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Lot Essay
Hailed as “the Boston Tea Party clock,” this tall-case clock created a stir in the marketplace and set a record for an American clock when it sold at auction in 1988. Today, its selling price of $440,000 remains an auction record for a clock by Simon Willard (1753-1848), early America’s most inventive clockmaker. Although the clock was made after the Boston Tea Party, it stood for over a hundred years in the Hollis Street house of Nathaniel Bradlee (1746-1813), one of the key players in the 1773 drama. It was in this house on the corner of Tremont Street that Bradlee and his cohorts disguised themselves as Native Americans before embarking on their mission to dump the tea from British ships into Boston harbor. The house had been built by Bradlee, a carpenter, in 1771 and several years after his death, was purchased by his son-in-law, Noah Doggett (1770-1842), husband to Bradlee’s daughter Elizabeth (1781-1869). Their son, Nathaniel Bradlee Doggett (1818-1906) inherited the house where the clock remained until the historic structure was torn down in 1898. In the 1900 Census, Nathaniel Bradlee Doggett is recorded as living on Commonwealth Avenue with his son, Samuel Bradlee Doggett (1858-1938), the family historian and subsequent owner of the clock. After his death, the clock was on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for over twenty years and in 1988, Brewster Dayton Doggett (b. 1909), the last family owner of the clock, consigned the clock to auction (“Passing of Bradlee house-Boston Tea Party Assumed Indian Guise in its Kitchen,” The New York Times, 22 October 1898; Samuel Bradlee Doggett, A History of the Doggett-Daggett Family (Boston, 1894), pp. 405-407, 429-430, 468; Rita Reif, “Auctions,” The New York Times, 24 June 1988).