The following story was told to me by my grandfather, Judge E. C. O’Rear of Woodford County, Kentucky, on August 25, 1947. This is as I wrote it down at the time. The scene of the story is the O’Rear farm near Mt. Sterling, Kentucky where John O’Rear settled in 1798. The time about 1900, his uncle Joseph C. O’Rear and Colonel John W. O’Rear (He had been a Lt. Colonel in the militia) owned the place.
"Uncle John was the last to die of the two brothers. During his last illness, in fact shortly before he died, I used to spend the night out at the house. I slept in the same room with Uncle John to be on hand in case he needed attention. Among the furnishings of his room was a grandfather’s clock, literally my grandfather’s clock which had been purchased by him early in the last century and inherited by Uncle John when my grandfather died. Now Uncle John had always lived on the old home place, had done very little traveling and in fact died in this same room in which he had been born. This clock needed winding every night and Uncle John had done this every night for many years. One night after I had gone to sleep I was awakened by Uncle John calling me. I went to see what the matter was and although he was very feeble and I could hardly hear him, he was saying "The clock! The clock!" Then I realized that I had forgotten to wind the clock and it had wound down and stopped ticking. Uncle John had missed the familiar "tick-tock" of the old clock."