zymurgy
20th July 2003, 12:11 PM
.I read this in rec.woodworking and thought others may like to read. Tom was asked in the thread, whether this was true story - he never answered that question.
Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him
sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and
still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. His lead man, Jimmy
Parker, said that Harper died sitting upright on his stool, which he
had taken to using when doing the lathe work about the time he'd turned eighty. On the day he passed, Harper was ninety three years old.
Jimmy told us that Harper must have gone on to the other side while trying to decide if he needed to strop his gouge, as his finger was on the tools edge and he had a sort of thoughtful look to his face. Harper was a fussy sort about edges, as is about right for a man who'd made some of the finest furniture in Chester County for seven decades and who always was a man to keep a cutting edge just right.
He was a neat and orderly man too and it didn't surprise Jimmy a bit that he had died without dropping his gouge and without falling off his stool. Jimmy figured that the first thing Harper would have said to Saint Peter would be, "I wish you'd given me enough warning so I could have shut down the lathe."
Harper Strode was for certain sure the best known and best loved
cabinetmaker in Chester County and more people turned out for his funeral than had shown up for Deeter Collins', who was a pretty famous baseball player in our parts and who was also a Marine Colonel. We're pretty big on baseball players and Marine's in our town, but Harper's funeral drew half again as many folks as Deeter's had.
Harper's work was all over our town and was pretty well distributed throughout most of the other towns in the county, as well as in the farmhouses that were between the towns. He'd never had more than three guys working for him but he'd turned out a powerful amount of cabinets, furniture, clocks and such from his bank barn shop.
The clocks were sort of his specialty. In early 1929 he'd agreed to
make a tall case clock to sit in the entry way of the First National
Bank. Hand shake deals were done even by bankers in those days and Harper had agreed to make a Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock (which could have been damned near anything, since neither the banker nor Harper could have told you in words what the clock was supposed to look like) for the consideration of two hundred dollars. Ben Timmons, the bank president, and Harper shook hands on the deal and the clock was to be ready before the Christmas Holidays, which was always a big deal at the bank, as the children from the town were toured through to
see the vaults and the teller's stations and all that, and they each
got a big candy cane and a dime bank card, that was to help them in their learning about saving money.
It was Harper's first tall case clock and he was a might worried about how it was going to come out but he contracted with Buddy Charles up in Boyertown to build him the works and they were to be delivered by the end of Summer, so Harper could build the case during the Fall.
Well, I guess you know what happened in October of 1929. Old Harper wasn't much on phones and wasn't one to own a radio, but he heard, sure enough, that things had taken a bad turn. Harper saw Ben Timmons at church and told him that he could back out of the deal if things weren't right at the bank. Ben Timmons was the third Timmons to be president of the bank and he was a proud man. He told Harper, "Things aren't too good at the bank right now, Harper but I'll make good on our deal personally." That's the way things were done in our parts back then.
Harper Strode was a proud man, too and he told Ben that he wouldn't take his personal money and that he would finish the clock and that, "The bank can pay me whenever times get better." So far as I know (and Ben Timmons said the same to his dying day), no other man on earth had ever said that to a banker before.
Now, Harper knew from the pictures that he'd been studying on that his clock would need to have three finials up at the top in order to be a proper Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock. Most believe that he got this idea from the John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue, which was, after all, the biggest store in Philadelphia and they should know their business when it came to such things.
Problem was, Harper had never turned anything before and he didn't even have a lathe.
Turns out that Fess Willard up in Honeybrook had a long bed Oliver lathe that he'd got because he thought he could make a few bucks turning porch posts during the Winter when there wasn't much happening on his farm. Fess had a daughter that was getting married, quick like, before Thanksgiving and he bartered with Harper to trade a cedar hope chest for the lathe. Fess was a rough sort of fella and hadn't made much progress with the porch post business and said that he'd spent most of his time dodging lathe tools as they were ripped out of his hands and flung around the cow barn. So, the lathe was pretty much new.
Harper studied on this for a while, as he didn't think that he really
needed such a big lathe but, when Fess offered to throw in the lathe tools and a half ton of hay, the deal was struck.
Well now, old Harper took to that lathe like a duck takes to water.
He just knew in his bones which way to come at the spinning wood with the tool, which is no great mystery since the man already knew damn near everything else about working with wood. He was a flat out natural.
The clock was a glorious thing. The John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue didn't show enough detail to tell how the finials should look so Harper came up with his own idea which everyone in town agreed was right smart and is copied to this day by Chester County cabinetmakers.
He got paid by the bank, as time went by, and Ben Timmons made sure that all his banker friends ordered up tall case clocks from Harper, so he got pretty famous for them. He made clocks for most of the banks in our county and quite a few for the counties that bordered us. He made quite a few for churches and quite a few more for regular people, too.
Continued next post....
Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him
sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and
still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. His lead man, Jimmy
Parker, said that Harper died sitting upright on his stool, which he
had taken to using when doing the lathe work about the time he'd turned eighty. On the day he passed, Harper was ninety three years old.
Jimmy told us that Harper must have gone on to the other side while trying to decide if he needed to strop his gouge, as his finger was on the tools edge and he had a sort of thoughtful look to his face. Harper was a fussy sort about edges, as is about right for a man who'd made some of the finest furniture in Chester County for seven decades and who always was a man to keep a cutting edge just right.
He was a neat and orderly man too and it didn't surprise Jimmy a bit that he had died without dropping his gouge and without falling off his stool. Jimmy figured that the first thing Harper would have said to Saint Peter would be, "I wish you'd given me enough warning so I could have shut down the lathe."
Harper Strode was for certain sure the best known and best loved
cabinetmaker in Chester County and more people turned out for his funeral than had shown up for Deeter Collins', who was a pretty famous baseball player in our parts and who was also a Marine Colonel. We're pretty big on baseball players and Marine's in our town, but Harper's funeral drew half again as many folks as Deeter's had.
Harper's work was all over our town and was pretty well distributed throughout most of the other towns in the county, as well as in the farmhouses that were between the towns. He'd never had more than three guys working for him but he'd turned out a powerful amount of cabinets, furniture, clocks and such from his bank barn shop.
The clocks were sort of his specialty. In early 1929 he'd agreed to
make a tall case clock to sit in the entry way of the First National
Bank. Hand shake deals were done even by bankers in those days and Harper had agreed to make a Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock (which could have been damned near anything, since neither the banker nor Harper could have told you in words what the clock was supposed to look like) for the consideration of two hundred dollars. Ben Timmons, the bank president, and Harper shook hands on the deal and the clock was to be ready before the Christmas Holidays, which was always a big deal at the bank, as the children from the town were toured through to
see the vaults and the teller's stations and all that, and they each
got a big candy cane and a dime bank card, that was to help them in their learning about saving money.
It was Harper's first tall case clock and he was a might worried about how it was going to come out but he contracted with Buddy Charles up in Boyertown to build him the works and they were to be delivered by the end of Summer, so Harper could build the case during the Fall.
Well, I guess you know what happened in October of 1929. Old Harper wasn't much on phones and wasn't one to own a radio, but he heard, sure enough, that things had taken a bad turn. Harper saw Ben Timmons at church and told him that he could back out of the deal if things weren't right at the bank. Ben Timmons was the third Timmons to be president of the bank and he was a proud man. He told Harper, "Things aren't too good at the bank right now, Harper but I'll make good on our deal personally." That's the way things were done in our parts back then.
Harper Strode was a proud man, too and he told Ben that he wouldn't take his personal money and that he would finish the clock and that, "The bank can pay me whenever times get better." So far as I know (and Ben Timmons said the same to his dying day), no other man on earth had ever said that to a banker before.
Now, Harper knew from the pictures that he'd been studying on that his clock would need to have three finials up at the top in order to be a proper Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock. Most believe that he got this idea from the John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue, which was, after all, the biggest store in Philadelphia and they should know their business when it came to such things.
Problem was, Harper had never turned anything before and he didn't even have a lathe.
Turns out that Fess Willard up in Honeybrook had a long bed Oliver lathe that he'd got because he thought he could make a few bucks turning porch posts during the Winter when there wasn't much happening on his farm. Fess had a daughter that was getting married, quick like, before Thanksgiving and he bartered with Harper to trade a cedar hope chest for the lathe. Fess was a rough sort of fella and hadn't made much progress with the porch post business and said that he'd spent most of his time dodging lathe tools as they were ripped out of his hands and flung around the cow barn. So, the lathe was pretty much new.
Harper studied on this for a while, as he didn't think that he really
needed such a big lathe but, when Fess offered to throw in the lathe tools and a half ton of hay, the deal was struck.
Well now, old Harper took to that lathe like a duck takes to water.
He just knew in his bones which way to come at the spinning wood with the tool, which is no great mystery since the man already knew damn near everything else about working with wood. He was a flat out natural.
The clock was a glorious thing. The John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue didn't show enough detail to tell how the finials should look so Harper came up with his own idea which everyone in town agreed was right smart and is copied to this day by Chester County cabinetmakers.
He got paid by the bank, as time went by, and Ben Timmons made sure that all his banker friends ordered up tall case clocks from Harper, so he got pretty famous for them. He made clocks for most of the banks in our county and quite a few for the counties that bordered us. He made quite a few for churches and quite a few more for regular people, too.
Continued next post....