This ornate nineteenth-century clock stood on the mantelpiece at Glebe House, now the site of a much-loved park in Canberra’s centre, then the family home of the Reverend Pierce Galliard Smith and Emily Philippa Smith (née Davies) from 1873 to 1905.

The Reverend Smith came to Canberra in 1855 as the third Minister of the Anglican Church of St John the Baptist in Reid. For fifty years he provided pastoral care to a broad sweep of the regional community, from Naas in the south of what is now the ACT to Gungahlin in the north. Smith was a keen arborist, whose tree plantings stand today in Glebe Park and on Acton Peninsula.

The Smith De Salis collection also includes the family bible, a hand bell, a hall chair and vases. The Reverend Smith’s letters and diaries are held in the collection of the National Library of Australia and serve as a private chronicle of important events in the life of the nineteenth-century rural community which was the precursor of the city of Canberra and helped create the community that exists today.