Benjamin Hanks of Windham and Litchfield, Connecticut and Troy, New York.

Benjamin Hanks was a skillful and energetic mechanic who made clocks and watches and carried out each of their repair businesses. He is better known as and was a goldsmith, a maker of stockings, looms, compasses, brass cannons, and large church bells. 

Benjamin Hanks was born in Mansfield, Connecticut, on October 29, 1755, the son of Uriah and Irene (Case) Hanks. The Hanks family was an inventive group. At one time, they became the Nation’s largest silk producers by importing the first mulberry trees from England, planting them in Connecticut, and raising silkworms. Soon, they invented and improved the apparatus for making silk into thread and constructed the first powered silk mill in the United States. The family built numerous forges, and Benjamin is believed to be the first to cast large bells and bronze cannons in the Country.

It is recorded that Benjamin learned the clockmaking trade from Thomas Harland, a noted Norwich clockmaker. Benjamin must have arrived at Harland’s doorstep with a solid mechanical background because his service with Harland had to be unusually short. Harland didn’t arrive in Norwich until 1773, and Benjamin is said to have been in the Boston area just before April 1775. Why, well, it is recorded that Benjamin served as a drummer during the Revolution and, in that role, took part in the march to Lexington in response to Paul Revere’s alarm. Shortly after, he enlisted or was assigned to General Israel Putnam’s Third Connecticut Regiment. Putnam was originally from Danvers, Massachusetts, and moved to Pomfret, CT, to pursue inexpensive land. Putnam rushed north when he received news of the Battle at Lexington and Concord and joined the Patriot cause. He was a primary figure at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Perhaps Benjamin knew Putnam from his time in Connecticut? During this tumultuous time in our Country’s history, Hanks is said to have worked in a foundry owned by Paul Revere during and after the war. And yet, he still had time to marry Alice Hovey about 1775 in Windham, CT. (Alice Hovey was born on December 15, 1754, in Mansfield Center, CT, christened on January 19, 1755, in Mansfield Center, CT, and died in Troy, NY.

By 1777, at the age of twenty-two, Benjamin Hanks advertises from Windham, Connecticut, as a Clock and Watchmaker and that he continued in the metal-smiths trade making (according to an advertisement from the late 1770s) spurs, buckles, beads, hilts, clocks, and watches, as well as general silver and gold work. In 1780, Benjamin moved to Litchfield, CT, and built a house and shop at 39 South Street to carry on his business. It is in the town of Litchfield that he performs the following accomplishments. Shortly after the move, Benjamin was awarded the contract to make the clock for the Old Dutch Church at Nassau and Liberty Streets in New York City. In 1783, he petitioned the General Assembly for a patent for his invention of a clock wound automatically by air, and in 1785, he advertised his clocks, Church clocks, pneumatic clocks, watches with center sweep seconds, surveyors’ compasses, etc. In 1786, he established a foundry and began casting large church bells. On August 6, 1787, Benjamin installed a bell in the Litchfield meeting house. The original one was broken. This bell was paid for by the society. In early 1790, he set up a “Brazier’s business.” In 1790, Benjamin moved to Mansfield, where he continued to make clocks and bells and carried on the woolen business. In 1808, he and his son Truman formed a partnership in the bell business and built a foundry in Troy, NY. The foundry made an assortment of items, including tower clocks, surveying tools, and church bells. One young man apprenticed at the Hanks’ West Troy foundry was Andrew Meneely, who would later establish his own foundry in Troy and become one of America’s leading bell-makers. Meneely is also buried in the Rural Cemetery in a family lot on the Middle Ridge. On November 4, Benjamin was granted a patent for “Molding and Casting bells.”

Benjamin Hanks died in Troy, New York, in December of 1824 at the age of 70.