John Bailey III

John Bailey III, or Junior, was born in Hanover, Massachusetts, on August 13, 1787. It is thought that he learned the family trade of clockmaking from his father, John II. John III finished his apprenticeship in 1809 at the tail end of the tall case clock's popularity. The wall timepiece and shelf clock became the clock of choice due to their reduction in cost. In June of 1809, he moved to Portland, Maine, and worked mainly as a repairman. In November of 1810, he married Anna Taber, the daughter of a prominent Quaker merchant in Portland. In 1811, they returned to Hanover. During this next period of his life, we find him traveling in the South during the winters, setting up temporary repair shops, and shipping complete clocks from the North to Southern clients while maintaining a shop in Hanover. In 1824, he moved his business from Hanover to the growing city of New Bedford, which is located on the Massachusetts south coast. Here he took the shop formerly occupied by the clockmakers Almy & Wall. In addition to his reputation as a fine businessman, clockmaker, and chronometer repairman, Bailey became well-known for his Anti-slavery convictions. He traveled extensively, including to the South, to preach his message of abolitionism. This was a stance that eventually cost him his business in New Bedford. In 1848, he moved to Lynn, MA, where he operated "The Old Curiosity Shop," a jewelry and repair business on Union Street. He died there in 1883 on March 2. Over his lifetime, he saw the cost of a clock start at $60 and fall to $2 due to the gearing up of mass production methods. Clocks were no longer for the most affluent of a community.

When he left New Bedford, driven out by his anti-slavery activities, he received a rare tribute in the Liberator on August 11, 1848. It was a letter to William Lloyd Garrison. “My object in writing to you is to inform you that tried friend of humanity, John Bailey, has just removed from New Bedford.” It goes on to explain why he was leaving. “It is unquestionably true, that his identity with and advocacy of the unpopular antislavery cause provoked the ill will and hatred of the sectarian minded and proslavery hearted, who have exerted an influence injurious to his business.” The letter goes on to explain that Bailey had the support of his family and that “his house was ever open to shelter… Hundreds of fugitives have known his benevolence.” The New Bedford Anti Slavery Society voted a resolution in his honor recognizing his work. It noted that he had given his time, money and influence to anti slavery. Later Bailey’s daughter, Anna remembered that their home had been a stop on the Underground Railroad and that her father “used to say that he and the Constitution of the United States were born in the same year." He continued to work for the cause and established two newspapers, in the 1850s, the Pathfinder and the People’s Press. He went on writing to the Liberator. John Bailey III lived to be 96, dying in 1883. Frederick Douglass admired him and in Reminiscences published in The Cosmopolitan in 1889 wrote: “The man in this town who illustrated this power most prominently was Mr. John Bailey a Quaker, one of the most amiable of men yet one of the most aggressive in the maintenance of his principles. At his invitation other abolition meetings were speedily held in the same place and were addressed by gentlemen distinguished for their eloquence.”