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Kevin T. Goss, right, inserts the winding handle into the E.L. Barnard clock he is passing down to his son, Kevin W. Goss, left, at his rural Brighton home. This will be the third generation to treasure the 116-year-old clock.
lessKevin T. Goss, right, inserts the winding handle into the E.L. Barnard clock he is passing down to his son, Kevin W. Goss, left, at his rural Brighton home. This will be the third generation to treasure the
... more
Kevin T. Goss, right, inserts the winding handle into the E.L. Barnard clock he is passing down to his son, Kevin W. Goss, left, at his rural Brighton home. This will be the third generation to treasure the 116-year-old clock.
lessKevin T. Goss, right, inserts the winding handle into the E.L. Barnard clock he is passing down to his son, Kevin W. Goss, left, at his rural Brighton home. This will be the third generation to treasure the
... moreBRIGHTON — The hands of time will continue a tradition for the Gosses as a father passes on a family heirloom to a third generation.
Kevin T. Goss, whose health is ailing, willed the rare jewelers regulator grand clock to his son, Kevin W. Goss, but decided the time was now to give it to him.
Kevin T. Goss’ father, the late Wallace “Wally” Goss, always admired the now 116-year-old timepiece, constructed by E.L. Barnard, who started the build in 1897 and finished in 1904. The elder Goss, a fine jeweler, owned his own jewelry store on State Street in Upper Alton.
“He had a house in Godfrey, on Elizabeth Street, by the old Godfrey speedway, where they put the exit ramp for 255. That took out the house, too,” his son recalled. “Dad ran the jewelry store and bought the clock from E.L. Barnard’s widow.
“It’s been in our family ever since,” Goss, of Brighton, said. “I want to pass it on to my son. I tore it down once with him here to see how it’s done. You can’t replace the parts today. You have to be very delicate with it.”
When servicing, oiling and moving the clock, encased in solid mahogany wood, every bit of its gears and internal workings must be removed from the case itself.
“We do very careful wrapping,” Goss said. “The pieces are very, very delicate. If you break something, you’re, just, out of business. Everything is handmade by a certified clock man.”
Goss cleans and oils the clock every three to four years.
Recently, Goss enlisted the help of Alton clock man Don Huber, owner of The Clock Shop, 9 Lenten St., to determine the clock’s value and evaluate the piece. Still in the research process, Huber estimated the clock’s worth from $15,000 to $20,000.
“I’ve been in the clock business since I was 13. Now I’m 66, and this is the third jewelers regulator — in private possession — I have ever seen,” Huber said. “They’re really a piece of mechanical artwork.”
With 11 children, Wally Goss had a big decision to make. The fact his son Kevin was a lifelong mechanic until retirement played into the clock being willed to him.
“Dad thought I’d be the one able to do the upkeep,” Goss said. “It has to be serviced about every three years. I would do it and take care of it. He ran it by all my brothers and sisters, there was no problem with all of them.”
Now one of Father Time’s rare sentinels will move to Jerseyville to stand guard in Goss’ only child’s home. The clock’s inner workings must be disassembled to transport it.
“I had to do that when I got it from my dad, as far as the moving goes, and I’m not doing real good with my cancer,” Goss said.
Huber’s work while researching the clock was cut out for him, but a solid knowledge of timekeeping history helped.
“It’s very hard to find anything on that clock,” he said. “It’s a jewelers regulator, which would hang — and this one did — in a local jewelry store. Before timepieces, time was all relative. This was the clock people in town would set all their clocks to, and that would become the standard of that area.”
Until the mid-19th century, towns relied on local time.
“Eventually railroads are what changed time in the world,” Huber said.
According to www.sciencemuseum.org, in June 1841, the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel completed the Great Western Railway (GWR) line from London to Bridgewater, a distance of 156 miles. For the benefit of passengers travelling on this route, the timetable carried an essential note:
“London time is kept at all the Stations on the Railway, which is about 4 minutes earlier than Reading time; 5½ minutes before Steventon time; 7½ minutes before Cirencester time; 8 minutes before Chippenham time; 11 minutes before Bath and Bristol time; and 14 minutes before Bridgewater time.” — Timetable of the GWR line from London to Bridgewater (1841)
The note underscored the problem with timekeeping, which railroads ultimately standardized.
“When railroads came in, they established the time zones, because of traveling across the country,” Huber explained. “But that didn’t change the methodology in town. Now they might set the town clock by the train schedule, but initially, for those on farmland, before the telegraph, heck, before the Civil War, this was the ‘go to’ method.
“You could make a doctor’s appointment at the same time as the doctor, because you and he both went by the town clock, especially before the telegraph. This clock I’m researching is a very, very accurate clock and, back in the day, that’s the clock everyone wanted to have.”
Huber agreed with Goss about the Barnard clock’s inner workings.
“It’s not complicated, but it’s delicate,” Huber said. “It’s not too hard to work on if you have mechanical expertise.”
Which, by now, is grounded in the Goss family for generations to come.
Goss’ son, 35, has three daughters.
“The family has taken care of this clock themselves,” Huber said.
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Time after time - Alton Telegraph
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