Hamilton’s vision won. The system he built moved the country from a chicken-for-a-chair barter system to centralized institutions that let the United States engage in foreign imports and, concurrently, build industry to effectively compete with those very imports. The Historical Society was the owner of a piece that had touched the origins of the American financial system.

But the American tradition of tall-tale telling is even older than its banking system. The legend of the Hamilton clock grew despite any apparent documentation of its connection to the Founding Father. In 1961, the Historical Society, realizing it had lost the original clock records, cobbled together a new set of paperwork. Any original documentation—or refutation—of a Hamilton link was lost.

Then, a letter arrived at the society in January 1973.

“Dear Sirs:” the note from Landon K. Thorne Jr. read, “You were given by the Bank of New York a historical clock which was purportedly given by Alexander Hamilton to the Bank in 1797 when the bank started operations. I have a similar clock … which was given by Alexander Hamilton to my ancestor when he started a bank in Philadelphia about the same time.” Thorne enclosed pictures of the clock. Its base had been lost, and its new proportions squatted between two doorways in the Thorne household. It was the twin to the Historical Society’s clock.

Behind a little door at the waist of Thorne’s clock, there was a plaque that contained the history he had outlined in his letter:

“This clock was presented to the United States Bank of Philadelphia by Alexander Hamilton about 1797 at which time were there 16 states in the Union as represented in the sixteen stars. After the bank was dissolved, it was given to Morris Ketchum by the Nicholas Biddle, the American financier and President of the Bank from 1823–1836.”

Building an impossible clock

The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the Thorne clock in 2005. In 2008, an intern was hired to research the living daylights out of it to find the Hamilton connection. That intern was me. Each morning when I walked into the Met, past the enormous flower vases in the entry hall and the Hepplewhite chairs that looked more like musical instruments than furniture, and settled into the American Wing library, I believed that this would be the day that I solved the mystery of the clock.

I called everyone remotely connected to Revolutionary-era clocks. I spoke with horologists, furniture historians, and curators. I read files about inlay to try to track down the maker of the 16 stars in case he had other Hamilton accounts. I created timelines of bank charters, bank failures, and credit crises. The trove of names on the plaque sent me sniffing down new leads.