26 
COLLECTING EARLY 
AMERICAN CLOCKS 
A Fascinating Hobby That Will 
Also Help Furnish the House 
GARDNER TEALL 
I I was inevitable that the American col¬ 
onists should bring over to this country 
not only clocks of English make, but 
Dutch, French and German clocks as well. 
Clocks were mentioned in the Massachusetts 
Bay Colony as early as 1628, and again in 
1638. Henry Parks of Hartford lists a clock 
in his will of 1640, and John Davenport of 
New Haven is known to have had a clock in 
his possession at the time of his death, 1670, 
and we are told that at the death of Mistress 
E. Needham of Lynn, Massachusetts, in the 
year 1677, it was found that she had made 
mention in her will of a 
striking-clock, a watch 
and a “larum that does 
not strike”. It is probable 
these various clocks were 
table or shelf clocks. 
The oldest clock in 
America is said to be one 
which originally belonged 
to Oliver Cromwell and 
which is now in the Phila¬ 
delphia Public Library. 
The austerity of the 
northern colonists prob¬ 
ably encouraged only the 
simpler cased and dialed 
clocks and eschewed any¬ 
thing even so frivolous as 
the “pretty and solemn” 
piece of “clocke-worke” 
mentioned by Pepys. Cer¬ 
tainly it would have 
frowned upon Queen 
Elizabeth’s clock which 
was in the form of “an 
Ethiop riding upon a rhi¬ 
noceros, with four attend¬ 
ants, who all make their 
obeisance when it strikes 
the hour”. 
With the growth of the 
colonies skilled artisans 
found encouragement to 
ply their trades in the new 
world and hither came 
clockmakers among others, 
placing early American 
clockmaking nearly if not 
quite on the level with its 
contemporary European 
A tall clock of mahogany 
made by Thomas Har- 
land of Norwich about 
1800 
competitors. 1 hese old clocks from their hands 
seem to have disappeared and even the names 
of the early clockmakers in America must be 
searched for in old town records and the like. 
Some of the pioneers of clockmaking in Amer¬ 
ica whose names have come down to us were 
William Davis (1783), Everardus Bogardus 
(1698), James Batterson (1707), Benjamin 
Bagnall (1712), John Bell (1734), Augustine 
Neiser (1739), Odran Dupuy (1735), Eben- 
ezer Parmilee (1740), Gawen Brown (1750), 
John Ent (1758), Basil Francis (1766). 
These men and their fellow clockmakers were 
to initiate the industry 
which was, eventually, to 
^ drive from the market the 
X hour-glasses such as we 
^ find advertised in the Bos¬ 
ton Gazette of 1762. 
The New England col¬ 
onies were the most pro¬ 
lific in clock production, 
and after the War of Inde¬ 
pendence the State of Con¬ 
necticut led all other 
States in the Union in the 
manufacture of timepieces. 
Daniel Burnap (1780- 
1800), Eli Terry (1793- 
1813), Eli Terry, Jr., and 
other members of the 
Terry family, Silas Hoad- 
ley (1808), Seth Thomas 
(1809-1850) and Chaun- 
cey Jerome (1816-1860) 
stand forth as the most 
prominent of the early 
Connecticut clockmakers. 
In Massachusetts the 
Willards — Benjamin 
(1716 - 1803), Simon 
(1753 - 1848), Aaron 
(1757-1844) and others 
of this famous family; the 
Mullikens—Samuel Mul- 
liken (1720-1756) and 
others of the family; Dan¬ 
iel Balch (1734-1790), 
and his sons Daniel 
(1782-1818) and Thomas 
H. (1790-1818); the Bag- 
nalls — Benjamin (1712- 
1740), and his son Samuel 
Benjamin Bagnall, also 
of Boston, produced this 
example in black walnut 
on pine 
A favorite design 
was the lyre. This 
example was made 
by Saurin & Dyer of 
Boston, about 1815 
A shelf clock of mahogany 
on pine made by David Wood 
of Newburyport, 1800-1825 
Samuel Bagnall of Bos¬ 
ton (1740-1807) was the 
maker of this tall ma¬ 
hogany clock 
The banjo was a fa¬ 
vorite early design. 
This one is in the 
New York Histori¬ 
cal Society rooms 
