Background
Simon Willard was born on April 3, 1753 in Grafton, Massachussets, the eighth child of Benjamin and Sarah (Brooks) Willard and a descendant of Maj. Simon Willard, one of the founders of Concord.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Simon Willard
Edit ProfileEducation
He had but a limited schooling and when he was twelve years old his father apprenticed him to a clockmaker in Grafton.
Career
Within a year (1766) he had made with his own hands and without any assistance a grandfather clock which was pronounced far superior to those produced by his master. For the next nine or ten years little is definitely known of Willard's activities. An older brother was engaged in the clock manufacturing business in Grafton at the time, and Simon may have been employed by him. He may, however, have made clocks for himself, for, clocks marked "Simon Willard, Grafton, " are occasionally found. At the time of the Lexington alarm, April 19, 1775, he marched with his brothers in Capt. Aaron Kimball's company of militia to Roxbury, Massachussets, but he was not war-minded and returned to Grafton after a week. He was drafted into the army later but he paid for a substitute, and presumably remained in Grafton making clocks during the Revolutionary War.
He apparently determined to leave Grafton, and some time between 1777 and 1780 he went to Roxbury, where he established a combined clock factory and home and occupied it until his retirement in 1839, a period of over fifty-eight years. During his long and active career he manufactured every kind of clock, but specialized in church, hall, and gallery timepieces. He had not been in Roxbury long before his inventive faculties asserted themselves and at the May 1784 session of the General Court of Massachusetts, he was granted the exclusive privilege of making and vending clock jacks for five years. This, his first patent, was for a piece of kitchen furniture used for roasting meat before the open fire. The jack was suspended by a hook from the mantel in front of the fireplace, the meat was hung on a hook on the lower end of the jack, and a clock mechanism within the jack turned the meat before the fire. The invention for which Willard is especially renowned, however, is that for an improved timepiece, which he devised in 1801, and for which a United States patent was granted Feburary 8, 1802. This "Willard Patent Timepiece" at once won popular favor and in the course of time came to be known as a "banjo clock, " a name which Willard himself did not use either in his patent specifications or advertisements and sales. How or when the name originated is not known. His third invention was an alarm clock, for which he obtained a patent December 8, 1819, but it was not very successful or popular.
Achievements
-
Willard built up an enviable reputation for the quality of the clocks he produced and his clientele was restricted to the wealthier classes. President Jefferson was one of his patrons and as a result, several of Willard's clocks were installed at the University of Virginia. One is today (1936) in the file room of the office of the chief clerk of the United States Supreme Court - still keeping perfect time - and another is contained in the Franzoni case in Statuary Hall in the Capitol at Washington.
Personality
Willard was an extremely poor business man; he paid no attention to the fact that other clockmakers stole his inventions beyond spurning them personally, and he retired at the age of eighty-six with five hundred dollars.
Connections
On November 29, 1776, he married Hannah Willard, his first cousin. On January 23, 1788, he married as his second wife, Mrs. Mary (Bird) Leeds. They had eleven children.
