Mordecai Miller Pocket Watch

Mordecai Miller was a fourth generation, Pennsylvania Quaker born in 1764. He likely apprenticed with clock maker and silversmith Elisha Kirk, a cousin, in Warrington, Pennsylvania. By 1786, he partnered with Caleb Bentley and worked in Leesburg, Virginia and by 1788 he established his own silversmith business in Alexandria, Virginia which by all accounts was quite successful. He advertised clocks, watches and an assortment of other items. Miller was listed as a watchmaker (1796) and silversmith (1797) in the Alexandria Census.

Miller's reputation was outstanding and his clients included George Washington. He left the business in 1800 to pursue other business ventures. Few of his watches survive. Catherine Hollan has extensive information on Miller (Hollan, 528-532).

This watch, serial number 332, was restored by David Cooper who observed that the English frame (also called an ébauche) for this watch was intended to be a regulator dial watch with a center minute hand and separate hour subsidiary dial. Regulator dial center sweep watches normally have the center wheel offset to the 12 position of the dial with the hour and minute hand running directly from the center wheel and the sweep second hand running off of the contrate wheel at the center of the movement. A second type of regulator dial is where the hour hand would only be shown in the subsidiary dial and run by means of a minute wheel between the cannon pinion and the hour wheel; the minute hand at the center of the dial would still be mounted on the center wheel arbor.

The silver pair cases have London assay date mark for 1794-95 and case maker mark "TC" likely Thomas Carpenter of London. The cases also have a King George III export duty mark that was used from 1786 to 1798 and indicates that the tax was paid on the silver cases.