A noon-mark is a traditional method used to track the passage of time.
[This article was originally published as the inaugural column in a feature titled “The Noon-Mark” for the digital newspaper Porcupine Soup, you can read those features through this link.]
I’ve been all bent out of shape trying to come up with a title for this newly inaugurated column, and now that I’ve finally arrived at one I have little doubt most of you are thinking “… that’s it?? It took you two weeks to come up with that?” — my reply to which is simply “yeah."
Like anyone faced with a vexing problem I sought sage counsel, but when I mentioned to my own mother that I had no clue what to call this prospective weekly feature she insightfully declared “You could call it ‘Fresh from the Jon.’” While allusions to the toilet probably don’t set the right tone I have little doubt that her kind suggestion was probably an apt one, though I leave it to you all to be the final judge of this. I only ask that you make the determination of this feature’s worth after a few issues and then decide if it should be carried on or canned.
So what the heck is a noon-mark? Truth be told I had never heard of one until about a week ago. I was up late reading “Old Times in Windham” by the Rev. Henry Hedges Prout, and stumbled across his reminiscence of an age before any of the earliest settlers of Windham had a clock among them to tell time. As a generally industrious lot of people it was still useful to track the passage of the day, so in lieu of a clock a tool called a noon-mark was employed.
Here’s how noon-marks work — In a sunny window of a cabin a gouge would be carved at the edge of a shadow cast by a fixed object when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. This gouge could then be used day by day to find a rough approximate of noon… as the shadow approached the mark it was the forenoon, and as it moved beyond the mark it was the afternoon.
Naturally, a noon-mark is only most accurate during the season it is carved, so I suspect these settlers probably had a summertime noon-mark and a wintertime one to account for the shifting of the sun’s position in the sky. While the noon-mark was doubtlessly primitive, it certainly sufficed to help track the day, and the people of that time were none the worse for wear through its use.
History, like the noon-mark, is an imprecise thing. The passage of time makes the exact recollection of many things impossible, and we are forever trying to track our own progress as a people by the veiled memory of the past. History then is really just a noon-mark for a different scale of time, and I suspect Rev. Prout would have agreed with my analogy.
I have no idea what this column will hold in store. I don’t aim to make it “all history, all the time” and certainly don’t have the ability to guarantee you’ll see it every week, but I do promise it will be the best I can muster. In the meantime I highly recommend you find a copy of Prout’s “Old Times in Windham” and give it a read.
By Jonathan Palmer, Greene County Historian.
[Banner image is a scene showing the ruined remnants of a settler’s cabin high in the mountains between Jewett and Windham. Palmer Photo.]
Questions and observations can be directed to Jon Palmer via archivist@gchistory.org