Corwin Family Keeping Time For 130 Years

When Tim Corwin was 10 years old, he had troubling winding the clock that sits high above Southampton Village in the First Presbyterian Church tower—a responsibility the family has shouldered almost exclusively for 130 years.

Not quite big enough for the job, Mr. Corwin resorted to using an electric motor the family had installed in the 1960s until he could muster the strength to use the manual hand crank. Now, 49 years later, he’s a pro.

“When I got a little beefier, I could wind it by hand,” he said, smiling. “I took over full time when I was 12.”

Mr. Corwin, who now runs the family store, Corwin’s Jewelers on Main Street, said the arduous job of clock winding “always was.”

The First Presbyterian Church is the oldest Presbyterian church in the United States, tracing its roots to a meetinghouse, a primitive building where government was also conducted, on Old Town Road in 1640, the year Southampton was established. In 1654, the meetinghouse was moved to South Main Street just north of St. John’s Episcopal Church, and moved again in 1707 to the northeast corner of Main Street and Meeting House Lane. The building as we know it today, including the tower, was completed in 1843.

Added to the historic church in 1877, the Bostonian E. Howard Clock Company bell became the Corwin family’s responsibility in about 1882, just three years after Mr. Corwin’s great-grandfather W.G. Corwin opened the jewelry store. It was up to the Corwins to wind the clock once a week and service it as needed.

“It’s a neat thing to do,” Mr. Corwin said. “Originally, the clock was the time source for the whole village. If you were working, you relied on the church clock and the bell to know what time it was.”

As the fourth generation timekeeper, he has become attuned to the 135-year-old clock’s needs and has passed his knowledge on to his 26-year-old son, Travis, who is now the full-time winder.

“Winding it is the easy part,” Mr. Corwin said. “It’s the service in between—when something gets out of adjustment, when something breaks, when it has to be cleaned and oiled. If you don’t do that, then the clock stops running.”

When a clock mechanism breaks, Mr. Corwin usually has to make its replacement by hand, because the old parts are no longer manufactured. “Unfortunately, for an antique clock, you can’t pick up a catalog and order a part for it,” he said. “If something breaks, you have to make it. Sometimes I have to make a part that takes me three days. It’s a labor of love.”

The church, located on South Main Street, pays Travis $15 a week to wind and service the clock—but Mr. Corwin thinks the job should pay a lot more. “It should probably be $150 a week, plus repairs,” he said.

According to Mr. Corwin, the village used to pay him to wind and service the clock, but during the late 1980s, the responsibility to compensate him fell to the church. For two years, Mr. Corwin did not enter the clock tower, because the church hired someone else to wind the clock for free, he said.

“After two years with no service, it stopped running altogether,” he said. Eventually, he was rehired by the church and fixed the problem. “I finally figured out that somebody had taken one of the parts off and reversed it. After cleaning all the pivots, oiling them and tuning everything up, it ran fine.”

More than once, however, Mr. Corwin has faced uncertainty about the clock’s future.

Last year, church officials submitted an application to the village to install a cellphone tower inside the church’s bell tower, which would have necessitated the removal of the old clock in favor of an automatic one. The application was tossed out by the village, but could be reintroduced at some point, according to Southampton Village Mayor Mark Epley.

The cellphone service provider, MetroPCS, would have paid the church $25,000 a year to host the cell tower, Mr. Corwin said. The extra funds would have been helpful to the church, as it recently lost a contract with the Southampton School District, in which the church leased space to the district to host a pre-K program, according to Mayor Epley.

Some community members opposed the plan because they were concerned about possible health impacts of having concealed antennas inside the clock tower—as well as the effect the cell tower would have on the Corwins’ ability to keep maintaining the clock.

According to Mayor Epley, MetroPCS might modify its plan and resubmit the application at some point in the future. Church officials declined to comment about the application.

But for now, the responsibility of the clock remains with the Corwins.

While the task of taking care of an old clock may seem like a charming responsibility, it can often be a lot to deal with, Mr. Corwin said. Going up the clock tower’s 47 steep steps in the middle of a storm to reset the clock can be less than appealing to its timekeeper.

“The worst part about it is when you have to climb up when the wind is blowing 50 mph and the tower is swaying back and forth,” Mr. Corwin said.

Of course, taking care of the village’s only hand-wound clock has its perks.

From the top of the roof, the ocean can be seen to the left, stretching as far as the eye can see; and to the right, the bustle of the village goes on until the trees seem to swallow up the roads.

Those who have been lucky enough to have seen the view have etched their names on the wooden walls inside the tower—the oldest name: Tim Corwin, 1963.

Every Monday morning, Travis Corwin takes a 10-minute walk to the church, winds the clock, and sometimes, eats his breakfast on the tower roof.

“The vantage point from the roof is incredible, and there’s not too many people in Southampton who have seen that. And I see it regularly,” he said.