Rural Missouri - February 2023 - 9

Maria strikes again
Silent courthouse clock will chime once more in Bloomfield
by Jim McCarty | jmccarty@ruralmissouri.coop
S
tarting in 1909, residents of Bloomfield marked the
passage of time by a four-sided clock that ticked off
the seconds and boomed out the hours from a tower
high above the courthouse. The clock presided over
the opening of business and signaled the noon hour and
the day's end for workers in the Stoddard County seat.
Originally, someone had to climb into the tower every
eight days to crank up the 200-pound weights that powered
the clock and another set that caused the bell to
strike. In 1952 an electric motor took over the job of winding.
It's possible that's when a sign was hung on the wall
with the name " Maria Strikes " and the date of the clock's
installation: Dec. 23, 1909.
Its resonant gong could be
heard for miles around. Many
teenagers attempting to sneak
in past their parents' curfew
got caught because of its hourly
reminder. It was so much a part
of the courthouse town that few
noticed when it stopped.
Ironically, time is the worst
enemy for a clock. That's especially
true for one built more
than a hundred years ago and
installed high above the streets
where dust, mud daubers and
dubious maintenance played
havoc on its many moving parts.
What finally silenced the
clock was the bushings on
which brass shafts moved, a
second at a time. The ravages of
time wallowed out the bushings,
causing the shafts to bind, the
gears to stop meshing and time
to seemingly stand still.
of dead ends trying to find someone who worked on that
kind of stuff, " Ethan says.
Be careful what you ask for. In short order the SEMO
Electric Cooperative member found himself authorized to
climb up the rickety ladder into the cupola to photograph
the clock mechanism in the hopes of sharing with someone
who repaired clocks.
That's when he called Sean and Nancy Barnes, who own
S&N Clock Repair in Cape Girardeau. Sean asked for the
photos and called Ethan back the second he saw them.
The next day he too was scaling the ladder, excited to be
considered for the restoration.
Sean and Nancy have seen just about every kind of
clock come into their shop for repairs, including 200-yearold
French clocks, cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks and
mantel clocks. But the thought
of working on a tower clock like
the one in Stoddard County
excited them more than anything
else.
One day when I got off
work I decided I was
going to walk in the
courthouse and just
ask somebody what's
wrong with the clock.
- Ethan Bryeans
" It is very cool for a clocksmith
to work on something like
that, " Sean says. " I was talking
to a clocksmith friend of mine
up in Lee's Summit. He works
on these. He said being able to
work on these kinds of clocks,
that's the Super Bowl. That's the
big leagues. "
Ethan was a little surprised
when Sean sent him his bid for
the repairs.
" It was substantially lower
than I thought it was going to
be, " he recalls. " If this was going
to cost a lot of money, I was
prepared to start raising some
funds. I had gobs of people telling
me that if you start doing
Ethan Bryeans, a soil conservationist with the Stoddard
County Soil and Water Conservation District, is one
Bloomfield resident who did take notice. " I've driven by it
for years and had thought to myself, 'Man, it would be neat
if the clock worked.' One day when I got off work I decided
I was going to walk in the courthouse and just ask somebody
what's wrong with the clock. "
He met with one of the Stoddard County commissioners,
who told him repairing the clock had come up at the
county meetings but nothing had come of it. " They hit a lot
fundraisers, let me know, because we would love to see it
working. There were people all over town who were just
tickled that something was being done with it. They really
cared about the clock. "
Now it was Sean's turn to wonder what he had gotten
himself into. Climbing the shaky ladder was just the first
step in getting the clock ticking again. Turning to a book
he owns on tower clocks, Sean quickly found the No. 15
Seth Thomas clock movement that was installed in the
courthouse during remodeling back in 1909.
Sean Barnes of S&N Clock Repair strains to detach one of the universal shafts that drive the hands on the four Stoddard County Courthouse clockfaces.
Installed in 1909, the old Seth Thomas clock had fallen silent but will soon toll out the hours once again in Bloomfield.
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Rural Missouri - February 2023

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