The most famous name among American clock-makers is Willard. There were
three Willard brothers,—Benjamin, Simon, and Aaron,—clock-makers
in Grafton, Massachusetts, in 1765. Benjamin and Simon established a
business in Roxbury, and in December, 1771, Benjamin advertised in the
_Boston Evening Post_ his “removal from Lexington to Roxbury. He will
sell house clocks neatly made, cheaper than imported.” February 22,
1773, he advertised that he “at his shop in Roxbury Street, pursues the
different branches of clock and watch work, and has for sale musical
clocks, playing different tunes, a new tune each day, and on Sunday a
Psalm tune. These tunes perform every hour.... All the branches of the
business likewise carried on in Grafton.” The third brother, Aaron,
may have remained in Grafton, for he went from there later to Roxbury,
as fifer of a company of minute-men, in the first days of the War of
the Revolution. Simon Willard remained in the same shop in Roxbury for
over seventy years, dying in 1848 at the great age of ninety-six years.
Aaron Willard built a shop in Boston and made a specialty of tall
striking clocks.
[Illustration: Illus. 352.—Willard Clock, 1784.]
Illustration 352 shows a clock owned by Dr. G. Faulkner of Jamaica
Plain. Inside the clock is written in a quaint hand, “The first short
time-piece made in America, 1784.” Dr. Faulkner’s father was married at
about that date, and the clock was made for him. It has always stood
upon a bracket upon the wall, and has been running constantly for one
hundred and seventeen years. Upon the scroll under the dial is the
inscription “Aaron Willard, Roxbury.” The case is of mahogany, and
stands twenty-six inches high. Upon the lower part are very beautiful
scroll feet, turning back. The upper part stands upon ogee feet, and
can be lifted off. The glass door is painted so that it forms a frame
for the dial.
Mr. Howard, the founder of the Howard Watch Company, has told me that
the Willards invented this style of clock as well as the style known as
the banjo clock. Mr. Howard was born in 1813 and when he was sixteen he
started to learn his trade in Boston, in the shop of Aaron Willard, Jr.
I have not been able to find that clocks of this style were made in
England at all, and they seem to be purely American, but in Britten’s
“Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers” is an illustration of an
astronomical clock made by Henry Jenkins, 1760 to 1780, with a case
very similar in shape to these clocks, and with a top like the centre
one of the three in Illustration 353. Aaron Willard may have obtained
his idea from such a clock. The clock in Illustration 352 is the
earliest one that I have heard of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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