We know, for example, that before the Industrial Revolution, the consensus in agrarian America was that time belonged to God. The good Lord had created light and dark and that was about all the time-keeping most people required. Clocks could be helpful on cloudy days when noontime was obscured--Boston had a town clock in 1638, for example—but few Americans owned clocks (perhaps one in 50 in 1700). And, everyone knew that clocks were not time per se, but crude mechanical proxies for what was really going on in the Heavens.
By 1820 things began to change, however, and it’s no surprise it reflected the rise of the steam engine, factories and the steady move from farm to city.