An American tall case (grandfather) clock made by Isaac Doolittle about 1760 in New Haven spent much of its life in Thankeful House at 6 Main Street in Newtown. It now is displayed in the Newtown Historical Society’s Matthew Curtiss House thanks to a collaboration between Elizabeth “Betsy” Dakin, a descendant of the clock’s many generations of owners, and Newtown Historical Society volunteer Jerry Valenta, a longtime antique clock repairer/restorer.

Isaac Doolittle was born in Wallingford on August 13, 1721. It is believed he learned the clockmaking trade from clockmaker Macock Ward there before moving to New Haven about 1742 and opening a shop on Chapel Street.

His shop advertised selling and repairing clock and watch cases and “compasses, sea and land surveyors scales and protractors, gauging rods, walking sticks, silver plated buttons” and a variety of other work. A man of many talents, Doolittle was an inventor, mechanic, manufacturer, militia officer, entrepreneur, printer, politician and brass, iron and silver artisan.

In 1774 he opened a foundry casting large bells, a difficult craft he continued along with clockmaking until shortly before his death in 1800.

Tall case clocks made by Isaac Doolittle can be seen in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, The National Clock and Watch Museum in Bristol, New Haven Historical Society’s collection, and now The Matthew Curtiss House.

According to Betsy Dakin’s family history, ownership of the clock can be traced back to Timothy Chittenden (1765-1835 ) and his wife Hannah Trowbridge (1765-1820). Both from New Haven, they moved to Stockport, N.Y., where he operated a mill that made nails.

“Who owned the clock before Timothy Chittenden is a mystery,” Dakin said. “It could have come from his family but more likely from the Trowbridges. Timothy and Hannah had no children and gave the clock to their goddaughter, Abigail, who was the daughter of Hannah’s sister Elizabeth Trowbridge and her husband Samuel Sherman of New Haven.”

Abigail Sherman married the Rev Henry Fitch of Trinity Church in New Haven and they had five children. Their daughter Arabella, usually called Belle, came to Newtown to be a teacher.

She married Daniel Glover Beers, who was the son of Charles Henry Beers and Mary Elizabeth Glover, and grandson of Ebenezer Beers Jr and Phoebe Botsford. Belle and Daniel operated the Beers farm and inherited the clock.

“[The late Newtown historian] Daniel Cruson told me where the foundation still exists of the Victorian house they built on Mile Hill Road,” Dakin said. “I was happy to find it. I wish there was a marker there but there is a road named after Daniel Glover Beers by the town’s municipal building at Fairfield Hills.”

The Beers had four children: Jane (Jennie) Fitch Beers (1871-1946), Helen May Beers (1874-1901), Harry Croswell Beers (1875-1949), and Elizabeth (Bessie) Louise Beers (1879-1963).

“Elizabeth Louise Beers was known to everyone in my family as Aunt Betty,” Dakin said. “Aunt Betty took care of her parents on the farm until they died in 1913. She had a close friend, the Rev Frederick Foote Johnson, who then asked her to marry him.

“They bought Thankeful House on Main Street and that’s how all the things from the Mile Hill farm wound up there,” she explained.

Born in 1866, Rev Johnson was the youngest son of Newtown’s first unofficial historian, Ezra Levan Johnson, whose wife Jane posthumously published Newtown’s History and Historian from his research.

Rev Johnson was consecrated in 1905 as a bishop of the Episcopal Church. His consecration was celebrated at Trinity Church in Newtown with six regional bishops and more than 100 clergy in attendance.

Bishop Johnson was the Bishop of Missouri but he and his wife kept the house in Newtown for summer vacations and they moved back there when he retired in 1933. Bishop Johnson died in 1943 and is buried in Newtown Village Cemetery.

“Aunt Betty had many health issues from childhood on but she outlived everyone,” Dakin said. “She died in 1963 at the age of 84.”

The clock and all the other antiques in Thankeful House then went to Dakin’s mother Jeanette and her uncle Sherman Beers.

“Harry Croswell Beers was my grandfather,” Dakin explained. “After he married, he moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and that’s where my mother and her brother Sherman Beers were born. My mother married Benjamin Roe Herman and I and my sister Judy were born there.”

When Dakin’s mother and uncle inherited the Beers antiques, half of them, including the clock, were transported to California where Sherman Beers lived at that time.

“Mother didn’t have room for the clock at her house but 10 years later my husband and I had bought a big house and my mother had it shipped back east. I’ve owned it since then.”

Over the years Dakin and her sister have given many of their family’s heirlooms to Newtown Historical Society. Dakin recently decided it was time to part with the clock.

A Permanent Loan

“Unfortunately the brass works were damaged in my last move and the clock wasn’t running,” she said. “I didn’t want the clock to go to a private collector. I wanted it to be in a museum.

“I had read an article about Jerry Valenta in the Newtown Historical Society’s newsletter so I contacted [Historical Society Vice President] John Renjilian and he put me in contact with Jerry,” she added.

Valenta confirmed the clock’s damage — “The works were heavily damaged and would require extensive restoration. Even the brass dial was bent,” he said — but he also recognized that the pieces were original and could be repaired.

“When the historical society board expressed interest in displaying the clock in the Matthew Curtiss House, I agreed to buy the clock from Mrs Dakin, repair it and offer it as a permanent loan to the historical society,” Valenta said. “That satisfied her wish that it never go to a private buyer. If at some point the Newtown Historical Society no longer wanted the clock — which is highly unlikely — it would be offered to another museum.”

Valenta said the Doolittle clock he repaired is unusual because although it has the same dial and works as his clocks in other museums, it has a very simple country style poplar and maple case.

“Country style clocks weren’t valued as much as more formal style clocks over the years so fewer of them survived,” he explained.

“Fortunately this one survived and after some casework by Oakley Restoration & Finishing of New Milford, it looks like it did all those years in the Thankeful House.”

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Kaaren Valenta is a retired Associate Editor of The Newtown Bee. She and her husband divide their time between seasonal homes, grandchildren, and his continued fascination with clocks.