American clocks - Current and Coming - The Willard House and Clock Museum exhibit - Willard brothers' clocks

Magazine Antiques, August, 2002 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Among the most ingenious men in New England in the early nineteenth century were the clockmaking Willard brothers-- Benjamin Jr., Simon, Ephraim, and Aaron. Simon is credited with inventing several types of clocks, and today his timepieces are highly prized by collectors. The Willard House and Clock Museum in North Grafton, Massachusetts, is located on the site of the house and adjacent workshop where Benjamin, the eldest of the brothers, began to make clocks in 1766. It was continuously occupied by his clockmaking descendants for the next two generations. As Benjamin was ten years older than Simon, the next in line, it is thought that he must have trained his brothers. However, it is not known where Benjamin received his training. When the clockmaker Nathaniel Mulliken Sr. of Lexington, Massachusetts, died in 1767, Benjamin moved there and took over his business while his brothers stayed behind in Grafton continuing to make tall-case clocks.

In the early 1780s Simon and Aaron moved to Roxbury, Massachusetts, where they settled permanently. Simon was an inventive man, and as outlined by Paul J. Foley in his excellent new book Willard's Patent lime Pieces, A History of the Weight-Driven Banjo Clock, 1800- 1900, Simon Willard began to develop new clocks soon after he moved to Roxbury. His first invention was the thirty-hour Grafton wall clock, and in 1784 he received his first patent for a portable clock jack used when roasting meat at the fireplace.

Certainly one of the most handsome clocks Willard created is his "patent alarm timepiece," known to collectors as the lighthouse clock for its resemblance to a lighthouse.

This, his third patent, was issued on December 8, 1819. An exhibition entitled Willard Lighthouse Clocks: 1819-1835 is on view at the Willard House and Clock Museum in North Grafton until October 13. Fifteen examples of these rare timepieces are on view out of a total of about two hundred that Willard is estimated to have made. While the lighthouse clock was patented as an alarm clock, more than a few exist without this feature, several of which are in the show.

There is no catalogue of this exhibition.