Henry Martin Bradley purchased this grandfather clock new in 1853 from the Waterbury Connecticut Clock Company. At the time it was stained a chocolate brown. In his will he left the clock to his son Edward Luther Bradley who then left it to his daughter Lucile Bradley Shepard. She thought it should stay in the Bradley family so she gave it to her nephew, my Dad, Stuart Bradley. He stripped the clock of the chocolate brown and stained it a lighter color. He remembers seeing the clock in the front hall of his grandfather’s house at 2229 East 1st Street in Duluth, Minnesota.

As a child I used to hide things inside the clock which was in our living room. It is now in my dining room and survived the earthquake we had a couple of years ago. I have to wind the brass weights up to the top once a week. One weight is for the time and the other for the chime.

I highly recommend visiting the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania near Lancaster, their website is www.nawcc.org. They have many examples of the tall case clocks and they show how they evolved in America.

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My daughter Maeve’s artistic rendering of the clock