Clocks and Timepiece and St. Michael's

CCPL Keeping time in Charleston's Past

 Timepieces, such as sundials and water clocks, have an ancient history.  By contrast, fully mechanical clocks only date back to the 13th century.  Watches for an individual to carry on their person date to the 16th century.  By the 18th century, these "watches" had developed into pocket watches for the wealthy.  That said, such pocket watches were expensive and tended to only be carried by the wealthy. 

Historically, the concept of exact time was simply not that important.   To quote Nic Butler, discussing life in 18th century Charleston:

Even after the arrival of our first public clock in the late 1720s, keeping track of the hour of the day in colonial-era Charleston continued to be a vague business. Most people’s lives simply revolved around the rising and the setting of the sun. Unless you had an expensive watch or clock, or even a sundial, calculating the hours between sunrise and sunset was a matter of guess work. As a result of these conditions, people’s lives did not revolve around schedules and deadlines. The concept of being late or early was far more elastic than it is today. The notion of “clock time” was a mathematical construct, not a rule that framed your life. . . .

That changed world-wide in the 19th century.  The development of the railroads and the need to safely schedule usage across tracks drove the need for precision time keeping and standardization of time across large geographical areas.  Railroads introduced the concept of time zones, that we still use to this day.  

------------

Shortly after the official opening of St. Michael’s Church in 1761, its vestry began to raise a subscription to purchase a clock and a set of bells. A 1763 description of their clock, provided by its maker in London, noted that it was designed “to show the hour four ways[,] to strike the hour on the largest bell[,] and the quarters on 4 bells, as the Royal Exchange [in] London.” The four-faced clock included four copper dial plates, each measuring six feet in diameter. Notice that the manufacturer did not mention a separate hand to show the minutes. It had an hour hand and it chimed the quarter hours, which was sufficient for eighteenth century lifestyles.

St. Michael’s clock arrived in Charleston in July of 1764 and was installed shortly afterwards. From that point to the end of the American Revolution, it was considered the “town clock.” Following the incorporation of the City of Charleston in 1783, the new city government paid an annual sum to maintain what it called “the city clock” at St. Michael’s Church, and also paid the salary of an official “time keeper.”[3] People in town set their watches and clocks by the hours and quarter hours chimed by St. Michael’s clock. As people’s lives became busier and more regimented in the nineteenth century, however, our community began to fret about dividing the hours of the day more precisely. Responding to this cultural shift in the spring of 1849, the City Council of Charleston paid to have minute hands added to the four faces of the clock in St. Michael’s steeple.[4]

The four-faced clock in the steeple of St. Michael’s Church remained the official time piece of the city of Charleston until mid-December of 1946, at which time the city paid the church to electrify and automate the venerable clock.[5] But for nearly half a century, St. Michael’s was not the only city clock. When St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church on King Street, just north of Calhoun Street, installed a set of bells and a clock in its steeple in 1901, it also entered into a long-term agreement with the city to hire a “time keeper” to maintain its time piece as a public service to the people residing on the north side of the city. This relationship continued well into the 1950s, when that clock was also converted to electric power.

From the installation of a peal of bells in the steeple of St. Michael’s Church in late 1764, the bells were rung each night for ten to fifteen minutes around sunset, to coordinate with the beating of the tattoo that marked the beginning of the nocturnal night watch and the curfew for the city’s black majority. This practice continued for more than a century, and its timing was adjusted seasonally just like setting of the watch. What was called “first bells” pealed at 7 p.m. in the winter and 8 p.m. in the summer, as a sort of warning to the population that the end of the work day was approaching, then the “last bells” pealed at 9 p.m. in the winter and 10 p.m. in the summer. The need for these bells disappeared with the advent of 24-hour police protection in the late 1850s and the end of slavery in 1865, but the tradition continued. Charleston’s seasonally-adjusted nocturnal bells were last heard on the sixth day of September, 1882. The following day, the city switched on a new telegraphic fire alarm system that chimed the bells electrically. You know—break glass, pull handle, bell will ring.