Early American Scientific Instruments and Their MakersBedini, Silvio A.
History
Early American Scientific Instruments and Their Makers
Bedini, Silvio A.
Scientific apparatus and instruments
Brief mention has already been made of the Chandlee family of
clockmakers and instrument makers of the 18th century. The founder of
the line and first of interest was Benjamin Chandlee, Sr., who migrated
in 1702 from Ireland to Philadelphia, where he was apprenticed to Abel
Cottey, clockmaker, and eventually married his daughter. His son
Benjamin Chandlee, Jr. (1723-1791), worked as a clockmaker in
Nottingham, Maryland, where he produced instruments as well as clocks. A
fine example of a brass surveying compass--inscribed with his name, and
which is believed to have been made for the Gilpin family in about
1761--is on exhibition in the Chester County Historical Society. He had
four sons, and a few years before his death he established the firm of
Chandlee & Sons, the name of which was changed to Ellis Chandlee &
Brothers a year before he died.
The oldest of Benjamin Jr.'s four sons was Goldsmith Chandlee
(c.1746-1821). After serving an apprenticeship with his father,
Goldsmith moved to Virginia and worked near Stephensburg (now Stephens
City). He eventually established himself at Winchester and built a brass
foundry and a shop where he produced clocks, surveying compasses,
sundials, apothecary and money scales, surgical instruments, compasses,
telescopes, and other items in metal. Numerous examples of his clocks
and instruments have survived. Their fine quality attests to the claim
that he was one of the foremost craftsmen of the 18th century. Several
of his surveying compasses exist in modern collections. An instrument
(fig. 26) that he made about 1794 for a surveyor named Robert Lyle is in
the writer's collection; an almost identical instrument that Chandlee
made for Lawrence Augustine Washington, George Washington's nephew, is
exhibited in the library at Mount Vernon, Virginia.
[Illustration: Figure 26.--The label of Goldsmith Chandlee. In the
collection of Ohio Historical Society, Ohio State Museum.]
Ellis Chandlee (1755-1816) also was apprenticed to his father, and he
worked with his brothers in the shop. He established the firm of Ellis
Chandlee & Brothers, in 1790, shortly before his father's death. The
firm was dissolved in 1797 when the youngest brother, John Chandlee,
left the firm. Ellis continued in partnership with his other brother,
Isaac Chandlee (1760-1813), until about 1804, producing clocks,
surveying instruments, and other metal articles. Their products were
signed "Ellis and Isaac Chandlee, Nottingham," or, in the case of a
surveying compass in the collection of the Chester County Historical
Society, "E. & I. Chandlee, Nottingham." Isaac Chandlee also produced
clocks and instruments under his own name only, for there are a number
of surviving clocks and surveying compasses signed in such manner (see
fig. 28).[59]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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