But what about hours within the day? Did an event occur at One o’Cock, Five o’Clock, Midnight? We simply had to take the diarists’ word: Begging the larger question, How did those diarists tell time?

Curiously, there is no mentions of clocks or other timepieces in any of the entries. The earliest allusion to timekeeping is that of Robert Juet, a mate on the Half Moon, On September 2, 1609. The little galleon, which had apparently been under sail the night before, anchored at the mouth of “a great Bay.” Juet’s journal records that this happened after sunrise, at “five of the clocke.”

The most likely “clock” for a mariner of the place and time would have been a heavy cast brass ring called an “astrolabe.” A sailor viewed a star or sun along a bar with a plate, or vane, mounted at each end. When the holes in the vanes were aligned perfectly upon the celestial object, a pointer came to rest at a spot on the circumference allowing one to calculate the correct hour.

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By the Revolutionary War, the British had developed their trusty nautical chronometer, so accurate it could keep time in the rough seas and stay on Greenwich mean time. Officers on both sides of the conflict had access to portable timepieces, pendant or pocket watches often so clumsy they were called “turnips.”

It fell to diarists of the 1800s to make distinctions within an hour. The first is the grief-stricken Philip Hone, who mentioned that his beloved invalid child Mary had “left this world at 11:45.” Her doctor, in the business of recording time of death, most likely had timepiece with not just a minute hand, but a second hand for precision. When a son was born to George Templeton Strong at “half-past twelve P.M,” that, too, was considered an occasion worth recording with uncommon particularity.

During the Gilded Age, New York ladies wore timepieces as jewelry. Men, who, found this effete, apparently didn’t start wearing “wristlets” until World War I when it was considered a good idea to equip troops with some means to coordinate action. As manufacturers cranked out wristwatches by the millions, the refined pursuit of horology became the domain of academics and the very few artisans who still made or make timepieces by hand.

Today, collecting old masterpieces is the province of the rich. And perhaps the richest collection in New York resides in the Portico of Clocks at the Frick Museum on Upper Fifth Avenue. The entire collection contains thirty-eight clocks and watches spanning the 1500s to the early 1800s, a bequest from Winthrop Kellog Edey, an oil heir who was an authority on Medieval French timepieces. The clocks and watches are all of Northern European derivation. They are under glass for climate control and, one imagines, to discourage tinkering, These casings have intricately wrought exteriors, something Edey valued as much as the interiors. Among these beauties are gilt brass cases adorned with mythological scenes painted on ceramic. (See the pendant watch above portraying Venus at her bath.)

My own favorites were two plainer objects; one a gold pocket watch with Tourbillon (circa 1822) and the other a carriage clock (circa 1811). The first acknowledges that watches, because of their constant movement, are not as reliable as clocks. The designers, Breguet and Fils eliminated the “positional error” by mounting the gears on a carriage, that rotated at intervals to neutralize the glitch. The “Tourbillon” translates roughly as “Whirlwind.” The carriage clock, also by the Breguets, offered a traveler every possible convenience. Portable, it told not only time, but the phase the moon, day, date, month and year. If it was too dark to see the face, the traveler could press a button on top and the clock would chime to the last quarter hour. It also had an alarm clock mechanism to set for a given interval desired for sleep.

The Frick exhibition, Precision and Splendor: Clocks and Watches at the Frick Collection, runs until February 4, 2014. Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Closed on Mondays and Holidays.

It’s a feisty ballad about one Paddy Kearney who enlists in New York’s 69th to fight the rebels. Straight out of the gate he proclaims himself a “modern hero,” a perception contrary to the one many New Yorkers held of the Irish prior to the outbreak of Civil War. The Irish had arrived in waves after the potato famine. Their sheer numbers and the fact that they were Catholic (the vast majority of previous comers were Protestant) branded them outcasts. “No Irish Need Apply” was posted unapogetically on the windows of shops and restaurants about town.

The Irish formed a volunteer “militia” ostensibly to keep the peace but meant more generally to protect Irish interests. One of these units was “Corcoran’s Brigade.” It was led by one Michael Corcoran whose ulterior purpose may have been to recruit and train Irish riflemen in the U.S. for a war against Great Britain. But there was another geopolitical force at play. In the early days of the Civil War, Britain was seriously considering throwing its weight on the side of the Confederacy in order to co-opt the profitable cotton trade. So joining forces with the North was Corcoran’s way of sticking it to John Bull.

“The Irish Brigade” was para-military rather than regular army, but the distinction blurred when Corcoran refused to parade his men past the visiting Prince of Wales. For this, he was court-martialed, but before he could be tried, The Civil War broke out and in 1860 the Brigade was mobilized and later mustered into the Union forces. The North could not afford to lose the fighting ability of the notoriously combative Irish.

The 69th won renown for its courage under fire and it suffered staggering losses. At the First Battle of Bull Run, it successfully defended the U.S. capital against on-coming Confederates. During the Battle of Antietam, it held the Confederates at bay giving Union troops time to break the Seccessh line. The Irish Brigade suffered a casualty rate of sixty percent. During the Battle of Fredericksburg Its remaining 1,600 men dwindled to 256. Lee himself bestowed the brigade the grudging title of “The Fighting 69th. The undermanned brigade fought on to Chancellorville suffering yet more casualties. It put its wounded back in the lines for the battle of Gettysburg where the casualties took their final toll. The Irish volunteers still standing were folded into two other existing brigades.

“We’ll Fight For Uncle Sam”, sung here by folk artist, David Kincaid, is the work of an anonymous lyricist set to the tune of an Irish drinking song, “Whiskey in a Jar.” Not a march per se, it was probably sung more often in dance halls and around regimental camp fires. I’ve included the lyrics below rendered phonetically. If you can sing this, you’re on your way to a pretty good brogue.

I am a modern hairo; my name is Paddy Kearney;
Not long ago, I landed from the bogs of sweet Killarney;
I used to cry out SOAP FAT! bekase that was my trade, sir
Till I ‘lsted for a Soldier boy wid Corcoran’s brigade, sir.

Chorus: For to Fight for Uncle Sam,
He’ll lade us on to glory, O!
He’ll lade us on to glory, O!
To save the Stripes and Stars.

Ora, once in regimentals, my mind it did dewildher.
I bid good-bye to Biddy dear and all the darling childher;
Whoo! Says I the Irish Volunteers the divil a one afraid is,
Bekase we got the soldier bold McClellan, for to lade us.

Chorus:

We soon got into battle, we made a charge of bay’nets:
The Rebel Blaggards soon gave way: They fell as thick as paynuts.
Och hone! The slaughter that we made, bedad it was delightin!
For, the Irish Lads in action are the divil’s boys for fightin’.

Chorus:

Och, sure, we never will give in, in any sort of manner,
Until the South comes back agin, beneath the Starry banner;
And if John Bull should interfere, he’d suffer for it truly;
For soon the Irish Volunteers would give him Ballyhooly.

Chorus:

And! Now, before I ind my song, this free advice I’ll tender;
We’ll soon use the Rebels up and make them all surrender,
And once again the Stars and Stripes will to the breeze be swellin’
If Uncle Abe will give us back our darlin’ boy McClellan.

Chorus:

O! We’ll follow Little Mac,
He’ll lade us on to glory, O!
He’ll lade us on to glory, O!
To save the Stripes and Stars.

Note: “Give him Ballyhooly” seems to be an all purpose insult; Ballyhooly being a hot, humid town near Cork considered by the Irish to be the most miserable spot on earth.

Another Note: The song apparently emerged at the start of the war, circa 1860, but the last verse, referring to General George “Little Mac” McClellan had to have been added later since McClellan was fired by Lincoln in 1963.

Maria lamented:

My flag, which I gave to the 69th, was lost. The ensign dropped it in his retreat, and, as he escaped unhurt, has not dared to show his face. The Regiment declared that he shall be shot if he does.… If anyone asks me about it, I shall say that one of ensigns was killed and nothing more…. Besides. It was the first battle, and I would forgive the poor fellow and give him another chance.

Maria Lydig Daly
July 29, 1861

The Playhouse received bomb threats. O’Neill received hate mail. He wrote in his journal entry of February 23, “Threatening letter from K.K.K.” The Klan threatened to march on New York. New York’s mayor, whipped into a moral frenzy by William Randolph Hearst’s New York American, threatened to disallow the production on various legal grounds. Shady maneuvering and the strain on the cast delayed the opening for weeks. When the curtain finally rose on May 15, the theater was encircled by police, deployed ostensibly to put down a race riot. The Playhouse’s managers, in turn, hired unemployed steelworkers whom they stationed outside dressing rooms to protect the cast from an angry mob and/or the police.

Despite the fiery run-up, the play opened to a full house. There was apparently cheering and whistling, but no violence. It ran for a month at the Provincetown and through the fall in other New York venues with no disturbance of the peace.

“Chillun” is not remembered as O’Neill’s best play, but it did go a significant distance in expanding leading roles for black actors. And its success, coming on the eve of the l924 Democratic Convention in NYC, dealt Hearst and the KKK a high-profile political defeat.

Photo of Robeson and Blair (Wikimedia Commons.) Though it was widely believed that he kissed her hand, she, in fact, kissed his.

Click here to view the embedded video.

November 11, 2005