The Grandfather Clock

In the mid sixties my family was living on five acres that had once been a farm in southern Iowa. We had all kinds of buildings on the place: a commercial egg processing facility, a horse barn with stables and a loft, a hog barn, a lighted riding arena, and a 1920’s era, three-story frame farmhouse.

The house was a wonderful place to live and I can appreciate now, in a way I didn’t then, why my parents loved it. My mother loved antiques, and our house certainly qualified as such. Within that house, an antique she prized nearly as much was a grandfather clock that, if I recall correctly, had belonged to her father many years before. I remember her winding it with a key she kept stored behind the glass door. 

When my mother died, I inherited her clock. Neither of my sisters had a place for it. With a bit of research, I discovered the clock was made by the Waterbury Clock Company in Waterbury, Connecticut. A photo from an 1891 catalogue lists my clock as the company’s Surrey model, available in oak or walnut. Mine is oak. How it got from Connecticut to my mother’s father, and then to her, I don’t know; she never told me. 

And perhaps it didn’t. Mom collected all kinds of antiques; the grandfather clock she wound every day in our home in Iowa might have been a different clock altogether. I have a very dim memory of that clock being a full length, stand-alone model, rather than the three quarter length clock I currently own.

But my memory has never been good, and lacking hard evidence one way or the other, I’m going to remember what I want to believe. So thanks, mom. Among your many gifts to me, this was one of the best.

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