Barak Pierson’s intricately crafted wedding present for his wife Libbie
Introduction
Barak Pierson hand built an ornate cathedral clock for his bride, Libbie [Mercer] Pierson, for their wedding day in 1883. The clock has had its own journey, including falling apart and being put back together, and residing in Barclay, Kansas; and Pasadena, Santa Monica, Walnut Creek, and Berkeley, California along the way. This is its story.
Born in 1860, Barak Pierson grew up in the Quaker community of Springdale, Iowa. He and his three siblings were raised by their Civil War-widowed mother, Deborah [Smith] Pierson and her extended Smith family. In addition to learning to become a skilled nurseryman, Barak became an excellent woodworker. As a boy, he earned money catching gophers, which he later used to buy a jigsaw that weighed almost 50 pounds. The heavy saw had to be carried 20 miles on horseback from the train station to his mother’s farm.
An antique 19th century treadle jigsaw. Cast iron made this type of saw particularly heavy.
Deborah moved with Barak and his siblings to Kansas around 1879. They settled near Barclay, another Quaker settlement. This is where Barak met Libbie, who had moved to Barclay with her Quaker family from Le Grand, Iowa.
Libbie had started elocution—the art of public speaking—when she was so small she had to stand on a box to be seen when she recited. Encouraged by her schoolteacher mother, Elizabeth [Baily] Mercer, and her father, John Mercer, a powerful public speaker, Libbie developed a remarkable memory that delighted her teachers. Barak was undoubtedly smitten by his dynamic wife-to-be, and he spent more than a year cutting over 800 tiny pieces to build his cathedral clock.
In the 1880 census, Deborah and her children were listed as living in Superior Township, Osage County, Kansas, near Barclay. Deborah, 49 years old, was identified as widowed and head of household. Living with her were William, 24 (carpenter), Elanora, 22 (teacher), Barak, 20 (nurseryman), and George, 19 (farm laborer)
This U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918 (Ancestry.com login required) shows Le Grand in Marshall County, Iowa in 1871, with J. R. and E. B. Mercer (Libbie’s parents) listed as owning property. Several families shown here later settled in Barclay inthe 1880s
Their wedding day arrived on May 3rd, 1883, and they were married at Libbie’s parents’ house in Barclay.
The Osage City Republican, Thu, May 10, 1883 · Page 2. This wedding announcement includes all of the presents they received (this must have put a lotof pressure on those giving gifts!). The “scroll work clock” is the first one listed
Kansas, U.S., County Marriage Record for Barak S. Smith and Libbie B. Mercer
Soon, Barak and Libbie had two little additions, Ressie in 1884 and George in 1887. A prolonged drought — and what the family later remembered as “locust years,” likely referring to damaging grasshopper outbreaks — made Kansas increasingly inhospitable. In 1887 Barak, Libbie, their children, and both extended families moved to Pasadena, California, a temperate boomtown. The glued-together clock did not like this dry new climate, and the pieces started to fall apart. The clock was carefully boxed up around 1894.
Barak and Libbie Pierson with their children, Theresa Smith “Ressie” Pierson [Lloyd] (1884–1975) on the right and George Mercer Pierson (1887–1973) on the left. Their daughter, Edna Elizabeth Pierson [Long] (1893–1981), would be born a few years later. It is unclear whether this photo was taken in Kansas or California. George was born in Barclay, Kansas, on March 29, 1887. Barak left for Pasadena on August 3, and Libbie, the children, and her parents joined him on September 12.
“Well, now in 1886/1881 along there, the locusts were so bad and they just wiped them out. remember Grandpa Pierson saying to me one time, he said, “Well, the locusts wiped us out.” And so then that’s when my grandparents, the Piersons, came to Pasadena when my mother was three. And some of the other Quakers had already arrived in Pasadena, and so they had people there.“
The Osage City Free Press, Wed, Aug 03, 1887 ·Page 4
Daily Kansas People, Mon, Sep 12, 1887 ·Page 3
The clock stayed in its box until the 1930s. Elderly Barak and Libbie, having retired from their farm in Orosi, lived in nearby Tulare in California’s Central Valley with their daughter Edna. Their son George lived in Santa Monica with his family. His two sons, David and John, decided it was time to put their grandfather’s clock together again. They spent many days fitting and gluing all the pieces together. The story even made it into the newspaper, which serves as the source of much of this narrative.
Over the years, George’s wife, Rena, had the clock electrified. George and Rena’s son David and his wife Florence [Hoeg] Pierson kept the clock at their Walnut Creek, California home for many years. It was eventually passed down to Carol Pierson, the eldest child of David and Florence. The intricate cathedral clock that Barak spent a year making for his bride, Libbie, now proudly stands on Carol’s mantle in Berkeley, California.
Barak and Libbie’s great-granddaughter Carol Pierson (1945-) standing in 2025 with the cathedral clock built in the early 1880s, now over 140 years old.
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