© Donn Haven Lathrop 2009

Benjamin Morrill was a clockmaker, scalemaker, and musical instrument maker who lived and worked in Boscawen, New Hampshire, during the first half of the 19th century. Boscawen, just to the northwest of Concord, was first settled in 1733 and took its name from Admiral Lord Edward de Boscawen, whose Norman ancestors had come to England in 1066 with William the Conqueror. The Admiral was the commander of the English fleet which nearly annihilated the French Navy off the French coast in the closing years of the French and Indian War.

Very little is recorded of Morrill's life---as a solid and stolid citizen and businessman in the town, he wasn't given to any particularly odd behaviors or habits which would enshrine him in the memories of the citizens of Boscawen. He lived in the first frame house built in Boscawen, a house built in about 1761 by his grandfather, the Reverend Robie Morrill. All the Morrill family's eccentricities seem to have settled themselves in this minister, who once expounded for two solid hours on the pronoun, "it"; startled his congregation by exclaiming "There goes a mouse!" in the midst of another profound exhortation, and another time asked someone in his dozing congregation, "My friend, won't you please punch that man who snores so loud, for if he goes on at that rate he will wake up my wife." A 1755 graduate of Harvard, he was minister of the Congregational Church in Boscawen for five years. He resigned his pulpit in a dispute with the town over his pay, and then taught school for many years.

Benjamin Morrill was born in Boscawen on 16 January, 1794, the fifth child of Samuel and Sarah Morrill. The Morrill name had been closely associated with Boscawen from the day the Rev. Robie Morrill was 'settled' as the minister in 1760. Benjamin very likely received the usual education of the day, both religious and civil, but had a natural bent for, and a creative skill, in mechanical matters. The Morrill genealogy is quite specific about his having been "a man of great ingenuity"---he is considered by some to have originated the New Hampshire mirror clock. Where and whether and with whom he served an apprenticeship is not known. Donald K. Packard mentions the possibility that both Morrill and Joseph Chadwick served their apprenticeships under Timothy

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Chandler (citing resemblances in Chandler's and Morrill's clock movements and clock cases), but they could have been apprenticed to Nathaniel Peabody Atkinson, at work in Boscawen in 1807. Chadwick, who later married Benjamin's older sister Judith, was his contemporary and probable competitor in Boscawen, a clockmaker who also made tall-case and mirror clocks. Morrill had a deep interest in music (as did his contemporary, George Handel Holbrook); in 1821 he and several others organized the Martin Luther Society, "A Society [for] the Cultivation of Music of a Higher Order", in which he sang for many years. In 1829 he was authorized to "raise money for the purchase of an organ for the church", and when clockmaking became unprofitable began the manufacture of musical instruments.

On 22 November, 1819, he married Mehetable Eastman, the daughter of Simeon and Anna (Kimball) Eastman, of Landaff, New Hampshire, and by her had two children, Lucretia, born 1822, and Franklin L., born 1824. Both of these children died in August of 1825---no cause of death recorded. Mehetable died on 6 July, 1828, in Boscawen. Morrill remarried six months after his first wife's death, to Mary Choate of Derry, New Hampshire. They had two children, Franklin Choate, born 1836, and Mary Frances, born 1843. In the 1850 census Benjamin was identified as a 'Clockmaker', with an estate of $2000---a fortune in that day. His wife unaccountably gained a year in age in this census. His nephew, Reuben Morrill, is listed as a resident in Benjamin's household. Reuben may have been an apprentice who later left his name in several New Hampshire clocks¹. In 1860 Mary C. Morrill is listed as head of the household---and somehow managed to lose 11 years on her recorded age. Benjamin Morrill died 21 April, 1857, three months after his 63rd birthday.

MORRILL'S KNOWN TOWER CLOCKS:
HENNIKER and DOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Very little has been written of Morrill's tower clocks. The primary concentration to date has been on his conventional tall-case and innovative 'sidewheeler' mirror clocks. This article will focus on his equally innovative tower clocks. Charles S. Parsons wrote this thumbnail sketch of Morrill's business activities:

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¹  See the question posed in the "The Answer Box", NAWCC BULLETIN Whole Number 83, Page 61, about 'R. Morrill' signatures found in several clocks. Benjamin's cousin, Reuben Prentice Morrill, is listed as still living at home in this same census record.

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"Benjamin made mirror, banjo, shelf, tall and tower clocks...The first [tower] clock set up in Dover, New Hampshire, was made by him for the First Parish Meeting House at a cost of $300. He also provided one for Henniker [New Hampshire]. When clockmaking became unprofitable he made scales. A small beam (scale) with "B. Morrill-Boscawen" die stamped on it would indicate that he made platform scales with a capacity of 100 pounds. About 1840 to 1850 (regardless of his listing in the 1850 census as "Clockmaker") he made musical instruments such as melodeons and seraphones (sic)."

Too many tower clocks have unfortunately, and sometimes seemingly unaccountably, disappeared without a trace. We should remember that public clocks were once considered a necessity, indeed, they were everyone's pocket watch. A town clock that didn't keep time properly was summarily discarded, regardless of its historical (to us) value. For some reason, Parsons recorded a great deal of data on Morrill's Henniker clock, but gave rather short shrift to the Dover clock, which seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

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The History of the HENNIKER Clock

The Henniker town history records that the clock was placed (probably 1834 - 35; no specific date can be found) in the Congregational Church which was rebuilt in 1834 following a fire: "The house was furnished with a bell (by the Revere Copper Company) which was raised to its position the day the building was raised May 8, 1834...and a clock, built by Mr. Morrill, of Boscawen, and an organ...". Thirty four years after the clock was removed from the church in 1949, it was given to the American Clock and Watch Museum in Bristol, Connecticut, by the late Frederick Mudge Selchow.

The History of the DOVER Clock

A small compendium of "Notable Events in Dover" records for the first of May, 1835:
"This day a steeple clock, built by Benjamin Morrill of Boscawen, NH, was set going in the tower of the First Parish Meeting House. The cost of the clock including dial (author's emphasis, but probably a single dial, for reasons later discussed) and fixtures about $300. This is the first steeple clock ever set up in Dover. This clock paid for by subscriptions from various persons, citizens of Dover, and was put up in the tower of the meeting house by consent of the Parish. Mr. Asa A. Tufts and Mr. Geo. Quint took care of it for several years, when the selectmen agreed to pay someone to keep it going." (Tufts Record)

After the several years of care by Mr. Tufts and Mr. Quint, payments to various people for the care of the clock appeared in the selectmen's records. Yearly payments ranged from $12.00, beginning in 1844, to $26.50 in 1931, with an unexplained hiatus in 1869 - 71. The following entries were noted beginning in 1867:

1867 N. H. Breard care of Town Clock 10.00
1868 No entry on care of the clock.
1869 Cha's W. Brewster, winding and caring for old clock 12.50
Charles W. Brewster, winding and repairing old Town Clock '68 and '69 (author's emphasis) 24.00
1870 No entry on care of the clock.
1871 C. W. Brewster, care of clock, 5. 00

The abrupt shift in reference to the "old Town Clock", the lack of entries in 1868 and 1870, and the reduced payment in 1871 suggests that the clock had either had a catastrophic failure and extensive repairs, or had been replaced, but there are no town or church records of either major repairs or replacement. Further, in reading through the histories of Dover, the suspicion quickly arose that the clock might have been repaired, but later destroyed in one of the many fires that had occurred in the town in the 160 years since the original installation of the clock. Particularly devastating fires were recorded in 1889, 1907, 1933, and 1950---the last destroyed the Town Hall and much of the downtown area. That no one had sought out the clock to document it further contributed to the feeling of unease. The usual fate of many of these old clocks, even if they have managed to survive through fire and neglect, has been a quick trip to the dump, and replacement by a more modern tower clock, usually installed soon after the visit of a high-pressure salesman representing the likes of Seth Thomas or Edward Howard.

BENJAMIN MORRILL's
TOWER CLOCKS

Benjamin Morrill was one of the first American clockmakers to design a flatbed tower clock with a unique built-in vertical drive to a transmission capable of driving more than the usual maximum of three dials. The only other clock I know of is the 1847 clock attributed to Hiram Todd Dewey installed in Lebanon, Ohio. Early flatbed clocks (such as those of Abel Stowell, Sr., Stephen Hasham, Major George Holbrook, George Handel Holbrook, and Simon Willard) were placed in their steeples on a level with the outside dials. Because of their simple transmissions, these clocks were best adapted to driving dials behind and to the left and the right of the clock. Morrill developed a clock-frame-mounted, bevel gear driven (from the second arbor) vertical shaft to a post-supported cluster of bevel gears (the transmission) at any height above the clock frame. This transmission could conveniently drive up to four dials without any major modifications to the basic design of the clock. An 1823 Hasham in Troy, New York, for instance, has a yoke pinned on an extended pivot² of the second wheel arbor to permit of driving four dials, but for

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²  Modifying the flatbed clock in this fashion summarily removed its greatest attraction---simplicity and ease of service, adjustment, and repair---as well as making it nearly impossible to set the outside hands simultaneously.  See The Amazing Stephen Hasham, NAWCC BULLETIN # 293.  Similarly, Holbrook's strike "fan", buried beneath the table, is difficult to service.

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some reason, the clock only drove the traditional three dials, even though one dial was driven by the add-on yoke! Morrill made no simple provision for setting the outside dial hands. The usual method of hand-setting on most clocks of this era is to slide either the escape wheel or the pallets out of engagement, and then "freewheel" the train. The sliding arbor involved was held in place for normal running by a weighted shutter or a spring-loaded pivot stop. Setting the outside hands on a Morrill clock requires that the crutch be disengaged from the pendulum, one of the pallet arbor bushings removed, the pallets disengaged---literally left dangling---and the train then "freewheeled", a dangerous and cumbersome procedure. It is even more cumbersome because all of the above has to be done at the back of the clock, while the setting dial is at the front of the clock. Pinwheels with obviously replaced pins are the norm. None of Morrill's known tower clocks have ever had more than three dials, and the Dover clock had only one dial for quite some time. This clock later had an extremely unusual motion-work-based transmission installed to drive its three dials, a system which could have been modified to drive four dials, had that been desired. Morrill's tower clocks are unusual in having the second wheel turning at 2 revolutions per hour, which requires either larger great and second wheels with more teeth, or a greater fall for the time weight. His contemporaries designed their wheel trains so the second wheel made 1 full rotation per hour. Morrill also was the first to use a unique horizontal strike rack which was pulled against the snail by a cranked weighted arm at the warning---did Howard copy Morrill? Morrill placed the ratchet for the strike fan on the collet for the third wheel in the strike train, rather than on the fan itself, a location used nearly 150 years earlier by Thomas Tompion. His tower clocks were built on a wood frame with mid-beam construction, used a pinwheel escapement, and contained a rather high percentage of cast iron. Many researchers consider the use of cast iron to be a reflection on the economy of the early 1800's, but Lord Grimthorpe noted that cast iron is considered an excellent material for clock wheels. Morrill's use of cast iron varied from clock to clock, but on different examples, the great and the second wheels, the pendulum bob, the winding drum endcap and ratchet, the winding jack gears, and even the motion work wheels have been made of cast iron. Nearly all of his clock wheels have some form of decorative spoking, most of the brass bearings are decorated; and horizontally split bearings are found on the winding drum arbors and on some of his motion works.

The Henniker clock's time train is closely patterned after a flatbed clock illustrated by Lepaute in his 1767 Traité d'Horlogerie.  The French flatbed design was first used in this country in 1799 by Abel Stowell, Sr. in Worcester, Massachusetts. Morrill used the wood-frame table pioneered by Stowell, but did not copy Stowell's platform base for the frame. The Henniker clock frame is 31 1/2 inches high, 26 1/4 inches deep, and 52 1/8 inches wide, made of 3 x 3 1/4 inch square beams of rock maple, with all joints mortised, tenoned, and fastened with wood pins. There is no decorative beading on the beams. The top beam ends are neatly rounded off in a form Frederick Shelley has christened the 'New Hampshire bumper'. All four legs are fitted with wood braces. Morrill used a mid-beam to support the shorter, stronger arbors for both trains, and, in this clock, placed the winding drums on top of the table. The time train is extremely simple, consisting of a barrel wheel with winding drum, a second wheel, a pinwheel, the escapement pallets, and the transmission drive system.

Figure 3. The Henniker clock now in the American Clock and Watch Museum in Bristol, Connecticut. The inverted 'L' above the clock carried the transmission capable of driving four dials.

Morrill's contemporaries almost invariably used an intermediate (or third) wheel in the time train, allowing lower tooth counts on each of the wheels. The tooth counts on the wheels and pinions of the Henniker clock are unusually high, particularly on the escape pinwheel---it has 46 pins around its rim, which impulsed a 1.9 second pendulum. Regulation of the pendulum was accomplished via the (un)usual rating nut under the 9 inch diameter, lenticular pendulum bob.


Figure 4. The fancy rating nut found on the Cooke, Henniker, Orford, and Sugar Hill clocks.

The crutch is a rather long and slender steel rod engaging an unlined slot in the hardwood pendulum rod. There is no provision for maintaining power. The 30 (not the 29 Parsons specifies) strike lifting pins are planted on the inner face of the strike main wheel, the second strike wheel arbor is fitted with a three tooth gathering pallet, and the

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³  Parsons very kindly provided the tooth count for this clock: "Great wheel, 120, driving a pinion of 10; the second wheel of 120 driving a pinion of 12; the pinwheel has 46 pins. An 18-tooth bevel (sic) gear on the first wheel arbor drives a 36-tooth wheel, whose 6-tooth pinion drives the 72-tooth hour wheel. Solving for vibrations per minute yields a pendulum length of nearly 14 feet---approximately two seconds (actually 1.956 seconds). Why Morrill used 46 pins in the pinwheel, I have no idea. A 45 pin wheel would have been easier to lay out, and would have driven a 2 second pendulum.

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ratchet drive for the strike train fan is fitted on the collet of the third wheel, instead of on the fan itself. The compact, yet rather wide and heavy fan may have been used as a combination air resistance and weight resistance governor. The horizontal strike rack has not been noted on any other contemporaneous clocks. The French, for some reason, clung to the count wheel system for many years; the English used both the count wheel and the rack and snail, and most early American tower clock makers used a rack and snail system which appears to merely be an enlargement of the familiar tall-case rack and snail. Morrill placed an 18 tooth gear on the non-working end of the second wheel arbor to drive a 36 tooth minute wheel which carries the trip lever for the hourly strike. The minute wheel and its six leaf pinion drive the strike snail and the motion work for the (unsigned) setting dial hands. A bevel gear on the second wheel arbor drives the vertical shaft to the transmission; the transmission bevel gear carrier is all that remains of the transmission. The transmission support post, shaped like an inverted 'L', is still attached to the frame. Parsons noted that the motion work hour wheel had 72 teeth, driven by a 6 tooth pinion and two wheels of 36 teeth, but mentions nothing about the spoking of the wheels. The bearing blocks are very nicely executed, rather than being merely utilitarian. The weights no longer exist, nor are any of the motion works, dials or hands available for examination.  The hands, according to Parsons, were 29^1/2 and 38^5/8 inches long with an internal counterpoise on the leading-off rod. The time side winding jack and the setting dial hand, shown in Parsons' photographs, were unaccountably missing when the latest photographs were taken in the American Clock and Watch Museum at Bristol.

The DOVER Clock

First sight of the First Parish Church in Dover wasn't very encouraging---the hands on the south dial facing the parking lot were Howards. The church secretary handed me the key to the clock room and pointed out the door to the stairs. On reaching the attic floor below the clock the first evidence that it really wasn't a case of mistaken identity was the typical Howard pendulum box, and the all-pervading killer-bee-hum of one of those horrid little Bodine motors---with bad bearings. It was one of Howard's æsthetic failures, a round-top with all the electrical bells and whistles foisted on tower clocks by those who would have us believe that in "Electrification is Preservation".  A thorough

Figure 9. A photograph of the Dover church from the 1860's. In the inset, the front dial can be seen to have the IV form for 4, while the north dial uses the IIII form.

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The barrel wheels and the remains of the second wheel are cast-iron, the pinwheel and the pallet arm are brass. The strike lock arm, unusual in that it has a roller, is steel, as are all the arbors. Neither of Morrill's other clocks have a roller on any strike control lever; the levers have ends made to lock the strike train at the warning and at the end of the strike sequence. It is pure conjecture, but the strike system may have employed a count wheel strike as does the clock shown in Figure 3 above. The typical Morrill horizontal strike rack was not to be found, nor were any other parts of the strike train, except as noted. The 28^1/2 inch leading off rod is fitted with an 18 tooth gear, and its fork for the universal joint is chisel cut on the anvil and forged to shape.  The 8^3/4 inch brass pinwheel has 40 pins on its rim; pinion of 12, and the 12^1/2 inch, 25 pound, lenticular pendulum bob is cast-iron, with a pattern of rings cast on the front. Calculating the pendulum period, and then its length, sent me back to the keyboard several times just to be sure---2.25 seconds---16.5 feet long! The pinwheel and pallet arbors were aligned vertically, as indicated by the offset between the pallet arm and the crutch. The wood winding drums are identical: 8 1/4 inches in diameter and 19 1/8 inches long with cast-iron end caps, one of which is the ratchet. There is no evidence of a maintaining power ratchet or spring on either of the barrel wheels, and none of his other clocks used gravity-bar maintaining power. Neither barrel wheel has pins on its rim (it's impossible to differentiate between the two wheels), therefore the bell hammer must have been cocked by pins on the second wheel, or by some other method we will never know about. The rather fine teeth on the barrel wheels and on the fragment of the second wheel appear to be machined---hobbed or fly cut---not hand filed, which would be unusual for a clock this early. Tower clocks of a later date by contemporary makers such as Stephen Hasham (1844) and George Handel Holbrook (1840) have obviously hand-filed teeth on all the train wheels. There was nothing to be found that would suggest a transmission gear cluster of any sort, nor Morrill's vertical drive to the transmission. The only piece of the clock frame I could find was a support for the mid-beam, which was tucked away in a stack of old lumber in the rafters of the clock room. It is painted a light green, has shallow notches chiselled in it whose spacings roughly match those of the top beams on the Henniker clock, and is 2 1/2 x 3 x 27 1/2 inches, which implies that the last figure is the approximate frame depth. The oil spots between the two closest notches indicate that that part lay under the train wheels---probably the strike train. The motion works have two wheels of thirty six teeth, with a pinion of six driving a 72-tooth hour wheel. None of the motion work wheels have circular spoking, except the hour wheel, which also carries an unusual bolted-on internal (inside the dial) counterpoise. The hour hand was held in place by nuts on two threaded rods which are shielded by a sheet metal truncated cone, fitted to deflect rain and snow. The minute arbor is filed to a tapered square, and threaded for a nut. There is no evidence of either

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⁵  Tooth counts: minute wheel of 36, pinion of 18 on the end of the leading-off rod; second wheel of 120; pinion of 12; pinwheel of 40; 2 pallets. This is:

36 x 120 x 40 x 2   =   345 600  =  26.667 vibrations per minute.
  18 x 12 x 60               12 960

      60      =   2.25 seconds.
  26.667

If the second wheel had fewer than 120 teeth, the pendulum length would increase. For instance; if the second wheel had only 96 teeth, the pendulum period would increase to 2.8125 seconds---25.8 feet!

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an internal or external counterpoise for the minute hand, but the hour hand has an internal hour wheel counterpoise mentioned above. The method used for setting the outside dials will very likely never be known, because the clock frame and the escapement supports have disappeared. There was neither a winding handle nor a winding gear to be found to fit the tapered winding squares on the drums. The winding squares are an inch square at the drum end, and taper down to 5/8 inch at the outer end of the 5-inch long square. A small cast iron wheel with 48 teeth may have been a part of a winding jack.

The brass bearing blocks for the wheel arbors on the frame are decorated, and resemble those on the Henniker clock, while the split brass bearings for the motion works arbors and the winding drum arbors are unusual.

Figure 10. Split bearing blocks found on Morrill clocks, and a section of motion work arbor with turned locating rings.

The two remaining minute hands are 55 inches long, and were keyed to the minute arbor by a square hole cut in a strap rivetted to the wood hand. There were no complete hour hands to be found anywhere. The Dover town history claims that the original church bell came from England, and then somehow disappeared. Its replacement---source unknown according to the church and town historians, but a Revere, according to Edward Stickney---was placed in the church in 1788. This bell cracked in 1822, and was sent to Boston where it was, "with the addition of some metal, recast by the Revere Company to a weight of 1048 pounds", and was replaced in the belfry the same year. The present bell is an undated Meneeley & Co., Troy, New York, recast by that company in about 1913 (again, per Stickney), after its predecessor also cracked. The bell hammer is a generic Howard bell hammer, similar to those in other Howard installations.

As I was leaving the church, I noticed at the back of the sanctuary a locked glass display case with a gilded fragment of one of the 'original' hour hands, the original (1829) key to the front door of the church, and the Howard! winding crank---all carefully labelled and arranged on a bed of red velvet.

Sic transit gloria Morrilliana.

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A MOTIONWORK SEAT-BOARD-BASED TRANSMISSION;
a novel solution to drive the two new dials

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Examination and analysis of the Dover clock's remains illustrate Morrill's ingenuity in adapting his original single-dial drive to a multiple dial drive without modifying or moving the clock. Although much of the analysis of this clock is conjecture⁶, if there had been a vertical drive to a transmission as there is on his Henniker clock, at least one or two of its pieces should have been left behind in the jumble of parts I found. All of the parts (except for the strike winding drum and the lock lever) I found are from the time train, which suggests that the striking of the clock was not considered as important as its time-telling function in its last years, somewhat of a reversal of the importance attached to the striking of a clock in mediæval days. There are no marks on the time train second wheel arbor to suggest the attachment of a bevel gear for the vertical drive as on the other two clocks. A recently overhauled 1840 single-dial Holbrook also had only a drive gear on the working end of the leading-off rod, as does this clock, while other three-dial Holbrooks have an appropriate transmission⁷.

Why was the minute wheel for the east dial a half-bevel gear, and why were the 45° slots cut in the motion work seatboard? The construction of the east dial motion work's base, and the angled drives on all three motion works provided the answer and the proof. It would have been much easier, and likely far less expensive, to make the extra half-bevelled gears (probably to an existing pattern) and their arbors than it would have been to design, build, and install a vertical drive and a transmission, or move the clock (with a redesigned simple transmission) to the center of the clock room. In all, there were seven half-bevel (22.5°) gears used in the three motion works, each with 36 teeth, a tooth count universally found in the minute hand drives on Morrill's tower clocks. The clock mechanism had already been installed at the extreme front of the steeple at dial level (the floor of the original clock room is approximately 18 inches below the level of

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⁶  Footnote 5 discussed the tooth counts of the time train to establish the pendulum length. In that the 36 tooth minute wheel is driven by an 18 tooth gear, the second arbor must have had a 36 tooth gear driving that gear, so the second arbor made two turns per hour. A 2.25 second pendulum falls within reasonable parameters for the clock. If the second wheel drove the motion works on a 1:1 ratio, the pendulum length would be unreasonable.
⁷  The very late (1850) Holbrook in East Medway, MA., (now Millis, MA) is an exception in that it has a secondary transmission to drive two dials well above the level on which the clock is installed, but still has only three dials. (Frederick Shelley, unpublished MS.)

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the main floor, and about 30 inches below the center of the dial opening), therefore it would have been a major effort to reposition the entire clock, as was done when the Howard was installed. The figure below (it appeared earlier as Figure 8.), enlarged somewhat, is a reconstruction of the method Morrill used to drive three dials.

Figure 11. The top motion works drove the original east dial, the other two drove the north and south dials.

The addition of the half-bevel gears, the two leading-off rods. and two new motion works solved all the problems of driving the two new dials. All in all, it's a clever solution to a sticky problem, and could have been adapted to drive a fourth dial from either of the 'new' motion works merely by installing the appropriate angled drives to the fourth dial. If Morrill had used his vertical drive to a transmission for ths clock, he would have had to build and install the transmission; the floor of the clock room would have had to be dropped considerably, the clock would have had to have been moved back to the center of the clock room, (even a conventional universal joint will jam at extreme angles, much less the fork universal) and three complete new leading off rods would have been required.

It was somewhat sad to find the mere remnants of a clock in a jumble of broken parts (with only the Bodine killer-bee hum for company) but it was rather pleasant to find several conjectures about one of Morrill's earliest tower clocks affirmed by the evidence lying mutely in that pile of discards.

And that Howard winding crank lying on its red velvet bed still bothers me.

The ORFORD MORRILL

Shortly after beginning a survey of New Hampshire tower clocks, I followed up on a suggestion from Frederick Shelley and found an odd-but-somehow-familiar-looking, unsigned and unattributed wood-framed clock in the steeple of the Orford Street, or West, Church in Orford, New Hampshire. It was unusual, and at first glance appeared that it might be another anonymous mid-1 th century wood-framed tower clock. Further study and consultation with Mr. Shelley and Mr. Edwin A. Battison convinced me that the clock was a third, and hitherto undocumented, (probable) Benjamin Morrill. The clock was incomplete---the second and third wheels in the strike train had been

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removed for 'repair'---and the clock had been rather crudely modified with useless and unnecessary universal joints. The story behind the damage is that someone who disliked the nighttime striking of the clock had sneaked into the steeple one dark night in the mid-1980's, and with the aid of a hammer and a cold chisel had removed 13 teeth from the strike train second wheel! The need for the modern universals installed (these have since been removed) by an alleged repairer during a recent "restoration" is open to some question---I've found the age-old fork universal works well if it is run within its design limits, and they certainly worked on this clock.

Figure 12. The West (or Orford Street) Church that carries the clock in its steeple. It is the only wooden Gothic church in New Hampshire.

Figure 13. The clock in the West Church, attributed to Benjamin Morrill, after its restoration.

An exhaustive search for documentation of the date of installation and corroboration of the name of the maker has drawn almost a total blank. Unfortunately, both the town and the church historians carefully detail the church's history until the 1801-1833 ministry of the Rev. Mr. Sylvester Dana⁸, and only resume the church history some years after the Rev. Mr. Dana's dismission due to old age, during the tenure of his successor. Town Records have also yielded (to date) only three cryptic entries: 1851---A. Phelps, cleaning the clock, 50¢; 1854---Adolphus Phelps, cleaning the clock, 50¢; March 21, 1881, A. Phelps---cleaning the clock, 50¢. The church building is the fifth used by the congregation, the fourth on the same site, and was built between 1850 and 1854. The first town meeting house and church in Orford was a remodelled storage shed. The second meeting house was built on the current site as a church, which, interestingly enough, when it was deemed no longer serviceable in 1820, was moved off to one side, where it sat for several years. It was later taken apart and floated down the Connecticut River to the town of Norwich, where it was repaired, rebuilt, and served as the Episcopal church until it was destroyed by fire in 1917. The dates and the fate of the third church building are not known, but it could have been the first to house the clock in its steeple. The history of this church building coincides with the tenures (and the missing church

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⁸  Penrose Hoopes places the Bristol, Connecticut, clockmaker, Gideon Roberts, in Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley, site of the Wyoming Massacre, contemporaneously with the young Dana. Small world...
⁹  The History of Orford states that the church was begun in 1851 and finished in 1854. The History of the Orford Church claims the church was completed on December 31, 1850, and dedicated the following month. Research continues...but the question arises as to whether the clock had been installed in this church's predecessor. If not, then why was the clock cleaned in 1851? The West Church records for the years 1833 - 1842 somehow disappeared at some time in the 1880's.
¹⁰  The reuse of the building fits in rather well with the New Englander's maxim; "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." Mrs. Hodgson, in her Orford, New Hampshire, A Most Beautiful Village, avers that this building was used as the Episcopal Church in Norwich, Vermont.  The Rev. E. D. Harvey in his History of the Orford Church, in turn, avers that this building was used in the construction of the Norwich Congregational Church, which would not be possible. The Norwich Congregational Church had its tower clock installed and running in 1816.

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records) of the Rev. Mr. Dana and his successor, the Rev. Mr. Daniel Campbell. The current building is an unusual and imposingly stately structure, to say the least. It is the only wooden church in New Hampshire done in the Gothic genre, designed by Moses G. Wood in 1850. The original drawing for the church, now hanging at the back of the sanctuary, puzzlingly enough, does not show clock dials in the steeple, but rather quatrefoil windows. Its unusual steeple (rebuilt in 1960) carries the clock's three dials on its north, east, and south sides, and before the strike train was damaged, the clock struck the hours on an 1863 Henry N. Hooper Co. bell.

The ORFORD Clock

The clock frame, 35^1/2 inches high, 25^1/2 inches deep, and 43^1/2 inches wide, is made of 2^1/2 x 2^1/2 inch rock maple beams, mortised, tenoned and pinned, and is painted a light green. The top beam ends are decorated with the 'New Hampshire bumper', but many differences in the clock's design are immediately apparent. The top front beam of the frame is cut away in the center, with only a small cap beam on each front leg, and the mid-beam runs the full length of the frame. A circularly spoked brass third wheel has been added to the time train; the escape wheel has only 18 pins. The vertical drive to the transmission places the driven gear below the driving gear, and outside the frame.  The Henniker clock has the driven gear above the driving gear, inside the frame.  The 8 inch diameter wood winding drums are placed below the train wheels, both time and strike, a much more compact design originating with Stephen Hasham (q.v., NAWCC BULLETIN #293) in 1816. The drum end caps are cast iron, one of them forming the ratchet. In the center of the front frame beam that supports the winding drums is a small reduction gear, or winding jack, to ease the effort of winding the strike side. A larger gear may be fitted and pinned to the strike winding square when the clock is wound. There is no provision for maintaining power, which makes it advisable to stop the pendulum when the time side is wound. The crutch wire is fitted into an unlined slot in the hardwood pendulum rod. The 61 inch, (1.25 second) pendulum hangs below floor level, and has an oddly fitted, flat, round (8 inch diameter) cast-iron bob suspended off-center on the inside flat of the rod. Shorter, stronger arbors for the wheels in both trains are used with the mid-beam construction. The time train third wheel, the pinwheel, and the pallet arbor are pivoted in brass bushings pressed into the forged 'A' frame pendulum

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support. The pinwheel and pallet arbors are aligned vertically, with the pallets acting inside the pins, which is the reason for stopping the pendulum during winding. This particular construction, used by many other makers, has a tendency to break or damage the pins, whether of brass or steel. This clock also has an 18-tooth wheel on the 'non-working' end of the second arbor to drive a 36-tooth minute wheel which carries the strike trip lever; its 6-tooth pinion drives the strike snail, but there is no motion work for a setting dial minute hand, thus the (missing) setting dial probably had only an hour hand, which is typical of many early tower clocks. (The setting dial shown is a replacement.) Setting the outside hands on the clock requires that one of the pallet arbor bushings be removed, the pallets disengaged---the entire pallet assembly left dangling---and the train then "freewheeled", an extremely dangerous and cumbersome procedure! The pinwheel shows evidence that all 18 pins have been replaced at least once. The 140 tooth circularly spoked strike barrel wheel carries its 35 lifting pins on an iron ring riveted to the inside face of the wheel; these pins act on a uniquely shaped, forged bell-hammer pull lever. The strike third wheel and fan arbors are pivoted in brass bushings pressed into a cast-iron 'Maltese cross' frame. The three-tooth gathering pallet fitted to the second wheel arbor 'gathers' the Morrill trademark horizontal strike rack, and the strike fan ratchet is located on the collet of the second strike wheel. The brass bearing blocks are very plain and utilitarian, with no attempt at decoration. The front winding drum bearing blocks are split horizontally, a bearing block construction noted on the motion works of the Dover clock. As noted earlier, the setting dial is missing, although the mounting posts for this dial are in place on the clock frame. The post-supported transmission gear cluster uses cast-iron bevel gears which drive the cast-iron, circular-spoked motion work wheels¹¹ via long metal (replacement) or wood leading-off rods, which have the original fork universals at the motion works. The hour wheels in these motion works show the remains of an internal counterpoise, as also noted on the Dover clock. These were evidently removed when the steeple was rebuilt in 1960, and the new internal structure precluded the use of the counterpoise---but a counterpoise on the hour wheel is extremely unusual. The unsightly universal joints in the vertical drive rod and (including one home-made joint) at the transmission end of the leading-off rods

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¹¹  The tooth counts on the motion work wheels are a departure from his other clocks: a 30 tooth pinion drives a 60 tooth intermediate wheel, whose 12 tooth pinion drives a 72 tooth hour wheel.

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are not original, but were installed in a purported restoration in the late 1980's. They have since been removed. The leading-off rods were originally supported by the bevel gear pivot at the transmission and by the fork universal at the motion works. The 350 pound time weight is of squared granite blocks held together end to end with iron 'staples', with a molten-sulphur secured hook. The 215 pound strike weight for this clock is also made of squared granite blocks---the staples apparently failed in the late 1960's---held in a (modern) strap iron cage. The weights are supported by double fall wire ropes to achieve the necessary drop (approximately 35 feet) for an eight-day running time. The hand-wound clock is still running and striking, almost 160 years after it was placed in its steeple; in 1995, at the time the last known living example of Benjamin Morrill's tower clocks.

The SUGAR HILL MORRILL

This one was a stunner. In the course of an Internet discussion of New Hampshire tower clocks in early 1999, Don Eastman, the clock winder for the Dow Academy clock in Franconia mentioned that a neighboring town had a tower clock in the museum. He had only seen it in passing, and recalled few of its details. During the first week of August, 1999 (after a move back to Vermont), I'd seen an intriguing all-wood chair frame clock---previously undocumented---and a couple of Howard roundtops that I've always considered one of Howard's æsthetic failures. I had the chance to see the Sugar Hill clock on 5 August.

Figure 14. The Sugar Hill clock. It was missing the vertical drive rod and the transmission carrier still had not been located.

Figure 15. The clock after the transmission carrier and the drive rod had been found and mounted. Two partial and one complete motion works were later located in Littleton, New Hampshire, and re-united with the clock.

At first glance it was another one-off on a metal frame, cast aside because it had some monumental fault in its design. A closer examination convinced me that it's very likely Morrill's last tower clock, and I hate to admit that I had given up trying to find another after the first three. It is, unfortunately, unsigned, and its provenance is a mystery...

Sugar Hill was a part of Lisbon, New Hampshire, until 1963, when it was incorporated as a town. Whatever records of its installation might have existed disappeared in 1927, when all the Lisbon Town Records (and most of Lisbon) went downstream in the flooding Ammonoosuc River, and none of the remaining church records mention the clock.

The clock had been originally installed (date unknown) in the 1839 Advent Church in Sugar Hill, and was set off to one side in the steeple (date unknown, but likely about 1898) after the installation of an E. Howard roundtop tower clock.

This latter clock was installed in 1898, and the church is now the Town Building. The clock was removed from the building some time in the 1980's, and given to the Sugar Hill Museum. The clock was missing some parts, but it resembles the other Morrill clocks in many ways. Some of the similarities:

1.  The use throughout of circular spoking on all the various wheels. All of Morrill's known and attributed clocks use this form of wheel spoking.
2.  The use of the inverted 'L' transmission carrier to carry the bevel gear drives to the dials. This unit is also configured to drive a possible four dials, a concept Morrill pioneered in New Hampshire. The usual flatbed construction yielded a clock that could

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drive three dials from the second arbor at the level of the top of the flatbed frame. This construction precluded the installation of a drive for a fourth dial, although at least one other contemporary clockmaker did make allowance for a four-dial drive on one of his clocks.
3.  The continuous arc pallets swinging within the 18 steel pins of the brass escape wheel, a design noted on the clock in Orford, New Hampshire. All of Morrill's known or attributed tower clocks use a pinwheel escapement.
4.  The unique design of the fork universals---one round pin and one square pin fitting into similar holes in the opposite member of the universal.
5.  The remarkable similarity in the construction and action of the strike lock, warning and release levers.
6.  The installation of a ratchet for the strike fan on the third wheel in the strike train, rather than on the fan itself. This design is seen on the Orford clock as well.
7.  The use of three axial pins on the rim of the second wheel in the strike train to lock the train at the end of the strike sequence. This design is seen on the Orford clock as well.
8.  The three-leaved gathering pallet for the rack. This design is also seen on the Orford clock, and appears to be unique to Morrill.
9.  The use of 140 teeth on the strike main wheel, coupled with the 35 lifting pins planted axially on the rim of the wheel.
10.  The similarity in the construction of the strike fan blades.
11.  The pendulum bob is an exact copy of the bob on the Orford clock, and is also similarly offset on the inside of the pendulum rod, rather than in-line with the center of the pendulum rod.
12.  The counterpoises for the minute hands attached to the leading-off rods are exact duplicates of those found on the Orford clock.
13.  The use of winding jacks for both trains, a design seen on the clock now in the collection of the American Clock and Watch Museum in Bristol, Connecticut.
14.  The cranked weight attached to the rack to ensure that it falls when released. This design is also seen on the Orford clock.
15.  The crutch wire slot in the pendulum rod is not reinforced with a plate---it is a simple slot in the wood. This design is also seen on the Orford clock.
16.  The remarkable similarity in the patterns cast in the winding barrel end-caps, the faces of the winding jacks, and the winding aid used on the Orford clock.

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To be entirely fair, there are dissimilarities:
1. The strike rack is not horizontal.
2. The frame is not of wood, but of angle iron metal.
3. The winding barrels are on the top of the clock frame, rather than on a level below. The Cook clock has the barrels on top of the frame, the clock in the Bristol museum has the barrels on top of the frame, the Dover clock construction is unknown, and the Orford clock has the barrels below.
4. The bushings are not decorated, nor are the larger bushings of a split construction as they are on his other clocks. (It should be noted here that the construction of this clock does not require that design, which is primarily one of convenience for the repairer/cleaner/maintainer of the clock.)

Figure 16. The 1839 Advent Church that originally housed this clock. The church has since been deconsecrated, and now serves as the Town House.

All in all, the similarities far outweigh the dissimilarities, and the conclusion is that this clock was either made by Benjamin Morrill of Boscawen, New Hampshire, or is perhaps a slavish later copy by an unknown, of Morrill's earlier works. This latter conjecture bears little weight in my opinion, as there are similarities that appear on all of his known and attributed clocks, and someone who copied his designs would have had to have visited all of the clocks and then diligently all copied the various oddities. Oddities they are, as they fall well outside of the commonly accepted design criteria applied to tower clocks---or indeed, any other clock---of Morrill's times by other makers. The maker of a tower clock would likely adhere to the design taught him by his master. There is no record of Morrill's apprenticeship with any known maker, and there is no record of any apprentices to Morrill (with the possible exception of his nephew, Reuben, listed as resident in Morrill's household in the 1850 census) who would have absorbed Morrill's unique designs and skills in construction. The 1830 census record shows 4 males aged 15-20, and 4 males aged 20-30 as resident in the Morrill household, therefore he may well have had 4 apprentices and 4 journeymen at work, but this date is long before this clock---or perhaps any of Morrill's tower clocks---was made..

This would seem to eliminate the possibility that this clock was made by someone other than Morrill, and reinforces the likelihood that this is Benjamin Morrill's last clock.

Morrill appears to have either had the services of an exceptionally talented model-maker for his various iron castings, or was extremely capable himself in that regard. The motion works on the clock in Orford are still functioning perfectly after more than 150 years. The teeth on the wheels of the motion works don't appear to have been dressed with a file---the marks of the sand mold are still to be seen on their faces.

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The SUGAR HILL Clock

The clock is small in comparison with its fellows, and the frame is entirely of metal. The top of the frame stands but slightly over 2 feet---25^1/4 inches, is a mere 20^1/2 inches wide and 44^3/8 inches long. The paint is a faded light blue, a departure from the dark green used on the Henniker and Orford clocks. Two winding jacks are permanently installed, driving wood drums with the characteristic circular spoking seen on all Morrill's clocks. The trains are carried in a central frame rising from the flatbed, time on the right and strike on the left. Morrill's inverted 'L' transmission carrier rises above the clock, bolted to the frame, and braced on the central frame. The carrier, with a vertical drive rod, is configured for three dials, but has provision to drive a fourth. The escapement is a pinwheel, with 18 steel pins, and the pallets are a steel arc swinging inside the pins.

Figure 17. The clock installed and running, time only, at the Sugar Hill Museum, Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, with the original dial and copies of the hands.

Figure 18. A side view of the clock after its installation.  The time train is on the right, strike on the left.

The strike train is a dead copy of the strike train of the Orford clock, with a few improvements. The cast-iron wheel teeth all look alike---they are cleanly cut---and almost look as though they were hobbed, rather than hand-filed, which was the then-accepted method of cutting teeth. Tooth counts are identical to those of the Orford clock. Review the "Similarities" above---they are telling. The glaring exception is the use of a conventional rack in the place of Morrill's signature horizontal rack, but there just isn't room for the horizontal rack.

While this observation is admittedly quite subjective, there is an 'ambience', or a 'presence' peculiar to Morrill clocks, as there is with clocks made by other early individual makers. They each established a style, or design, and tended to follow that bent, regardless that they might change the apparent design to accomodate new ideas.

A Summation---and a possible early MORRILL clock.

To sum up, we have two known Morrill clocks. Two attributed clocks. Then, on the 30th of July, 2007, I received an e-mail from Martin Cooke of Connecticut. He attached several photos of what appears to be a very early Morrill. It has many similarities with the other clocks examined. The ornate circular spoking of the wheels (all clocks examined), the pallets mounted on a single angled arm (the Henniker clock), a pinwheel escape

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wheel, two-piece bearing blocks for the winding barrels (seen on all but the Dover clock, where they were not to be found), the A-frame at the center of the frame carrying the pallet arbor and suspending the pendulum (Orford, Henniker clocks), and the adjusting nut for the pendulum bob (a dead ringer for the nut on the Orford and Sugar Hill clocks) are strikingly similar to Morrill's known and attributed clocks. It does use countwheel striking, and is designed to drive but three dials from the level of the top of the frame.

MORRILL, The Practical Æsthete

Even though he at first appears to have been a stolid businessman, Benjamin Morrill reveals himself to have been an inquiring man, an experimenter who was always willing to try something new, and a skilled worker in wood and metal who showed quite a bit of an artistic flair in the design and construction of his clocks. All of his clocks, from his presumed first in Dover (the Cooke clock may be earlier) to his fourth (fifth) in Sugar Hill, indicate he was always thinking, always experimenting, always trying to make the next clock better than the last. All of the train wheels and most of the motion work wheels are made with some form of circular spoking, a purely decorative, time-and-materials-intensive effort, and the cast-iron wheels are painted black. He must have been a master carver in wood. His patterns for the cast-iron wheels in his clocks appear to have been accurate enough to require little, if any, filing. None of the cast-iron wheels show any file marks on the teeth. His solidly built wood frames are carefully jointed and finished and were painted a light green after assembly. The brass bearing blocks and nuts are decorated---really time-consuming---and the "A" frames in both the time and strike trains are painted a glossy black. The horizontal rack and the strike control levers are nicely polished, not at all like the "straight from the blacksmith's anvil" look all Holbrooks¹² have.

Figure 19. A view of a Holbrook I restored in Chelsea, Vermont.
Its overall appearance is more blacksmith than clockmaker.

All of this extra work was in complete disregard of the simple fact that the only person who would see the clock in the years to come would be the lonely clock winder on his weekly trudge up the stairs, a man who wasn't too likely to be quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson's lines; "If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being." The winder very likely had something more on his mind than "that gorgeous clock"---would you do all that work for just $12.00 a year?---winding these clocks is a workout!

A casual glance at Benjamin Morrill may have given the initial impression that he was stolid and businesslike, but he indeed proved himself resourceful and inventive, "a man of great ingenuity", and his work bears the touch of the Muses.

The sheer artistry devoted to the design and execution of his clocks makes an immediate impression on the observer---"Here is a man who cared deeply about his work, and who poured his heart and soul into the effort."

He was a New Englander to the core---an unremarkably remarkable man.

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¹²  I am not picking on Holbrook.  He was merely a contemporary maker of somewhat similar clocks.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BUXTON, Willis George, History: BOSCAWEN & WEBSTER: FIFTY YEARS, 1883-1933. Ranney, Penacook, New Hampshire. 1934

COFFIN, Charles Carleton, Comp., THE HISTORY of BOSCAWEN and WEBSTER, N.H. from 1733 to 1878.  Printed by the Republican Press Association, Concord, New Hampshire.. 1878.

____, ONE HUNDRED and FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY of the SETTLEMENT of BOSCAWEN and WEBSTER, Merrimack Co., N.H., Also births recorded on the town records from 1733 to 1850.  Concord, New Hampshire., Republican Press Association, 1884.

COGSWELL, Leander Winslow, HISTORY of the TOWN of HENNIKER, Merrimack County, New Hampshire, from the date of the Canada grant by the province of Massachusetts, in 1735, to 1880; with a genealogical register of the families of Henniker.  Printed by the Republican Press Association, Concord, New Hampshire., 1880.

DANA, Rev. Sylvester, Manuscript; Personal Papers, 1775-1835.

GODDARD, Merritt Elton, A HISTORY of NORWICH, VERMONT. (Published by authority of the town) with portraits and illustrations by M. E. Goddard & Henry V. Partridge.  Dartmouth Press, Hanover, New Hampshire. 1905.

Granite State Monthly, October, 1949. Morrill House photograph.

HAMMOND, Priscilla, GRAVESTONE INSCRIPTIONS, BOSCAWEN, NEW HAMPSHIRE.  Compiled 1932. Re-published by Higginson Book Company, Salem, Massachusetts. 2000

HARVEY, Rev. Edwin Deeks, A HISTORY of THE ORFORD CHURCH, 1770 - 1945:  The Green Mountain Press, Bradford, Vermont. 1945.

THE ONLY HENNIKER ON EARTH; Henniker History Committee, researched and written by the historical committee.  Phoenix Publishing, Canaan, v 1980

HODGSON, Alice Doan, THANKS to the PAST: THE STORY of ORFORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE;  Historical Fact Publications, Orford, New Hampshire. 1965.

____, ORFORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE, A MOST BEAUTIFUL VILLAGE.  Privately published by A.D. Hodgson, 1978.

HOOPES, Penrose Robinson, CONNECTICUT CLOCKMAKERS of the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY;  Edwin Valentine Mitchell, Hartford, Connecticut. 1930.

LATHROP, Donn Haven, & SHELLEY, Frederick, THE AMAZING STEPHEN HASHAM;  Bulletin of the NAWCC, Whole #293, December, 1994.

THE NEW-ENGLAND HISTORICAL and GENEALOGICAL REGISTER. Published at the Society's Rooms, 17 Bromfield Street, Boston, Massachusetts.  Printed by David Clapp & Son, Boston, Massachusetts. 1870.

RECORDS of the TOWN of ORFORD, 1849 - 1862.

PACKARD, DONALD K., WHEN NEW HAMPSHIRE was a CLOCKMAKING CENTER;  Historical New Hampshire, An occasional publication of the New Hampshire Historical Society: April, 1950

PARSONS, Charles S., NEW HAMPSHIRE CLOCKS and CLOCKMAKERS:  Adams-Brown Co., Exeter, New Hampshire. 1976

PRICE, Ebenezer, A CHRONOLOGICAL REGISTER of BOSCAWEN, in the County of Merrimack, and State of New-Hampshire, from the first settlement of the town to 1820.  Printed by J.B. Moore, Concord, New Hampshire. 1823.

RECEIPTS and EXPENDITURES of the TOWN of DOVER, from 1844 to 1940. (Several lacks.)

SCALES, John, HISTORY of DOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE (Vol. 1);  John B. Clarke Co., Manchester, New Hampshire. 1923.

SMITH, Daniel J., RAMBLES about the DOVER AREA; 1623 - 1973.  The Hancock Press, Lexington, Massachusetts. 1973.

STICKNEY, Edward and Evelyn, THE BELLS of PAUL REVERE, his sons and grandsons.  Privately printed, Bedford, Massachusetts. 1976

WADLEIGH, George, NOTABLE EVENTS in the HISTORY of DOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE.  The Tufts College Press, Boston, Massachusetts. 1923

NEW HAMPSHIRE HISTORY, WEBSTER, 1933-1983.  Compiled and published by the Webster History Committee, Mabel M. Anderson, [et al.]  Published by The Committee, Webster, New Hampshire. 1984

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