In this issue I am pleased to feature two clocks from our current special exhibit, Pennsylvania Clocks, 1750-1850. The exhibit includes clocks from several different areas of the state. On display are some rare table or bracket clocks and weight-driven shelf clocks. The shelf clocks are particularly interesting, as they were being produced at the same time that mass-produced shelf clocks from Connecticut were being marketed in the area. Clocks in Pennsylvania were still being produced in the traditional way, one by one, even into the 1840s. Many of the design features of the Connecticut clocks were incorporated into these handcrafted clocks, but they were expensive and time consuming to produce, which accounts for their rarity. The tall clock continued to be popular, at least in the German-populated areas of the state, well into the 1830s.

The clocks shown here were made by Henry B. Ober Jr. (b.1804-d.1880) of Elizabethtown, Lancaster County. Henry Jr. was the son of a wagon maker, Henry Ober of West Donegal Township. It is not known where he learned clockmaking, but he was related to two area clockmakers who could have trained him. His sister Catherine married clockmaker Jacob Gorgas (b.1795-d.1874) of Running Pumps, Mount Joy Township, eldest son of clockmaker Joseph Gorgas (b.1770-d.1841), who moved to Running Pumps from Ephrata in 1806. His paternal grandmother’s first cousin was clockmaker Samuel Stauffer (b.1757-d.1825) of Manheim. He first appears in the Mount Joy Township tax records in 1828. He thus began his career at a time when individual clockmakers were beginning to lose the economic battle against the factory system of mass production and interchangeable parts.

Like most clockmakers of his era, Ober purchased rough castings and forgings, which came from England or Philadelphia, from a local supplier and then finished the parts and assembled them into a finished product. A letter survives from Ober to Harrisburg merchants Ogelsby & Pool, dated 1831, ordering, “1. 24 hour 12 inch clock dial with English figures,” one set each of castings, forgings, pinions, hands, and a bell for a 24-hour clock. One of his movements is stamped on the front plate, “Wm Vale/Lichfield,” a mark seen on the plates of other area clocks.

Cases for clocks were usually purchased from local cabinetmakers. Most of the cases of Ober’s clocks apparently came from the same shop; they usually share the same shape of the scrolls, the same cone-shaped turned rosettes, and similar turnings on the pillars. The plinths below the finials have a crosshatched pattern. Fortunately one of these cases (Figure 4) was signed by John Smith, a cabinetmaker documented as working in Donegal Township during this period.

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