Johann Ludwig Eberhardt and His Salem Clocks

By Frank P. Albright

Eberhardt (1758-1839) was master clockmaker in Salem for more than thirty-eight years. Albright attributes more than thirty clocks to Eberhardt, building his evidence by a diligent reading of the Moravian records and by a careful cataloging of the characteristics of each clock. He reconstructs Eberhardt's methods of clockmaking in precise detail from the inventories and the purchase invoices of equipment and materials, and he attempts to identify the cabinetmaker in each case.

Originally published in 1978.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781469639567

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Johann Ludwig Eberhardt in Salem

Johann Ludwig Eberhardt arrived in Salem, North Carolina, on the 29th of November 1799 to make clocks, and there he made clocks for thirty-eight years. An unmarried man forty-one years of age, he left his trade in a thriving Germany to accept a call to a young settlement on the frontier of America. The transfer was not such a drastic change as it might at first seem, for this settlement was a somewhat unusual one, more like a bit of Germany transplanted to the wilderness of America than the chopped-out-of-the-woods homestead that usually comes to mind with the words frontier settlement.

Salem had been settled by members of the Unitas Fratrum, or Unity of Brethren, later known in England and America as the Moravian church because of its origin in Moravia and Bohemia. The Unitas Fratrum was founded in 1457 by followers of the Bohemian priest John Hus, who was martyred in 1415 for his innovative teaching that the Bible should be read by all the people in their own language and that the Lord’s Supper should be served to the people in the form of both the bread and the wine. The new church flourished briefly and then fell on a long period of great difficulty through the Counter-Reformation, emerging only in the early eighteenth century with the aid of the Lutheran theologian of southeast Germany, Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf.

After building the town in Herrnhut on the count’s estate, and with his sponsorship, the Moravians had by the middle of the century also established several toeholds in Pennsylvania. These they developed with such industry that Lord Granville of England offered to sell them 100,000 acres of land on his grant in North Carolina.

The prospect seemed good to them. After selecting the land in the North Carolina Piedmont and arranging the purchase, they began their settlement in November of 1753 with eleven unmarried men from Pennsylvania, who found temporary shelter in a hunter’s vacant cabin. The Moravians called this place Bethabara, meaning in Hebrew house of passage, for to them it was a starting place from which they would select a site for their central town. Their land they called Wachovia, a picturesque name derived from the Austrian area of Zinzendorf’s ancestry (Wachau), a land of valleys with brooks and meadows. These Moravians had no thought of existing on agriculture in a rough and wooded frontier. Their idea was to build up an urban and industrial culture not at all inferior to life in Germany or in the more developed parts of Pennsylvania. Therefore, as soon as possible—and the opportunity was delayed for some years by the French and Indian War—they began their central town, which they named Salem, a Semitic word meaning peace. The first tree was cut for it in January of 1766, and by the year 1800, when Eberhardt arrived, Salem had a population of 202.

To survey this Wachovia tract and lay out the plan for Salem, they imported from Germany a surveyor, Christian Gottlieb Reuter, the royal surveyor for Frederick II (Frederick the Great), no less! He arrived in July of 1758, when the war hostilities were yet to run five years. During his time he surveyed the Wachovia tract, planned the layout for the villages of Bethabara and nearby Bethania, where construction began in 1759, and drew up a number of beautiful and accurate maps. After the site for Salem was selected, he laid out the streets for good access and proper drainage and planned the water system so that Salem could have running water throughout the town from natural springs. The water system, with water conducted by means of conduits of logs with holes bored through their lengths, was completed in 1778, twelve years after the town was begun.

Called a congregation town, Salem was highly organized and strictly controlled. It had some unusual conditions in its government to which all who were permitted to live in the town as citizens had to conform. The people were divided into groups, or choirs, according to age, sex, and marital status, each choir being regarded as a unit in the society. The congregation owned all the land for which the tenants, who owned the improvements on the land, paid a small annual rent. Committees controlled most of their life and kept minutes of their meetings. General policies were decided by fully democratic means in the Congregation Council. The Elders Conference (Board of Elders) had oversight of morals, religion, education, and behavior in general. The Aufseher Collegium, the supervisory committee, controlled the businesses, the finances, and property in general. They decided what crafts and trades should function in town and how many could be permitted in each so that ample products were on hand and all craftsmen could make a good living. They controlled the apprenticeships of the crafts and trades, and they also to a large extent controlled prices and wages.

Some choirs had their own choir houses. In Salem the Single Brothers (the unmarried men, who were mostly craftsmen) and the Single Sisters (the unmarried women) had their houses, and for a while the widows had their house. Actually ownership of these houses was vested in the congregation but the choirs were responsible for their upkeep. Usually in Salem there were not enough widows or widowers to keep up houses of their own, and houses or rooms were therefore rented for them according to their needs. The Single Sisters, in addition to tending their garden, conducted several crafts in their house, such as weaving and spinning, sewing and tailoring, working on gloves for the glover, and the like. They were also the teachers in the Girls School, located next to their house. The single men had a number of crafts in their house and in another shop behind it. They also ran the brewery and distillery and a large farm as well as their garden and orchard. The men, who rented the shops, also ate and slept in the house, paying board and lodging for themselves and their apprentices.

The choir was organized like a corporation. One of the men was the president (Vorsteher) and actually managed the choir’s corporate property. He managed the finances, rented the rooms, and hired the cook and the gardeners. The cook managed the kitchen and dining room and was also boss of the kitchen garden.

The Single Sisters choir was similarly managed, but it had some businessman as curator of its Diacony (business organization), a civic office without pay.

By the end of the eighteenth century the Moravians had developed in the wilderness of North Carolina a culture of considerable sophistication. Were it not beyond the scope of this book, the Moravian culture would have been more fully described. The education of Moravian children and Moravian accomplishments in music, for example, were distinctive. They not only had musicians of all kinds and probably the first pipe organ in piedmont North Carolina, but before the end of the eighteenth century they had composed a considerable volume of distinguished music, much of which is now widely distributed in print and on records. German was their common language and official records were kept in German, but most people also spoke English of sorts and English was taught in the schools.

Business was kept current and crafts up to date by their close and constant contact with wholesale houses and other firms in the north, especially in Philadelphia. Salem was designed as a craft and trade center and not for agriculture, as Frederick William Marshall, the Oeconomus (Administrator of the whole Wachovia tract) stated when the town was planned in 1765: This town is not designed for farmers but for those with trades¹ The trades were already in operation in Bethabara before Salem was built, and as early as 1768, before the crafts and trades were transferred to Salem, Marshall wrote from Bethabara: In addition to our farm of about 200 acres of cleared land, we have a grist and saw mill, which can also be used for breaking tanbark and pressing oil; a brewery and distillery, a store, apothecary shop, tan-yard, pottery, gunsmith, blacksmith, gunstock maker, tailor shop, shoemaker, linen weaver, saddlery, baker, and the carpenters, joiners and masons, who do the building, and there is also our tavern. Even if these businesses are not particularly profitable they are indispensable, and with them we can provide ourselves with most of the necessaries of life.²

It was the Aufseher Collegium that decided that Salem needed a clockmaker. Knowing the time of day is an important concomitant of civilized society and one with which the Moravian settlers in North Carolina were very much concerned from the start, although the first group of men apparently brought no watch or clock with them. To set their day’s work with the rise and fall of daylight might have sufficed at first. Hunger and the force of habit would tell them approximately when it was time to eat—and, being few men, they pretty much worked in one group. But the community diarist, who was usually the minister, wrote in September 1755, less than two years after their arrival, that the night watch has been divided among several Brethren, the clock that was given us is especially useful for them, and we appreciate the gift.³ This sounds as if it were a recent gift and not one they themselves brought from Pennsylvania. It had probably been brought by men who came down later.

As the congregation grew, not only did the night watch require timing, but so did the devotional services, the meals, and, increasingly, other functions as well. The importance of ringing the bell at the proper time was demonstrated when in 1810 the bell was rung at the wrong time and caused great disturbance and distress.⁴ During the French and Indian War it was largely the ringing of the bell and the blowing of horns that kept the Indians from attacking Bethabara. This ringing and blowing was not necessarily a warning to the citizens that the Indians were near; the Moravians loved music and were constantly playing their musical instruments. The Indians could not understand the purpose of the music, the horns, and the bells, and therefore thought they were being discovered. After the war was over they said that these many sounds had confused them.

The ringing of the bell was timed by the clock, but the clock, too, had to be adjusted from time to time. This was done by means of a sundial.

Sundials are not mentioned in the first settlement at Bethabara, and it is possible that the timing of the bell was conducted somewhat arbitrarily; but in Salem a sundial was set up in the spring of 1772. The Helpers Conference minutes recorded 11 May: Concerning the clocks in town, there was discussion as to how they could be kept together, and especially how the hours to be struck on the big bell should be ascertained. It was proposed to make two sundials, one on the north and one on the south wall of the Brothers House; Brother Reuter is willing to make them, if the Single Brothers will let the joiner make the tablets.⁵ On 1 June it was written: Tablets for the ‘sun clock’ cannot be placed on the Brothers House, for the roof gives too much shade. A horizontal sundial will be made as soon as Br. Reuter has ascertained the noon line.⁶ On 6 July it is noted: The sundial, made horizontally on stone, will be set in the square on a brick foundation.⁷ By August 1802 it had been removed but saved, and thought was given to putting it back in the town square where it could help set the town clock.

There were also portable sundials, several of which are exhibited in Old Salem. One is a small portable sundial mounted on a compass, which was once the property of two leaders of the Moravian church—Count Zinzendorf, who died in Germany in 1760, and later Christian Ludwig Benzien, who died in Salem in 1811.

A 275-pound bell, cast in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1771 by Matthew Tommerop, was hung in a low wooden tower near the Gemein Haus (the Congregation House) in Salem. The tower was rebuilt to greater height in 1780 and Frederick William Marshall and his wife undertook the duty of striking the hours on the bell. This does not mean that they rang the bell every hour on the hour, but that they rang it in the morning at 7 A.M. and at 11:30 A.M. and in the evening at about sunset, though not later than 7 P.M. in the summer. Since the bell tower was situated near the Gemein Haus, close to the comer of which their apartment was located, they rang the bell by means of a rope that was attached to the hammer and extended to their room.

A clock that struck the hours on the bell was installed in the tower in 1791. The clock was made in Gnadau, Germany, and cost 113 British pounds (about $285 American money at that time) installed.⁸ It had only the hour hand and was powered by a stone weight. Someone had to climb the ladder and wind the clock every day and set it whenever necessary.

In 1800, when the new church was built and the bell was moved to its belfry, Eberhardt moved the clock to the gable of the church. The following year he made a new dial for it, 84 (2.134 m.) inches in diameter, and added the minute hand. Five years later he added another, smaller bell in the belfry above the clock and a mechanism on the clock so that it would strike the quarter hours, for which he was paid