OBSERVER Photo by Craig Harvey Pictured is what Family Church Fredonia looked like Tuesday.

The clock at Family Church Fredonia was historic in more ways than one

Because of its age, 132 years old, it was originally a manual clock in another time.

Tony Maxwell, project manager from GC3, a construction company who works for GuideOne Insurance was overseeing the demolition Monday when he told the story of how the clock worked.

“When we got up there, we found a large wooden box of rocks. In my mind, that’s how they got the beams up here, but what it actually was was that every day, or almost every day, a gentleman in town would go up there and wind the clock and the rocks would go up and as they dropped, that’s what moved the hands. You put one too many rocks, the clock would run fast, not enough, it moved slow.”

After the fire, people noticed that the hands of the clock would randomly move and as the tower was taken down Monday they spun like crazy, the box of rocks were still doing their job more than 100 years later.