TIME TRAVELER
©2025 Terry Harmon
Shortly after the conclusion of the American Revolution, a young Patriot veteran, Nathan Horton married Elizabeth Eagles in New York. The following year, in 1784, these two native New Englanders decided to relocate to North Carolina from their home in New Jersey. They loaded their four-horse Conestoga wagon with their possessions and provisions.
Perhaps the most unique item that made the trip of many hundreds of miles down the Great Wagon Road was a seven-foot high grandfather clock. Enclosed by a mahogany case with inlays, the clock’s face, manufactured by Osborne of Birmingham, England (likely Thomas Osborne, who made clock dials as early as 1777), showed the rising and setting of the moon, and it had a hand to mark the seasons, among other devices.
The Hortons, who became my 5x great-grandparents, established their home along the New River, just east of present-day Boone, North Carolina. Nathan Horton died in 1824 and Elizabeth in 1854, and the clock was passed on to their youngest child, Jonathan Horton. Jonathan married Malinda Hartzog, a great, great-grandniece of famous frontiersman Daniel Boone. As they aged, the childless couple were cared for by Jonathan’s great-nephew, James Crittenden “Crit” Horton, who, after the respective deaths of Jonathan and Malinda Horton in 1895 and 1911, inherited the clock.
Crit Horton died in 1920, at which time, this family heirloom became the property of his only child, Carrie Horton Bingham, who later sold the clock to her first cousin, Gordon Winkler, son of Elizabeth Horton Winkler, and former mayor of Boone.
In the early 1970s, the clock was refinished by students and faculty of the industrial arts and technical education department at Appalachian State University, and in 1974, Gordon Winkler donated the clock to the university’s William E. Eury Appalachian Collection in honor of his late aunt, Emma Horton Moore, who was the first head librarian at the school and worked there for forty-four years.
When the university established its Appalachian Cultural Museum in 1989, the clock was put on display there, but when the museum was disbanded in 2006, its future became somewhat uncertain.
Ultimately, after ASU’s new Belk Library was constructed, the clock found a new home in the Rhinehart Rare Books and Special Collections Room, where it currently stands.
It is unknown what year the clock was constructed or how long it had been in Nathan and Elizabeth Horton’s possession prior to their move to North Carolina, but for the past 240 years, it has been within the borders of present-day Watauga County and part of Appalachian State University for more than fifty of those years.
