USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Our Yankee heritage: the making of Bristol > Part 10
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Chauncey was a descendant of Timothy Jerome, the brother of Wil- liam and Zerubbabel. As a boy, he had to work in the fields and help his father hammer out nails. Or- phaned at fourteen, he had walked the roads with his clothes in a bun- dle on a stick over his shoulder. As a farmer's apprentice, he had to la- bor barefoot in the snow and never owned a pair of boots until con- scripted in the War of 1812.
Jerome set up a case shop at the Pcquabuck, and to cut the veneers installed the first circular saw in Bristol. "What we need," Mitchell told him, "is a shelf clock with a more attractive design than any-
thing Terry puts out, but which costs less to make. I can take as many as you can make."
Chauncey designed a new bronze looking-glass case, an adaptation of Joseph Ives's patented 1822 model. It proved far more popular than the Terry product.
Three years later, Chauncey formed a company with his brother Noble, a fine mechanic, and Elijah Darrow, a competent glass-tablet and dial painter and built a two- story movement shop as an ell closer to the strect. A bridge was put across the river to the lumber house, horse barn and wagon shed. Soon a paint and finishing shop was built on the west side of the street, con- nccted by an overhead passage. Later he expanded operations by taking over the Edward Smith look- ing-glass shop some rods down- stream.
ITiram Camp was hired in 1829 to sweep out, open the shop in the mornings and make the fires. There were no matches, and Hiram used to hold an iron wire against a turn- ing file until it got red hot. Some- times the water wheel was frozen, and he had to go under the shop in the dark and chop off the ice - a mcan task after a warm bed. Camp married Noble Jerome's daughter and became a permanent and trusted business associate, in due time one of the ablest clockmakers and inventors in the industry. He
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was the head of the greatest clock factory in the world long after Chauncey had gone down to bank- ruptcy.
In 1834 Darrow left the company to make paneled clock dials and glass clock tablets by a new mass- production method he had devised, which he continued to do until his death in 1857. From 1838 to 1840 he went into a clock company or- ganized by Thomas and Alphonso Barnes.
By then Chauncey Jerome had outdistanced all competitors. The year before the canal was opened, he contracted to make 12,000 clocks. Mitchell burst into his store, shout- ing excitedly to his helpers, "We have to do what we do in the clock business this year, for soon it will be good for nothing."
But these prosperous days every- body wanted a clock. The country, growing fast in territory and people and industry, now included the great Louisiana purchase, all the Mississippi Valley to the Rockies. Louisiana and Mississippi had al- ready been admitted as states. Florida, the fabulous land where Ponce de Leon had sought the Foun- tain of Youth, was also United States soil. The remotest cabins in Arkan- sas and the Everglades felt the need for clocks. A British traveler of the period was astonished to see Bristol wooden clocks in the poorest cabins, deep in the Ozark wilderness. In-
stead of being swamped by the Je- rome mass production, George could not keep up with the clamor of his peddlers for clocks and more clocks.
Presently the Jeromes set up their own selling organization, and Mitchell had to skirmish around for new sources.
To Ephraim Downs, apprentice of the Harrisons in Waterbury, Mitchell sold a gristmill and shop - half for cash, half for clocks - and agreed to take all the clocks Downs could make. Downs was a brother- in-law of Butler Dunbar and hired the latter's son, young Edward L., to work for him. In a few years, Downs was doing unusually well, and Mitchell was sending his clocks as far as Louisiana and Missouri. The best seller was a looking-glass type, but Downs also turned out carved and bronzed cases, with square or scroll tops.
One morning a tall young clock- case maker, Elias Ingraham from Marlboro, Massachusetts, lately of Hartford, walked into Bristol, where he had relatives, and asked George for work.
"I want a case that will sell better than the Chauncey Jerome job," Mitchell told Ingraham. "You go down to the 'cotton mill' and get to work on it right away."
Ingraham designed a handsome, well-proportioned case with lion- paw columns, ornate rosettes and carved front, that took the public's
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eye. Years afterward Elias told how much he owed to that early chance to work for Mitchell. Two years later he helped Chauncey Ives and his nephew, Lawson C. Ives, at the Eureka shop, which they had just built on North Main Street, then went in with William Gilbert.
In 1831 Ingraham and William Bartholomew bought Mitchell's old 'cotton mill' to make cases. The following year Bartholomew joined up with William Hills and Jonathan C. Brown, who bought the old Ives- Manross shop in Forestville, to make cabinets, cases and furniture. Elias Ingraham teamed up with Chauncey Goodrich but, after a few years, went it alone. He also made coffins and furniture - cabinets, chairs and mirrors. One large fur- niture order came in from Samuel Terry, brother of Eli.
Ingraham bought various Ives Clock patents, and in 1835 began making complete clocks. On a sail- ing trip to Caracas, Venezuela, he worked out a 'sharp Gothic' case that also took public fancy. He made other fine clockcase designs, Ionic, Gothic, Doric, Mosaic and Venetian, and his styles ruled the American clock trade for more than fifty years. He became the greatest clock designer in the long history of the industry.
George Mitchell also persuaded Samuel Terry, a partner of Eli since 1818, to have his son Ralph Ensign
Terry locate in Bristol to make clocks. Samuel Terry, originally in the harness and leather-goods busi- ness in Windsor, had built and in- stalled a meetinghouse clock there as early as 1811. He came to Bristol in 1825 to get Ralph started and de- cided to set up in business himself. On May 28, 1828, three days before the opening of the Farmington Canal, he bought three properties, the Thomas Botsford home, Charlie Kirke's clock shop on Middle Street and the Philo Pierce mill with water rights. Part payment was made in future delivery of 'patent clocks.'
"I'll take all the clocks you people can make," George told Terry. Many were labeled, 'Manufactured by Samuel Terry for George Mitch- ell.
Samuel also sold clocks to Thomas Barnes. August 2, 1830, Samuel signed a promise - one of many such orders - to deliver to him eleven short clocks with 'bronz col- lom and top piece and carved feet.'
Kirke, also an excellent clock- maker, the first to produce brass springs at a time when good steel springs were not available, went into partnership with Elisha C. Brewster on Race Street. Brewster who had once peddled clocks in the South for Thomas Barnes was a fine clock-dial and tablet painter.
The Kirke-Brewster foreman, Jo- seph S. Ives, nephew of the clock designer, later perfected Kirke's
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brass springs. His original patent, May 23, 1836, states that by his im- provement - an casy cold-roll proc- ess any clockmaker could follow - mainsprings can be made easier and cheaper of brass or other like metals than of steel and equally as good.'
Kirke moved to Wolcott to manu- facture a thirty-hour musical clock and a marine clock with cast-iron back plate and brass coil springs he had developed, and Brewster turncd to new partners, Jonathan C. Brown, Shaylor Ives, then Elias Ingraham.
A most enterprising manufacturer was John Birge. After coming back from the War of 1812, he made wag- ons and cabinets and peddled clocks as far west as Santa Fe, New Mex- ico. In 1819 Dr. Titus Merriman backed him in making clocks. Later, with the aid of Joseph Ivcs, Birge became a big producer.
Joseph was a great technical genius, a real clock wizard, but hopeless as a business man. In 1825 he went briefly to New York to manufacture on his own, but landed in debtor's prison. John Birge went down with friends, paid Ives's debts and brought him back to Bristol to work out more new ideas.
Ives's great passion, in spite of his early failure with Barnes, was to de- vise a cheap practical metal clock. He kept on working doggedly and with Chauncey and Lawson C. Ives at the 'Eureka Shop,' began making the 'strap-brass' clock. These fa-
mous 'Ives patent spring lever clocks' were advertised in the Con- necticut Courant 'as lighter and cheaper than any other comparable brass clock, easily kept in order.' They struck the hours. 'The springs . . . can never break or be affected by change of weather and are of sufficient strength to make the clock run eight days or longer.' Their cases - mahogany with metal doors 'in various and elegant patterns' - were made by Loomis, a relative, who had a horsepower shop near Tracy Peck on West Street, and by Elias Ingraham.
Birge and Joseph Ives started working together again in 1832, us- ing this same spring lever patent, and Erastus and Harvey Case - re- markable mechanics and clock brok- crs with an inventive turn - were taken into partnership. Joseph next invented his famous 'pinion rolling and pinion wheel' device, a truly great discovery, which reduced fric- tion.
In 1838 Joseph Ives patented his 'wagon spring' movement on which he had worked for many years - 'the best ever made' a revolutionary principle. The length of time the clock would run without rewinding depended on the number of leaves in the miniature wagon spring.
Bristol's erudite citizen, Epaphro- ditus Peck, later remarked, "Only a great mathematical genius could ever have figured out the relation
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of the stresses in the springs to the complicated clock mechanisms."
Joseph Ives transformed the whole clock industry of America. He was the pioneer brass clock- maker, the first to use rolled brass. He was the first to use the rolling bearing principle. Among his many patents, seven have proved basic from that day to this. One curious invention to lower costs was a round (tinplate) movement with 'squirrel- cage' escapements. For his inven- tions he had to devise original tools, gauges and machinery, which greatly advanced clockmaking and industry. He was the greatest in- ventive genius in the entire history of clockmaking in this country.
But to Bristol folk, 'Uncle Joe' was better known as the 'Mighty Chorister' of the Congregational Church. His big frame swayed and his big arms swung wide to the mu- sic as he exhorted the most fervent hymn singing ever known. He swept everybody into the warm cir- cle of his affection and good humor.
All six grandsons of Gideon Ives, 'the Mighty Hunter,' mostly ap- prentices of Gideon Roberts, were making their mark as inventors or producers. As early as 1809 Ira in- vented a 'clock time-and-strike-de- vice - the first clock patent taken out by a Bristol citizen - and in 1812 he patented a new pinion that was bought by Elias Ingraham in 1835. His son, Joseph S., also took
out important patents. Amasa, Chauncey, Shaylor and Lawson Ives each hit upon many new ideas and improvements.
The tinmakers and everybody else were eager to get into the flourish- ing clock business, but though Bris- tol had become the world's greatest producing center, George Mitchell still could not get enough to supply his peddlers.
He went down to his wood-turn- ing shop to see his brother-in-law, Irenus Atkins. 'Priest' Atkins, an ordained Baptist minister, though now devoted to craftsmanship and business, still preached every chance he got. His great mane of hair and a fringe beard made a halo about his kindly face and deep, zeal- ous eyes.
"I can't get enough cases," George told him. "I can't get enough clocks. Every blessed soul in the country wants one."
The circular saw rose to a shrill song as it went through the hard cherry wood.
"Irenus, we've got to begin mak- ing whole clocks, works and all. We'll bring Ephraim Downs's brother Anson into the firm," said George. "There's no better clock than a Downs clock."
"We haven't the room, and every building in town is full up," pro- tested Irenus.
"We'll buy Wildman's old Baptist church and move it here," George
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answered. "It won't cost much, and it will help us both."
A new Baptist church had just been built. As member of the build- ing committee, Mitchell had helped raise funds. The first Sabbath meet- ing in the new edifice, complete with steeple, bell and organ, had been held December 30, 1830.
The congregation was glad to dis- pose of the old building, and in a few days mules were pulling it on log rollers to Divinity Street beside the Pequabuck. Dual clock com- panies, 'Atkins and Downs' and 'Mitchell and Atkins' were formed and went quickly into production. Irenus and Rollin Atkins also started manufacturing the circular saws needed by clockcase makers.
In 1835 Bristol had sixteen clock companies turning out a hundred thousand clocks a year, fifty times as many as fifteen years before. Pro- duction that year was greatly boosted by Jonathan C. Brown when he and his partners at the Forestville Ives-Manross shop or- ganized the Forestville Manufactur- ing Company, built a new plant south of the Pequabuck, and with the help of Chauncey Pomeroy, a great craftsman, produced an eight- day weight-driven strap movement, with a solid brass escapement. Their handsome Empire cases with painted and etched tablets became very popular.
By 1842 Brown was turning out
thirty thousand clocks a year. He kept on his toes with improvements and attractive models, his famous 'Acorn Clocks,' and his 'Lyre Clock.' Brown's clocks carried a picture of himself and his palatial home on Maple Street, bought from Lawson C. Ives when the latter moved per- manently to Hartford.
By the middle thirties, thanks to Joseph Ives, brass clocks could be made as cheaply as wooden clocks. This was shaking up the whole clock business. Great stocks of wooden clocks had to be junked. In front of one factory, two thousand of them were piled up with no takers.
Depression in 1837 brought still more confusion to the struggling clockmakers. Many concerns went under or had to reorganize. The Ives's Eureka Shop went bankrupt, though Lawson Ives managed to keep on for a time. The Terrys closed down. Sherman Treat, origi- nally a pearl button manufacturer, had to lease his clock plant and the dam he had thrown across the Pe- quabuck to Lucius and Franklin Andrews, who kept on successfully till 1843. The Atkins brothers barely pulled through by taking in a third partner with capital, but had to sell their saw enterprise to Frost, Merri- man and Company. This concern put up a new shop and a dam and built a raceway well above Hickory Park. Later the factory moved to a building at the top of Divinity Street
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hill. Finally in 1847, securing the rights to various Joseph Ives patents, Irenus reorganized as Atkins and Company, making clocks, saws, cot- ton gins and machinery, and as the Atkins Whiting and Company, which made Ives roller pinion and wagon spring clocks. These were merged in 1858 as the Atkins Clock Company.
Mostly those who failed during the depression did so because of in- ferior techniques, methods and products or for lack of capital and business ability. Sounder concerns, with more capital, able to change over quickly to brass clocks, scarcely faltered.
Ephraim Downs came through with flying colors. Elias Ingraham weathered the hard times fairly well. He went into a brief partner- ship with Benjamin Ray, owner of the Ives Eureka Shop, who had come from Vermont in 1831 and had been his foreman. In 1844 Elias and his brother Andrew joined forces with Elisha C. Brewster, a good combination. Soon they had sev- eral factories and were secretly backing other large producers. The Brewster and Ingrahams Company became one of the country's biggest concerns.
Their clocks bore the poem:
I serve thee here with all my might To tell the time both day and night. Therefore example take from me And serve thy God as I serve thee.
The company took considerable interest in the morality and church habits of its employees. When An- son L. Atwood was taken on as su- perintendent in 1848, he signed a contract agreeing 'to keep good or- der in the establishment' and to allow 'no gambling nor wrestling or scuffling, nor profane language.' . . The factory could be opened on the Sabbath only briefly 'for the purpose of workmen, shaving and preparing for church.' He and all new hands had to be 'regular at- tendants at church.'
New or reorganized companies got under way: Fuller and Ives, Allen and Atkins, Terry and An- drews, Barnes and Bartholomew. Not all were successful.
George visited the big Boardman- Wells North Forestville plant on the Hartford turnpike, owned by Joseph A. Wells and Chauncey Boardman, formerly partner of Butler Dunbar. Under the swift saws, wooden clock wheels tumbled into boxes below like showering stars - all uniform, all perfectly gauged.
"A nice job," George remarked.
"Yes," replied Chauncey, "but this will be our last year making wooden clocks. We are going to make Joseph Ives's new coil-spring clock."
Mitchell also talked with James Root, a workman making wheel and pinion sets. He put in seventy-two hours a week at about eight cents
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an hour and earned $24.50 a month, paid to him on a yearly basis. The previous year he had made $270. These were slim wages even in those days, and the first labor strike in the clock industry occurred here a few years later.
Making brass elocks, Boardman- Wells kept on growing. In 1847 they greatly simplified their eloek mechanism by a new patented 're- verse fuzee.' They ereeted four fae- tories and upped their output to thirty thousand clocks a year.
No one in Bristol lost or profited more from depression than did the Jeromes on Main Street - down to ruin, up to glory. Driven to the wall by brass cloeks, they converted their factory to make carriages and wag- ons and moved their elock activities to the South where wooden elocks still brought top prices. But that was a losing game, for soon people could not pay their bills and the Jeromes were ruined. Despondent in a lonely Richmond hotel room, Chauncey decided to give up the elock business for good.
But elockmaking had been his one dream since boyhood when he had watched Eli Terry cutting out cherry-wood wheels with a jack- knife, and he now reminded himself, "I know more about the clock busi- ness than anybody else." He stared mournfully at the wooden clock be- side his bed, and in a flash the idea came to him how to make a small
one-day brass clock that could be turned out cheaply in mass quanti- ties. He lay awake all night, know- ing he had a fortune within his grasp.
He rushed back to Bristol, and his brother Noble quiekly made a model. Zelotes Grant and William Lewis Gilbert were induced to help. The necessary eapital was seeured, mostly from Thomas Barnes, and once more the Jerome plant hummed with activity. They turned out 'O. G. Brass Clocks' as fast as they could make them.
A dam was put across the river for power, and seores of new eot- tages were built to the north for ar- tisans from Hartford and New Ha- ven.
The O. G. Clock put Jerome on the firm road to sueeess as the great- est clockmaker in America. By 1841, he was selling eloeks all over the world, and Epaphroditus Peck, an- eestor of the historian, was sent to England as permanent agent. In 1843 they formed the Bristol Clock Company with other large manufac- turers to try to crash the Chinese market. By 1845 Jerome was using 700,000 feet of lumber, 10,000 pounds of glue for his cases, 100,000 pounds of brass and was turning out 50,000 clocks a year.
The company had a bad setback that year of the Mexican War. The factories burned down with a loss of nearly seventy thousand clocks.
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Jerome moved to New Haven, a city he had always liked, taking along his more skilled workmen and his able nephew, Hiram Camp. There the great Jerome Clock Company became the country's leading mass- producing concern. Camp contin- ued to commute from Bristol, which he loved and considered his home.
The forties saw many new clock enterprises started. In 1840 with a partner, H. H. Porter began making clocks in a shop on the east side of Stafford Avenue. Later he split off to start a saw company.
In 1842-4, Sylvester S. Root be- latedly tried making wooden clocks at the Downs shop. Milo Norton said that Root could go into the woods in the morning, cut down a tree and have it made into clocks by nightfall. If that was true, the wheels must have warped badly.
Samuel Terry had retired from business in the thirties to devote himself to making tower clocks and working on clock improvements, and his sons, Ralph and John Burn- ham Terry, who carried on, were closed out by the depression. John Burnham went off to Hartford to study medicine. In 1842 Ralph and his brother Theodore joined with Franklin Andrews in the Ives-Man- ross-Brown shop on Frederick Street, Forestville, to make shelf and gallery clocks, an excellent eight- day lyre-shaped movement, and by 1850 they built the business up to
forty thousand clocks annually. Ralph invented an eight-day brass clock, which he manufactured from 1851 on with such notable clock- makers as Downs, Burwell and others.
John Birge and Thomas Franklin Fuller, brother-in-law of Wallace Barnes, started a partnership in 1844 and did well till Fuller's death four years later. The firm then became Birge, Peck and Company and pros- pered greatly.
In 1847 Lyman Jewell started two companies at the old John Rich shop at Union and Wolcott Streets, which had been made over into a turning shop by Andrew Jerome, Chaun- cey's brother.
Chauncey Goodrich and Levi Smith pulled out of the Jonathan C. Brown concern, and with Elias In- graham's backing took over a minor clock concern using the old Church- ill mill. They became big pro- ducers.
Noah Pomeroy bought the Ives Eureka plant to make marine clocks. On the South side, John Pomeroy began making clocks and steel wire by a new secret process.
Dozens of men were hitting upon new methods, designs and mecha- nisms. In 1849 Rodney Barnes came to Ebenezer N. Hendrick, who had just started a firm with John Churchill at the old Manross factory in Forestville, to show him a marine clock his brother Wil-
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liam Bainbridge had invented. It was truly a marvel. Rodney and Wil- liam Bainbridge, who had originally come from Burlington, left Jonathan Brown's factory where they had been working, and with Laporte Hubbell, one of Bristol's most origi- nal clock inventors and mechanics, founded the firm of Hendrick, Hub- bell and Company.
A few years later, Hendrick lost so much money when the great Je- rome business failed, he drowned himself in New Haven harbor, al- though by then the Bristol firm had built up the biggest marine clock factory in the world. Laporte made two new important inventions and eventually took over the entire busi- ness and ran it with his son.
Clockmaking gave endless oppor- tunities for fine cabinetmakers and designers. It called for many mate- rials and parts. These demands kept the metal and wood-turning trades moving ahead.
In 1841 Edward L. Dunbar quit working for Downs and bought the Judson and Hills casting shop on Union Street, where he turned out clock weights, clock parts and trim. Eventually with several partners, among them his brother-in-law, Winthrop Warner, he began making complete clocks. From 1844 to 1847 he made brass leaf springs for Birge and Fuller, so profitable an undertaking he was able to buy Chauncey Jerome's fine Main Street
home when the latter moved to New Haven.
In 1850 Wilfred H. Nettleton on North Main Street began making striking mechanisms and special clock parts. Some years later Albert Warner put up a shop on Main Street near the Pequabuck to make verges. Scores of small shops were making parts: verges, or spindles and escapements, pendulum rods, balls, belts, wire, pillars, ratchets, pinions, springs.
Various of these small enterprises grew to great industries as impor- tant for industry and the entire country as clockmaking. But no other industry - not even gunmak- ing, which had been building up in New Haven, Hartford and the Nau- gatuck Valley - required such fine intricate skills as did clock manufac- turing. It called for inventive gen- ius and constant improvements. As one of George Mitchell's sons put it, "Thinking makes clocks and clocks make thinkers."
Such unparalleled opportunities for ingenious minds and promoters made Bristol a magnet for the finest artisans and industrialists of the country. A major part of Bristol's capital from that day to this has been its workers with fine skills and knowledge, its inventors, its able businessmen and traders.
In the bringing of new skilled men to Bristol, in starting new enter-
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