Genealogy Chat

Knowing that grandfather clocks are often passed down the family - and apparantly were the car / plasma tele of their days (the biggest showiest expense of a family after their house). I'm trying to find out which ancestor bought it and which side of the family (pre grandmother) it came down. Any ideas about where to start searching? Are there records of longcase clocks? Does anyone else have a 1730s Step. Tracey grandfather clock? Does anyone know about him (google is unusually unhelpful) but mentions a Step Tracy of Holland in 1630 building a sort of 'planetary clock'. Would he be related?

I'd get on to the BBC website if I were you.........find the antiques section, and send them an e-mail......... Reg

Yes they are the same Stephen Tracy. The 'planetry clock' is 'The Leyden Sphere'.Its in a museum in Zaandam (Holland). The clockmakers used to travel to and fro between Holland and England regularly.

On the subject of clocks has aybody heard of a clockmaker called Gunther Becker?? I have tried googling to no avail. The clock in question is circa 1900

Becker clocks are not too difficult to identify. Until 1880 and the introduction of the spring driven mechanism, almost all of Gustav Becker’s clocks were weight driven Regulator wall clocks. Becker’s clocks bear his trademark and serial number on the dial and weights are usually marked with his initials. Serial numbers reference the year of manufacture, so determining age is made very simple. An excellent resource for this information and more is available in the book The Gustav Becker Story by Karl Kochmann, and Gustav Becker Clocks by Tran Duy Ly. If you google Becker +clock , there's a good web page - Antique Clock Guy.He also gives the numbers and dates.

Thankyou for that Karen ever likely I wasn't getting anywhere with google as I was putting Gunther in instead of Gustav !!! DOH