Simon Willard, Jr. Banjo Clock, 1815-1830, reverse painted with sailing ship and patriotic decor, eagle finial, gold gilt trim, overall 40" tall, working......Simon Willard, Jr., was the second son of Simon Willard (1753 - 1848) and Willard's second wife, Mary Bird Willard. He was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1795. He died in 1874.In a memoir written in 1872, Willard said that he had no regular education until the age of 10, when he went to a public grammar school for four years. At 14, he entered his father's shop and helped to make clocks until being apprenticed to a watchmaker named Pond in Portsmouth, NH. Pond failed in 1812, and Willard returned home for a year. In 1813, he entered West Point and graduated in 1815. He served in the ordnance corps at the Pittsburg Arsenal until May 1816. He started a crockery business in Roxbury, but it failed in 1824. So he returned to his father's clock-making business, where he remained until 1826. Then at age 31, he took an apprenticeship in New York with D. Eggert, where he mastered the manufacture and repair of marine chronometers and watches. In 1828, he set up his own shop in Boston at 9 Congress Street, where his business thrived.For many years, Simon Willard, Jr., was in charge of maintaining the public clocks in Boston. His astronomical regulator, built in 1832 and currently at Harvard, was the standard time keeper for the New England railroads.