MEMORANDUM  

TO: Stanley Weiss
FROM:  Virginia Stuart-Howard
DATE:   5 March 2014
RE:     Description and story of the Rathbun Clock  

HEPPLEWHITE INLAID MAHOGANY TALL CASE CLOCK William Stanton, Providence, 'Rhode Island c. 1814-1816 With a scroll cresting with three brass ball finials above a molded hood above a white painted dial with rocking ship tympanum and fan spandrels centering an eight day time-and strike movement the waisted case outlined with pattern stringing and with a cockbeaded door; the inlaid base outlined with pattern stringing and continuing to a valanced skirt and high French feet. 93 inches high   Note: William Stanton (1794-1878) is recorded as working in Providence in the years 1814 to 1816 Description by Appraiser Ronald De Silva 18 January 2002 There is a Stanton clock in the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.    

PROVENANCE  

The clock was the property of the Rathbun family of Wickford, Rhode Island. The clock came to my father Rodman Gardiner Rathbun from his first cousin Emily Chase Ellis who inherited it.  Her mother, ............ was the sister of Thomas A. Rathbun, she married ........... Chase. Emily was an only child, she married ............. Ellis who died quite young and they did not have children.  So, Emily was widowed early.  Emily was with us for Thanksgiving in the late 20's and early '30's when my grandfather Thomas A. Rathbun lived with us from 1926 after his wife died.  Emily was of an earlier generation and had not changed and had no reason to; I remember her dressed in brown silk with high lace collars and high button shoes.  After my grandfather died ( 1932?) Emily no longer came for any Holiday dinners and maintained only a remote relationship with my father, her cousin.  I learned years later that Emily withdrew from family association due to a change in her lifestyle that would have been unacceptable. She owned a house in Providence and had a lover who moved from New York to live with her. My recollection is that he had a wife in an institution which precluded marriage, and two adults living together was not acceptable in that era. His name was John and he was a retired attorney or in investments. My father met him and said he was a very nice man. I think he died around 1940 and Emily was again alone and left to live frugally. She was independent but my father kept in touch. I think in about 1947 Emily needed money and contacted my father to help her sell the clock, and my father bought the clock. Emily was increasingly frail with failing eyesight and sometime thereafter, she rented the lower floor of her house to a woman who would take care of her. As she became nearly blind, the woman took advantage of her and stole most of Emily's antiques and a great amount of Canton china and probably silver. This was discovered when Emily died in 1956. It is a sad story tangential to the Rathbun/ Stanton clock. The Stanton clock was always in the dining room of Two Cushing Street and it was wound every Sunday morning with the other tall Rathbun clock in the hall, both wound by my father, and then by my mother and lastly by sister Edith.  

Note: The names in para. 1 can be checked in the Rathbun plot in Elm Grove Cemetery in Allenton, adjacent to Wickford.  Thomas R. Rathbun, Sr. at one time owned the house known as Smith's Castle in Wickford, then known as Cocumcussoc Farm. My grandfather, Thomas R. Rathbun, remembered helping to build a stone wall (pointed out to me years ago), on the south side of the RI State Police Barracks on Rte: 1 a couple of hundred yards, location was/is west of Cocumcussoc Farm near Devil’s Foot Rock on the west side of Rte.1.

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