Clock-winder John Sampson. Photos courtesy of the Hood County News. Photographer is Mary Vinson

Hood County Courthouse Clock
By Jon McConal

If county officials had electrified the courthouse clock in 1969 as some had suggested, they would have eliminated one of John Sampson's favorite jobs. He's the official Hood County Courthouse clock winder.

Once a week Sampson climbs two steel ladders into the three-story clock tower in Granbury to wind the 112-year-old Seth Thomas clock. "It puts me into a pretty unique category, because I think we are the only county in the state that still has one of these wind-by-hand clocks in the courthouse," he says. "That's quite a page of history."

It's a page that goes back to 1891 when the three-storied courthouse was completed. Made of limestone quarried five miles from the town square, the building cost $40,000. Almost as an afterthought, county commissioners approved $1,465 for the clock, to be paid with bond installments of $700. Locals joked that the county purchased "time" on "time," just one of many witticisms inspired by the clock.

In 1969 a damaging storm prompted county leaders to consider removing not only the tower, but also the clock. The late Norma Crawford, then publisher of the Hood County News Tablet, became unwound at that idea. She urged her readers to mail their comments against the proposal to county commissioners. The resulting deluge of mail convinced the county to save the clock.

"I wasn't here when Norma launched her campaign," said Diane Lock, chairperson of the Hood County Historical District, "but if I had been, I would have been by her side. So, yes, I'm for keeping the clock and keeping on winding it by hand."

Lance Key shares Lock's feelings. His great uncle, James Alexander Key, installed the clock and wound it for its first 40 years. Key never knew his uncle, who was born in 1855, but enjoyed researching his life. "I found out that during all that time, he only failed twice to wind it, and that was because the temperatures dropped to below zero." James Key was so dependable that he earned mention in "Ripley's Believe It or Not." The citation reads: "The town clock, which has kept running and telling perfect time without repairs, is wound weekly by J.A. Key."

Sampson is a long way from that record. He has wound the clock for only eight years. I met him on a hot summer morning to climb the steps and ladders leading to the clock. We reached a floor of heavy steel mesh where the clock and its gears and pendulum sits. From there I could see the clock's 30-foot-long drive shaft that turns all four separate drives from the clock faces. It looks like a u-joint from an old pickup.

Sampson looked for the winding handle. "When I came here, the commissioners asked if I could keep this running," he says. "I had never worked on a clock, but I've been in construction all my life, so I figured I could." He then spent a day with a man in Lampasas who kept a similar clock. "He showed me the basics and said that you do what you got to do with what you got."

The clock began its 8 o'clock tolling. The chimes sounded like somebody pounding a sledgehammer on an iron anvil. After the last strike, it made soft ticking sounds. "The man in Lampasas told me that you knew you had the clock set right when those ticks sounded exactly the same," Sampson said. They were.

Sampson attached the handle and began winding. His muscles flexed after each turn. After about two minutes he took a break. "Do you remember the old pocket watches that we used to get when we were kids?" he asked. "We could take the backs off of those and there was this little hand that you moved to make it go slower or faster. This clock works on the same principle, except instead of winding a spring, we're winding weights."

The two weights, which together weigh nearly 1,000 pounds, power the striker and the clock's hands. The clock will run eight days without winding, but Sampson winds it every seven days. "When I first came, it was slow by five minutes a week," he says. "I've got that down to only 40 seconds."

We watched the pendulum swing back and forth, two times for each second. "Can you imagine how many times that has swung in 112 years?" Sampson mused. "How many hearts it has set beating and how many it has heard stop? And it just keeps on and on."

Jon McConal spent 40 years as a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and other newspapers. His columns have been collected in Jon McConal's Texas by Republic of Texas Press.

Hood County is served by United Cooperative Services and Tri-County electric cooperatives.

Comments about the magazine? E-mail Editor Kaye Northcott at kayen@texas-ec.org ©2003 Texas Electric Cooperatives, Inc.