771 he moved
from there to Roxbury. In this latter spot he himself set up a shop; but
he must still have maintained another one at Grafton, his birthplace,
where apprentices in the meantime carried on a part of his business, for
his clocks bear three different markings--Grafton, Lexington, and
Roxbury. He turned out excellent long-case clocks as well as some
musical ones, and many of these survive him. He died in Baltimore in
1803. Aaron, and his son Aaron, Junior (who entered his father's shop
in 1823), also made fine long-case clocks with brass works that found
ready sale."
"And Simon?"
"Ah, the story of Simon and his deeds would fill a book. He was the
flower of the family, so far, anyway, as clockmaking went. His handiwork
cannot be surpassed," exclaimed McPhearson with enthusiasm. "People are
liable to associate him only with the banjo clock that bears his name;
but in reality he made clocks of every imaginable description--long-case
clocks, tower clocks, gallery clocks, shelf clocks. He was a born clock
lover if ever there was one! He was, moreover, a marvelous man who up to
the end of his long life was active and useful. Even after he became
very old he fought to conceal the limitations age brought and remain
cheerful and independent. A wonderful example of lusty manhood, truly!
In the first place you must remember he started out on his career with
the same meager equipment that hampered all the early clockmakers. A
file, drill and hammer were practically the only tools he possessed.
Neither you nor I would think it possible to construct so delicate a
mechanism as a clock with so few articles to work with. We should insist
that we needed and _must have_ this thing, that thing, and the other
thing to use, and then we probably should not be able to produce a clock
that would go--let alone one that would keep accurate time. But you did
not hear Simon Willard doing any fussing. There was nothing of the
whiner about him. The fact that he was obliged to import brass from
England, hammer it down to the thickness necessary, file it until it
was smooth, and then polish it by hand did not daunt him. A more
persistent, painstaking, conscientious clockmaker never lived. What
marvel that he scorned to advertise? While others cried their products,
he simply pasted in the back of each of his clocks the few modest facts
he wished to announce and let his work go out to speak for itself."
"_Ask the man who owns one!_" put in Christopher, quoting a well-known
and modern advertisement.
"Exactly!" agreed McPhearson. "Anybody that produces an A1 commodity
hardly needs to bark about it. People find out what goods are worth.
This, evidently, was Simon Willard's theory. You see he knew his trade
from A to Z, having been apprenticed to his older brother Benjamin when
only a small boy. The tale is that when barely thirteen years old he
made a grandfather clock that was in every respect better than that of
his master."
"Gee! Why, I am--"
"You are older than that already and could not make a clock, eh?"
interrupted the Scotchman with quick understanding. "Neither could I,
and I am many times your age. But life was different in the olden days.
Boys learned trades very early and went to work at them. Many a lad, for
example, was sent to sea by the time he was ten or twelve. Hence the
fact that Simon Willard was apprenticed when so young was in no way
remarkable. But that he should thus early have outranked his teacher is
significant. We are not surprised, in consequence, to hear that it was
not long before he branched out for himself and opened a shop at Grafton
where he began to construct clocks."
"He must still have been pretty youthful," ventured Christopher.
"I imagine he was. Nevertheless he married and settled down to his
career, starting in to make both shelf and long-case varieties. These he
completed during the snowy season when the roads were bad and then, as
soon as summer came and it was possible to get about on horseback, he
and his brother, Aaron, used to travel about and sell the winter's
output. Aaron peddled the goods along the south edge of the
Massachusetts coast and Simon went north, sometimes even as far as
Maine."
"But I should think clocks would have been ruined if jolted about on
horseback!" objected Christopher.
"I don't think it could have been ideal for their health," laughed
McPhearson. "But it was the best method of distribution the age afforded
and Simon Willard did not scorn so humble a beginning. He remained in
Grafton until some time between 1777 and 1780 and then as his wife died
he moved to Roxbury and at what is now Number 2196 Washington Street
opened a shop. In the meantime he had done quite a lot of experimenting
and had arrived at the conclusion he would in future center his energy
on making only church clocks, hall clocks and turret clocks. Therefore
from that date on these were the styles he chiefly manufactured.
Probably it would have been no small surprise to him had he known that
the banjo clock he patented about 1802 and dubbed an _improved
timepiece_ would be the one to come down through history bearing his
name."
"I wouldn't mind having it bear mine," smiled the boy, as he glanced
toward the beautiful old Willard lying so ignominiously on its back on
McPhearson's workbench. "I like all these brass trimmings. Besides, the
picture of the sea fight painted on the glass door is jolly."
"Evidently Willard thought sea fights jolly, too, for he generally
selected them as decoration for his clocks. I have heard there were two
men in Roxbury who painted all his glass for him; one of them did lacy
patterns of conventional design, and the other did naval battles. This
fact helps us some in identifying genuine Willards. Of course the
decoration could be copied by others; but add to it other hallmarks
typical and now well-known and a true Willard can usually be detected.
For instance, it is said on good authority that no real Willard clock is
ever surmounted by a brass eagle. We often see the design on old clocks
that purport to be Willards; but Simon Willard, his descendants attest,
never used a decoration so elaborate. Instead he preferred simple things
such as a brass acorn or one carved from wood; a gilt ball, or
combination of ball and spear-head. But the eagle he never patronized."
"Maybe he didn't know how to make a brass eagle and couldn't find
anybody who did," suggested Christopher.
"Possibly. To make an eagle would be quite an undertaking if you didn't
know just how to set about it," acquiesced McPhearson. "At any rate
Simon let eagles alone. Another device characteristic of his clocks,
along with these two patterns of glass and the decoration on top, was
the catch that kept the doors tightly closed. It was a pet scheme of his
to make use of a sort of clasp that could only be opened with the clock
key. This he resorted to in order to prevent the doors from jarring open
and admitting the dirt; and also that children might not be able to
meddle with the works or hands. He had a great many small children
himself and had perhaps learned from experience the pranks little people
were likely to perpetrate. Besides these several trademarks there are in
addition various ingenious tricks that belonged to Willard and to nobody
else. These a trained clockmaker instantly recognizes--the use of brass
pins to hold the dial in place, for one thing. So, you see, when a banjo
clock comes your way there are various methods by which its genuineness
can be tested. They cannot, perhaps, be rated as infallible but they do
help in identification."
"It is a pity Simon Willard did not sign his clocks as artists sign
their pictures. Then there would have been no discussion about them,"
said Christopher.
"Willard did mark his later clocks," answered McPhearson. "Possibly in
his early days it did not occur to him that it was worth while."
"Well, anyhow, I can hunt for the Willard tags--the queer catch on the
door; the acorns, balls, or spearheads; and the painted lace or the
naval battles."
At the final phrase the Scotchman smiled whimsically.
"It is funny Willard should have been so keen on sea fights," remarked
he, "for as a matter of fact he was anything but a fighter. Undoubtedly
it was the Revolution and the War of 1812 that stimulated the picturing
of such scenes and made them popular. Had war been left to dear
peace-loving old Simon Willard there would not have been much shooting,
for he hated the very sight of a gun. One of his relatives declares that
although like other loyal citizens he turned out at Lexington on the
famous nineteenth of April and marched to Roxbury with Captain Kimball's
company he often humorously asserted afterward that the musket he
carried had no lock on it. The omission, however, did not appear to
trouble him; on the contrary, it rather pleased him. Once, in later
life, he one day picked up a gun that unexpectedly went off with such a
bang that it knocked him down and as a result he could never be tempted
into touching firearms of any description. The argument that they were
not loaded had no effect whatsoever.
"No matter," he would say. "The durn thing may go off just the same."
Christopher laughed merrily.
"It was sometime between 1777 and 1780, as I told you, that Simon
Willard came to Roxbury. But before he focused his entire attention on
clocks he invented a clock-jack, and in 1784 with the approval of John
Hancock, the General Court of Massachusetts granted him the exclusive
right to make and sell the device."
"And what, pray, is a clock-jack?" interrogated Christopher.
"Ah, it is easily seen you did not live in early colonial days," smiled
McPhearson. "A clock-jack, sonny, is a contrivance for roasting meat."
"Roasting meat!" repeated the lad incredulously. "But what had a man of
Willard's genius to do with roasting meat?"
"Perhaps a good deal," the Scotchman answered. "He was the father of a
big family, remember, and no doubt, like all good husbands, bore his
share of the domestic burden. A man with eleven children must have been
forced to turn his shoulder to the wheel in many a domestic crisis, for
nobody kept servants at that time. Evidently either Willard himself had
encountered the dilemmas of cooking or he had seen others struggle with
them, and this, no doubt, was what led him to invent the ingenious
article of which I have told you."
"But you haven't told me," was Christopher's quick protest.
"Why, so I haven't! Well, in the far-away days of our forefathers food
was cooked neither in ranges nor in gas stoves. Instead it was cooked
before the big open fire. A piece of meat, for example, was suspended by
a chain from the mantelpiece and some member of the family was detailed
to whirl it round and round until it was roasted evenly and cooked
through. Now such an operation was a great nuisance, for no matter what
you wished to do you must keep your mind on that roast lest it burn on
one side and be ruined. If the mother of the house was washing dishes,
cooking, or taking care of the baby, she had to stop every few moments
and turn the meat around. And if she was too much occupied to do it,
like as not the father was routed out of his shop, and told to have an
eye on the beef.
"Willard himself may frequently have been forced to drop his tools and,
since his children were young and motherless, attend to this bothersome
duty. For fathers played a more intimate part in the homes of that
generation than they do now. At any rate he was certainly familiar with
the problems that entered into the cooking of the family dinner--just
how heavy and clumsy were the big, awkward clock-jacks imported from
England, how costly they were, and all. So he took the matter in hand
and invented a clock-jack that was much better than the imported one.
Not only did it spin the meat around when wound up, but it was enclosed
in a brass cover that kept in the heat and juices. It is probable that
the invention furnished inspiration for somebody else for presently the
covered tin baker made its appearance and Willard abandoned making
clock-jacks and turned his energy toward timekeepers instead."
"Do you mean to say he made his clocks at home?"
"At first he did. His house was a tiny dwelling, too. Just how he and
his many children contrived to find places to sleep is a mystery. Some
of the youngsters were tucked away in trundle beds, you may be sure. Out
behind the kitchen was a sort of woodshed, and it was in this primitive
location that Mr. Willard made his clocks."
"Not big clocks!"
"Yes, indeed."
"But I should think he would have been compelled to have more room."
"I fancy his quarters were not ideal and were pretty cramped. He could
have got on well enough had he been making shelf clocks that vibrated
only half-seconds, like those of Eli Terry; but he had given up making
those when he left Grafton. Therefore when it came to testing out his
big turret clocks, he had to cut a hole in the floor in order to give
their long pendulums room to swing."
"That was a stunt!"
"It simply proves that a determined man will find a way," McPhearson
declared. "Simon Willard was not a person who allowed circumstances to
master him. Lack of tools, limitations of space, the utter absence of
all those aids we should now deem indispensable--none of these obstacles
deterred him from making clocks that have seldom been outranked."
"A bully good sport, wasn't he!" exclaimed Christopher.
"A sport in the best sense," agreed McPhearson. "As a humble member of
his craft I take off my hat to him. It was in 1801 that he made his
first banjo clock--a clock that, as he asserted, could be hung on the
wall and stood no risk of being knocked off or moved about as a shelf
clock did. The patent for this article bore the autographs of President
Jefferson and James Madison, who was at the time Secretary of State. The
same year Willard made a clock for the United States Senate Chamber and
went to Washington to assure himself that it was properly put up and
also explain how it should be cared for. This clock, unfortunately, was
ruined when the British burned the Capitol; nevertheless, Willard's
journey hither was not in vain, for while in the city he made the
personal acquaintance of President Jefferson and the two men, both of
them interested in mechanics, formed a lifelong friendship. In fact, it
was through Jefferson that Willard received the order to make a large
clock for the University of Virginia."
"And did he have to go down there, too?"
"He did go down. During Jefferson's lifetime he was more than once a
guest at Monticello. The clock, however, was not completed until after
the President died, and when Willard finally went to put it in place he
stayed with Madison who had a home no great distance away."
"He seemed to make friends wherever his business took him," remarked
Christopher thoughtfully.
"Not only that, but his work made friends for him," was McPhearson's
answer. "It was so well done that people appreciated its worth and gave
him more orders. For fifty years he had charge of the clocks at Harvard
University and in 1829 the Corporation awarded him a vote of thanks for
his faithful services. It is something of a record to have performed
work so satisfactorily for half a century."
"I'll say it is!"
"In 1837 the United States Government engaged Mr. Willard to make two
clocks for the new Capitol at Washington, one of them to take the place
of the Senate clock that was burned and the other to be put in Statuary
Hall. In the latter room there was already a very beautiful allegorical
clock but it needed new works. Willard was now getting to be an old man
and such a commission would have dismayed most elderly persons. But
although eighty-five the old clockmaker did not hesitate to fill the
order or travel to Washington to make sure his handiwork was properly
installed. It sometimes seemed as if he must have discovered the
fountain of eternal youth. Remember he was seventy-eight when he made
the turret clock for the Old State House in Boston. I have heard that
for some of this later work he used a hand engine to cut parts afterward
finished by hand; and of course as his fame traveled and his business
increased, he had apprentices to help him and he was obliged to move
into a larger shop. But even at that the miracle of what he did does not
lose its luster.
"At length, in 1839, he retired, a hale, respected veteran with a long
path of usefulness behind him. Until he was eighty he read without
glasses; and so accurate was his eye that never in all his life did he
measure the notchings on a wheel, and yet these free-hand calculations
proved to be unfailingly correct. But, alas, human machinery is less
long-lived than is artificial, and at the age of ninety-five Simon
Willard died.
"'_The old clock is worn out!_' was what he said, and indeed the words
were true. For close on to a century eyes, hands, and brain had
continuously labored for the well-being of others. Yet the works of a
good man follow him and in numberless homes, in public buildings, on
church spires, honored monuments to the memory of Simon Willard still
survive--monuments far more useful than are inert blocks of
marble--monuments that pulse with life and keep hourly before those who
look upon them the thought of one who performed for his fellow men a
practical and enduring service."