Billy Salter of Elm Street is the latest in a long line of people who have cared about the town clock, which has always been located in the Unitarian church building. Salter has been watching the clock for the past 25 years, making adjustments when asked or, as a self-proclaimed “clock nudge,” when he sees the need.
Salter says that virtually all adjustments are made from the inside: “Climb up a little fold-down ladder in Bargains in the Belfry, then up a fairly rickety ladder, then you are in a little square room with the three clock mechanisms.”
Billy Salter looks down from the cherry-picker as he resets the hands on the town clock in May. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
On those rare occasions when the gearing slips and the relative positions of the hour and minute hands are out of alignment, someone has to manually detach one hand and reset them both. Twice in the past 15 years that “someone” has been Salter, donning a hard hat and climbing into a cherry-picker to ride up to the clock tower.
The names of past clock adjusters have been lost to time, but Press reporter Joan Eliyesil’s recent articles on the men and women behind the town trusts preserve the names of past townspeople who cared financially, giving money for a clock and its maintenance.
The first town clock dates to 1861. In that year Harvard celebrated the Fourth of July with what Henry Nourse (“History of the Town of Harvard, Massachusetts, 1732–1893”) describes as “a parade of ‘Ancient and Honorables’ escorted by ‘Harvard Guards’ commanded by Captain G.C. Wetherbee.” A dinner followed the outdoor festivities, and receipts from tickets went to pay for a town clock that was placed in the Unitarian church.
The first clock tower
The church, built in 1840 on the site of the first and second town meetinghouses, was the first of those three buildings to have a clock tower. The first town hall, built in 1828 after the separation of church and state, looked very much like a house (which, in fact, it became upon completion of the current Town Hall), and had no place for a clock.
The town clock in 1876. (Photo courtesy of Harvard Historical Society)
In 1875 the church burned, and a year later, a Queen Anne–style structure replaced the previous Greek Revival building. Warren Hapgood presented the town with what Nourse calls “an excellent tower clock” that was placed in the steeple of the Unitarian church. Although the new Town Hall had been built at this time, the Italianate-style building had a lantern tower rather than a structure for a clock. Mercy Maynard, who died in 1889, left $500 to the town for the “purchase, erection, and maintenance of a Town Clock, said clock to be placed in the Unitarian Church” (Nourse), and she made a provision that if the whole sum were not needed, the balance would be paid over by the selectmen to the Unitarian Society for the maintenance of said clock. Nourse reports that because the town already had a clock in the church steeple, Maynard’s fund was invested, “awaiting contingencies.”
At first it seemed odd that Mercy Maynard would leave money for a clock, knowing that the town already had one. On the other hand, she was the first cousin of Warren Hapgood, who had given the town that clock 23 years earlier, and perhaps she wanted to ensure that his gift could be replaced should it become necessary.
Unfortunately, it did become necessary because the Unitarian church burned in 1966. It is not clear whether it was the original Hapgood clock that was lost in the fire. In 1942 Stanley Hildreth had established a clock fund to be used for the maintenance of the town clock. Because the fund was not for the purchase of a new clock, one might infer that the Hapgood clock had continued to function.
Who paid for today’s clock?
From Eliyesil’s research, Mercy Maynard’s gift appears untouched since its acceptance by the town in 1892, so it was apparently not tapped to pay for the clock in the present Unitarian church. Town Clerk Janet Vellante says that the 1967 Town Report shows no appropriations or acceptances. The same report has a listing on the town accountant’s asset sheet that includes $500 as “Town Clock Insurance Fund,” an amount that would not go far to cover the cost of a new clock. Would the church’s insurance have covered replacement of a clock that had “belonged” to the town? The question remains: Who funded the current town clock?
