Christopher and the Clockmakers

by Sara Ware Bassett

"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."