'It Needed To Go Back Home': 1840s-Era Clock Now on Display

 

We get asked quite a bit if any original artifacts from the 175-year-old French Lick Springs Hotel still exist today. And now we can answer “yes” to that question.

It doesn’t scream for attention, this modest-looking pendulum clock hiding along the wall in the corner of the hotel lobby. But this thing has seen some serious history.

“It’s probably at this point the oldest artifact that we have anywhere at French Lick Resort – either hotel,” says Jeff Lane, our Resort Historian.

Our intel about this clock comes from the family it’s been in for nearly 70 years. According to research from the family, this clock was made between 1840-1850 in Cincinnati. That would, of course, been the same timeframe the first hotel was constructed on the French Lick Springs property by Dr. William A. Bowles in 1845.

It’s believed there were three of these clocks in the original hotel — one on each floor. Keep in mind, there was no electricity in the hotel during this era, and most folks didn’t even own watches yet, except maybe the wealthy. A clock in the common area of your hotel floor was the best you had.

“A lot of people depended on these clocks for proper time,” Jeff says.

The original French Lick Springs Hotel (circa 1850) was a modest three-story building. Two stories are visible in the angle of this photo; the third story was a split level on the back end of the hillside. 

It’s uncertain how long the clock remained in the hotel, but it wound up getting moved to storage on the hotel property after a while. Then it was purchased by Guy Love, who owned the Standard Oil dealership in town and was good friends with people at the hotel. Guy and his wife collected vintage items before antique collecting was really even a thing. They just knew the clock was beautiful and valuable, so they wanted to keep it in the family.

It got passed down to one of their daughters. She moved to California, and the clock went with her. She moved back to Indiana; clock returned to Hoosierland. Eventually, the woman and the sister contacted us and worked out an agreement to return the clock to its original roots.

“She said, ‘We needed to return it to the hotel and it needed to go back home,’” Jeff says.

Indeed it’s back home now in the lobby, so the next time you’re passing through the hotel, stop by for a look at this relic that may be more than 175 years old.

The outer wood is cherry on this 8-foot tall clock, and the only obvious sign of wear is on the hand-painted clock face which has lost some streaks of paint over the years. The inner clockworks, believe it or not, are even older than the rest of the clock. The former owners researched it and discovered that the apple wood clockworks were one of 4,000 sets made between 1807 and 1810 in Plymouth, Connecticut. This was the first mass production and first water-powered clock factory in the United States.

Our hope is to get the clock restored a little further and return it to working order. Hopefully sometime soon, you’ll be able to watch these hands of time tick once again, just like they did for the hotel’s first guests in the 1840s.