THE BRONZE LOOKING GLASS CLOCK.--CHURCH AT BRISTOL.--PANIC OF 1837.--
CLOCKS AT THE SOUTH.--THE ONE DAY BRASS CLOCK.
With the introduction of the Bronze Looking-Glass Clock, the business
seemed to revive in all the neighboring towns, but more especially in
Plymouth and Bristol. Both Mr. Terry and Mr. Thomas, did and said much
in disparagement of my new invention, and tried to discourage the
pedlars from buying of me, but they did as men do now-a-days, buy where
they can do the best and make the most money. This new clock was liked
very much in the southern market. I have heard of some of these being
sold in Mississippi and Lousianna [sic] as high as one hundred and one
hundred and fifteen dollars, and a great many at ninety dollars, which
was a good advance on the first cost. Mr. Thomas gave out that he would
not make them any how, he did not want to follow Jerome, but did finally
come to it, making only a few at first, but running them down in the
mean time and praising his old case. He finally gave up making the
Scroll Top and made my new kind altogether.
Samuel Terry, a brother of Eli, came to Bristol about this time, and
commenced making this kind of clock.
Several others began to make them--Geo. Mitchell and his brother in-law
Rollin Atkins went into it, also Riley Whiting of Winsted. The business
increased very rapidly between 1827 and 1837. During these ten years
Jeromes and Barrow made more than any other company. The two towns of
Plymouth and Bristol grew and improved very rapidly; many new houses
were built, and every thing looked prosperous.
In 1831, a new church was built in Bristol, and, it is said, through the
introduction of this Bronze Looking Glass Clock. Jeromes and Barrow paid
one-third of the cost of its erection. The writer obtained every dollar
of the subscription. The Hon. Tracy Peck and myself first started this
project, which ended in building this fine church which was finished and
dedicated in August, 1832. The Rev. David Lewis Parmelee preached the
dedication sermon, and was the settled minister there. I was greatly
interested in his preaching for ten years. He has for the last nineteen
years preached at South Farms now the town of Morris. This Mr. Parmelee
was a merchant till he was thirty years old, and was then converted in
some mysterious manner, as St. Paul was, and left his business to preach
the gospel. He proved to be one of the soundest preachers in the land,
and I have no doubt but he will be one of the bright and shining lights
in heaven. Oh! what happy days I saw during those ten years, little
dreaming of the great troubles that were before me, or that I should
experience in after life, which are now resting so heavily upon me, many
times seeming greater than I can bear. But such is life.
About this time, also, Chauncey and Lawson C. Ives, two highly
respectable men, built a factory in Bristol for the purpose of making an
eight day brass clock. This clock was invented by Joseph Ives, a brother
of Chauncey, and sold for about twenty dollars. The manufacture of these
was carried on very successfully for a few years by them, but in 1836,
their business was closed up, they having made about one hundred
thousand dollars. Soon after this, in 1837, came the great panic and
break down of business which extended all over the country. Clock makers
and almost every one else stopped business. I should mention that
another company made the eight day brass clock previous to 1837, Erastus
and Harvey Case and John Birge. Their clocks were retailed mostly in the
southern market. They made perhaps four thousand a year. The Ives Co.,
made about two thousand, but both went out of business in 1837, and it
was thought that clock making was about done with in Conn.
The third chapter, as I have divided it, was now closing up. Wood clocks
were good for time, but it was a slow job to properly make them, and
difficult to procure wood just right for wheels and plates, and it took
a whole year to season it. No factory had made over _Ten_ thousand
in a year; they were always classed with wooden nutmegs and wooden
cucumber seeds, and could not be introduced into other countries to any
advantage. But this was not the only trouble; being on water long as
they would have to be, would swell the wood of the wheels and ruin the
clock. Here then we had the eight day brass clock costing about twenty
dollars; the idea had always been that a brass clock must be an eight
day, and all one day should be of wood, and the plan of a brass one day
had never been thought of.
In 1835, the southern people were greatly opposed to the Yankee pedlars
coming into their states, especially the clock pedlars, and the licences
were raised so high by their Legislatures that it amounted to almost a
prohibition. Their laws were that any goods made in their own States
could be sold without licence. Therefore clocks to be profitable must be
made in those states. Chauncey and Noble Jerome started a factory in
Richmond Va., making the cases and parts at Bristol, Connecticut, and
packing them with the dials, glass &c. We shipped them to Richmond and
took along workmen to put them together. The people were highly pleased
with the idea of having clocks all made in their State. The old planters
would tell the pedlars they meant to go to Richmond and see the
wonderful machinery there must be to produce such articles and would no
doubt have thought the tools we had there were sufficient to make a
clock. We carried on this kind of business for two or three years and
did very well at it, though it was unpleasant. Every one knew it was all
a humbug trying to stop the pedlars from coming to their State. We
removed from Richmond to Hamburg, S.C., and manufactured in the same
way. This was in 1835 and '36.
There was another company doing the same kind of business at Augusta,
Geo., by the name Case, Dyer, Wadsworth & Co., and Seth Thomas was
making the cases and movements for them. The hard times came down on us
and we really thought that clocks would no longer be made. Our firm
thought we could make them if any body could, but like the others felt
discouraged and disgusted with the whole business as it was then. I am
sure that I had lost, from 1821 to this time, more than one hundred
thousand _dollars_, and felt very much discouraged in consequence.
Our company had a good deal of unsettled business in Virginia and South
Carolina, and I started in the fall of 1837 for those places. Arriving
at Richmond, I had a strong notion of going into the marl business. I
had been down into Kent county, the summer before, where I saw great
mountains of this white marl composed of shells of clams and oysters
white as chalk. I had sent one vessel load of this to New Haven the year
before. At Richmond I was looking after our old accounts, settling up,
collecting notes and picking up some scattered clocks.
One night I took one of these clocks into my room and placing it on the
table, left a light burning near it and went to bed. While thinking over
my business troubles and disappointments, I could not help feeling very
much depressed. I said to myself I will not give up yet, I know more
about the clock business than anything else. That minute I was looking
at the wood clock on the table and it came into my mind instantly that
there could be a cheap one day brass clock that would take the place of
the wood clock. I at once began to figure on it; the case would cost no
more, the dials, glass, and weights and other fixtures would be the
same, and the size could be reduced. I lay awake nearly all night
thinking this new thing over. I knew there was a fortune in it. Many a
sensible man has since told me that if I could have secured the sole
right for making them for ten years, I could easily have made a million
of dollars. The more I looked at this new plan, the better it appeared.
My business took me to South Carolina before I could return home. I had
now enough to think of day and night; this one day brass clock was
constantly on my mind; I was drawing plans and contriving how they could
be made best. I traveled most of the way from Richmond by stage.
Arriving at Augusta, Geo., I called on the Connecticut men who were
finishing wood clocks for that market, and told Mr. Dyer the head man,
that I had got up, or could get up something when I got home that would
run out all the wood clocks in the country, Thomas's and all; he laughed
at me quite heartily. I told him that was all right, and asked him to
come to Bristol when he went home and I would show him something that
would astonish him. He promised that he would, and during the next
summer when he called at my place, I showed him a shelf full of them
running, which he acknowledged to be the best he had ever seen.
I arrived home from the south the 28th of January, and told my brother
who was a first-rate clock maker what I had been thinking about since I
had been gone. He was much pleased with my plan, thought it a first rate
idea, and said he would go right to work and get up the movement, which
he perfected in a short time so that it was the best clock that had ever
been made in this or any other country. There have been more of this
same kind manufactured than of any other in the United States. What I
originated that night on my bed in Richmond, has given work to thousands
of men yearly for more than twenty years, built up the largest
manufactories in New England, and put more than a million of dollars
into the pockets of the brass makers,--"but there is not one of them
that remembers _Joseph_."