Pocket watch is link to family past

Posted on February 12, 2008 in Genealogy by DM

I have been thinking about and connecting with Sarah’s post this week about “guilt items” - those things you keep out of guilt or a sense of duty, even though you don’t want them. I can be absolutely brutal when it comes to tossing or giving away items that I’ve personally acquired, but it’s harder for me to let go of things that have come down through the family. I understand Sarah’s compromise - she’s keeping one of several similar items made by her grandfather, and letting the rest go to auction - but I also know that 100 years from now, a precious few artifacts may be all that remain of an ancestor to say “I was here” to the future family history buff. Speaking as that history buff for my family, I can say without hestitation that every item that survives is truly a treasure.

This past Sunday when I was visiting my dad, we ended up taking on a really interesting project: going through his jewelry box, looking for treasure. There were a few things he wanted to be sure to give me: a pocket watch he said had been mine when I was younger (more on that in a moment), some costume jewelry that belonged to his mother, and generally anything I found in the jewelry box(es) that I wanted to keep. It was a wonderful couple hours of “Ooo where’d you get this?” and “Where’d that come from?”

The pocket watch is an interesting story: Dad found it in his jewelry box a few weeks ago, and determined that it had my birth initials, J.B., engraved in script lettering on the cover. He determined that it must have been mine, and today he gave it back to me. The only trouble was, I didn’t remember ever owning it - or ever having seen it. It looked very old, and I thought perhaps the “JB” actually referred to one of his uncles back in Pennsylvania. My husband theorized that maybe a relative had bought the watch for me when I was very little, intending that I should have it when I was older, but that it was simply never given to me. This would explain why my initials were on it, as well as why I didn’t remember ever owning it.

When I got it home, I did a little closer inspection. The name in script on the face of the watch reads, “C.A. Cole, Winterset.” That made it more likely that it came from my mother’s side of the family, as her ancestors were all from Winterset. I did a little Googling, and learned that there was indeed a Winterset jeweler name Clarence Adrian Cole who was a watch- and clock-maker. But, he had left Winterset and moved to Florida in 1909. Since this was long before I was ever a sparkle in anyone’s eye, it didn’t seem likely that the watch had been purchased with me in mind.

Then I took a closer look at the engraved script initials. It turns out that they are not “J.B.,” they are “I.B.” We were mistaking the script capital “I” for a “J,” but finally determined that it doesn’t have the bottom loop of a typical cursive “J.”

At that point I realized immediately who the watch probably belonged to: my great-grandfather Isaac Bardrick, who lived in Winterset much of his life and died there in 1907 - certainly within the timeframe in which C.A. Cole would have been a jeweler there.

My grandmother Verdie, his grand-daughter, once gave me a shoe button hook that he had made as a blacksmith, which I still have. And now I have what I believe to be his pocket watch. Which is really incredible, as it’s likely more than 100 years old. And extra special to me, because finding his gravestone remains one of my favorite cemetery-searching stories along my entire genealogical journey.

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