Donated by Zelmer and Norene Teague

Complete with Seth Thomas clockworks, this clock was made by Southern Calendar Clock Company of St. Louis in 1877. The upper dial keeps time; the lower dial is a perpetual calendar—it automatically adjusts for months of different lengths and indicates February 29 in each leap year.

John Sisemore, a farmer and Civil War veteran who lived near the Madison County community of Japton, bought this clock in 1877. According to Sisemore family lore, John was one of three people in Northwest Arkansas that year who purchased this brand of clock. The other buyers were the Johnson family who owned Johnson Mill in Washington County, and an unknown woman in Fayetteville.

John Sisemore’s clock was used by Sisemore family and descendants until 2008, when Zelmer “Teb” and Norene Teague donated it to the Shiloh Museum.

Donated by Melvin and Lucille Ferguson

This transferware plate belonged to Hiram Hamilton and Ida May Lierly Tresner, who lived in the Round Mountain community east of Fayetteville. Their daughter, Laura Pearl Tresner Ferguson, recalled that the plate sat on the family dining table and was always used for serving crackers.

According to the Transferware Collectors Club website, “Transferware is the term givento pottery that has had a pattern applied by transferring the print from a copper plate to a specially sized paper and finally to the pottery body. While produced primarily on earthenware, transfer prints are also found on ironstone, porcelain and bone china.”

The plate was manufactured by Dunn Bennett & Company of England, a producer of stoneware items for the American market in the late 1880s and early 1900s. Shaftesbury is the pattern name.