A few years ago I snapped this photo of my Great Grandmother’s clock sitting on my Dad’s work bench in his shop. 

My parents picked up this clock in Richmond, Utah after my Great Grandma Lillian Coley Jonas Bowcutt passed away in 1987. The story I recall was that it was in the root cellar. The belief being that at some point it quit working and was placed in the cellar. 

At some point I remember Dad determining that the main spring had broke. The photo above 2021 shows that the silver of the clock, if it was original, was nearly all gone. I don’t think it was original, probably painted at some point over the years. Sitting in a root cellar for unknown decades had not helped the wood and clock mechanism either. 

I don’t know if my Great Grandparents purchased it new or not. I will have to do some research on it, but the belief is this clock likely predates my Great Grandparent’s marriage in 1918. Did it belong to the the Coley family before that, the Jonas, or did someone else give/sell it to them? We will not know in this life. It likely even predated Lillian’s birth in 1898.

Either way, Dad took it upon himself to work on restoring it. He took the clock to Twin Falls and had the mechanism fixed. He restored the wood and glass while the clock was fixed. Here is what it looked like at Christmas 2022. Pretty amazing.

It now works and even chimes the hour and quarter hour. A beautiful relic restored to life.