Figure 1 – Clock and case, Moses Wing, case inscribed by George Belden, Windsor, Connecticut, 1800, cherry and white pine, enameled dial and false plate imported from England. H. 92.5”, W. 12.75”, D. 10”. | WHS collections, 2024.49.1.Bequest of Dr. Harvey Hayden.
Moses Wing clock works.
In late-2024, the Society acquired a handsome tall case clock through a generous bequest.The clock is the product of two Windsor craftsmen, clockmaker and silversmith Moses Wing (1760-1809) and cabinetmaker George Belden (1770-1838), each of whom is the subject of previous Society newsletter articles.
The clock was made for Wealthy Haskell (1776-1861) when she married Levi Hayden (1773-1839) in Windsor in 1800. Hayden lived approximately halfway between Belden and Wing.
Moses Wing worked in Windsor from around 1782 until 1805, when he moved to Worcester, Massachusetts. In addition to making eight-day clocks (a clock that runs for 8 days after winding) with brass movements, surviving primary source materials reveal that he – like many of his contemporaries – crafted silver and gold items and provided a variety of services in order to make a living. More than a dozen Wing clocks are known to have survived to today. Wing’s early clocks have engraved brass dials, and later clocks have painted white dials, like the recently acquired clock.
George Belden worked in Windsor from 1793 until 1832 and crafted some of the most elegant furniture made in the Hartford area during this time. The elaborate case, which contains locally favored decorative elements such as a pagoda top, fretwork, fluted quarter columns, and splayed ogee bracket feet, is one of several surviving examples of this form. Fortuitously, the case is inscribed in chalk on the inside of the backboard with what appears to be a muddled “G” over a very clear “B”. The “B” is an exact match to Belden’s capital “Bs” from inscriptions on other objects and makes this the first clock case that can be definitively ascribed to him.
A note inside the clock lists its owners after Wealthy and Levi Hayden as their daughter Lucinda Hayden (1801-1893), then to her nephew Nathaniel Warham Hayden (1855-1912, son of Jabez Haskell Hayden (1811-1902)), then to his son Haskell Warham Hayden (1902-1986), and then to his son, Dr. Harvey Hayden.
While family histories of ownership can be unreliable, this clock can be firmly ascribed to Moses Wing for two reasons. First, Jabez Haskell Hayden recounted in his journal in 1893 that the clock was made for his mother Wealthy Haskell’s wedding in 1800. He wrote:
“My son Nathaniel Hayden of Windsor has a fine old brass clock, an excellent time keeper, made by Moses Wing of Pinemeadow [the earlier name for Windsor Locks] for his cousin Wealthy Haskell. Wealthy (who became my mother) received the clock at about the time of her wedding in 1800. It kept time in our home during all the life of my sister Lucinda 1801-1893 and is pronounced by an expert, ‘good for another hundred years.’”
Second, a nearly identical clock in a private collection is inscribed on the inside of the backboard in contemporaneous script, “This Clock was Bot of M Wing Maker January 1800 Price Fifty Dollars”.
The Society owns a second Moses Wing clock with a much simpler case which is on display in the Society’s North Gallery. An oxbow chest made by George Belden is also on display in the North Gallery. Both Wing and Belden are the subjects of long-term research studies being conducted by the author.
If anyone has any information regarding the whereabouts of any objects, account books, letters, or other documents relating to Wing or Belden, please contact our curator at kwands@windsorhistoricalsociety.org. All responses will remain private.
By Kevin G. Ferrigno, WHS Collections Committee Member, 2025
Left: List of Hayden family owners. Right: Infrared image of inscriptions by the people who maintained the clock over the years.
Further Reading:
- Daniel Burnap Account Books, Connecticut Museum of Culture and History
- Penrose R. Hoopes, Shop Records of Daniel Burnap Clockmaker (Hartford, CT: The Connecticut Historical Society, 1958).
- “Tick, Tock, Windsor Clocks!,” Christina Keyser Vida, in Windsor Historical Society News 30, no. 1 (March 2012); and “George Belden: A Cabinetmaking Success Story,” Christina Vida, in Windsor Historical Society News 32, no. 4 (December 2014).
- Jabez Haskell Hayden 1811-1902, in Windsor Historical Society Newsletter, June, 1985.
- Penrose R. Hoopes, Connecticut Clockmakers of the Eighteenth Century (New York: 1930, Dodd, Mead & Company), p. 125.
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