USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Waltham > History of the American Waltham Watch Company of Waltham, Mass., 1904 > Part 3
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During the fall of 1856 Mr. Robbins' health was very poor, and on January 1, 1857, he retired as a general part- ner, but still retained his interest in the firm, the name being changed to Robbins & Appleton. These few years of expe- rience in the watch trade had, however, served as a prepara- tion for his life's career, which was then about to begin. In the following May he went to Waltham, Mass., in the inter- est of Tracy & Baker of Philadelphia, who were manufactur-
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ers of watch cases, and who were creditors of the Boston Watch Company for cases which had been furnished them but for which they were unable to pay. The watch com- pany's property being put into the hands of an assignee, he offered it for sale by auction. Tracy & Baker hoped to se- cure as much as possible out of the wreck and entertained the project of purchasing the factory, provided the price did not get too high. Mr. Robbins proposed to assist them in their project, to the extent of a loan of $35,000. By some misunderstanding he continued bidding on their behalf with the result that at last the property became theirs, to their immediate disgust and their subsequent loss, for after a few months' attempt at managing it they abandoned the enter- prise entirely, with all they had invested in it.
Daniel Fuller Appleton.
CHAPTER V.
Daniel Fuller Appleton, merchant, was born in Marble- head, Mass., in 1826, son of General James and Sarah (Ful- ler) Appleton. His first American ancestor was Samuel Appleton, who came from England in 1635 and settled in Ipswich, Mass., on land still in possession of the family, be- ing occupied by the subject of this sketch, at the time of his death, as a summer home. Samuel Appleton was the ancestor of all of the name in New England, among whom have been some that became distinguished in the State of Maine, notably, the Hon. John Appleton of Portland, mem- ber of Congress and United States minister to Russia ; Rev. Jesse Appleton, D. D., second president of Bowdoin Col- lege, and Chief Justice Appleton of Bangor. General James Appleton, the father of our subject, removed from Marble- head to Portland in 1833. He became actively interested in politics, was several times the candidate for governor of the old Liberty party, the forerunner of the Republican organi- zation, and was a conspicuous advocate of anti-slavery and of temperance. He was an especially determined advocate of prohibition as applied to the liquor traffic and was the first man anywhere to propose and propagate that principle- first by petition to the legislature of Massachusetts in 1831, and afterward, in 1837, by a report to the Maine legislature, of which he was then a member. Daniel F. Appleton was educated in the public schools of Portland and, best of all, in his own home. His is the old story of a young man leav- ing home at the age of twenty-one, with an ambition to do the best he could to rise in the world and make as much
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of fortune as the opportunities of the great city of New York would afford. Although he was without money and had no friends there who could assist him, he had not much trouble nor many difficulties in getting a start. After em- ployment for a few months with a concern that soon went out of business, he answered the advertisement for a clerk of Royal E. Robbins, an importer of watches, by whom his application was at once accepted. His connection with Mr. Robbins continued from that day to the time of Mr. Roh- bins' death, he having been admitted after a few years to a partnership in the business, forming the firm of Robbins & Appleton, which firm in 1857 became the owners of the then young and small watch works at Waltham, Mass. The firm soon after organized and established the American Waltham Watch Company, which business they have conducted con- tinuously ever since. To the advancement and success of that business Mr. Appleton gave his constant and active at- tention. In the earlier years of the company's existence, his energies were mainly devoted to the selling of the product and it was through his activity and great ability that the American watch was successfully placed before the buying public all over the world. It is a remarkable incident that he, with Mr. Robbins and his younger brother, Henry A. Robbins, continued together in the same business actively for forty-nine years. It is to be noted that Mr. Appleton was content to begin and continue in the business of a watch- maker, in which he was brought up in the store of his elder brother, James, in Portland; and that he sought to enlarge and develop that business until his concern became the greatest watchmakers in the world. Mr. Appleton, though he never sought office, had been at times active in the coun- cils of the Republican party, to which he came by evolution from the old Liberty party. He was a member of the first national convention of that party, held in Philadelphia in 1856, when General Fremont was nominated for the presi- dency, and has ever since given his active and earnest sup-
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port to the party. Of all the many New England boys who have come to New York to seek their fortune, and have contributed so much to the welfare and glory in many pro- fessions of that great city of their adoption, not many have attained a more prominent social position or a higher com- mercial standing than the subject of this sketch. He was one of the founders of the Union League Club of New York, and at one time its vice-president; a member of the Century, Metropolitan, Grolier and various other club or- ganizations, and served as president of the New England Society of the city of New York in 1878-9. Mr. Appleton died on Friday, February 10, 1904, at his residence, 28 E. Thirty-sixth street, New York, in his 78th year. Mr. Ap- pleton was twice married, first in 1853 to Julia Randall, and second in 1889 to Susan Cowles. He has three sons and two daughters: Francis Randall, Randolph Morgan and James Waldingfield Appleton ; Mrs. Gerald Livingston Hoyt of New York and Mrs. Charles S. Tuckerman of Boston.
CHAPTER VI.
Of course, in starting into the manufacture of watches, as did Edward Howard and Aaron L. Dennison in 1850, one of the essential matters then, as now, was to decide upon a model of the watch which the factory proposed to turn out. This, of course, it was necessary to do before any tools or machinery for the building of the watch could be commenced. While Mr. Dennison was a pretty fair watch repairer, he did not consider that he was equal to the task of making a model for the proposed watch, and this work was intrusted to two brothers, Oliver and David Marsh. They were soon joined by Mr. Chas. S. Moseley, whose name is familiar in many of the watch factories in this coun- try, and to whom credit is due for designing much of the machinery which is now in use in watch factories. Among others who were engaged on the original watches and ma- chines, it is proper to mention here James Baker, who after- wards became a foreman of one of the departments of the Waltham factory, which he left in 1874 and engaged in the mercantile business, returning, however, after a few years' absence.
David S. and Oliver Marsh went to work in a small room which was partitioned off in the Howard and Davis watch factory, and they produced two models, both of which were designed to run from seven to eight days with one winding. An illustration of this original model watch is shown here- with. After thoroughly looking over the field and talking to the jewelry trade in regard to this model, it was finally decided that it would be unwise to enter the market with a
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watch of this character and a simple one-day watch was finally adopted as the model. Before the new factory was in operation, however, the Marsh brothers severed their connection with it, but after a few years' absence David Marsh returned to the company and for several years was engaged in adjusting the high-grade movements.
David S. Marsh was born in Calais, Vt., in 1826. In 1868 he abandoned the watch business and for a few years carried on a mercantile business in the city of Waltham. He retired from active business on his own account in 1882 and died on March 10, 1901. The original model watch,
Dial and Plate View of the Eight Day Watch.
which is herewith illustrated, is now owned by his son, a resident of Waltham.
Oliver B. Marsh was also born in Calais, Vt., and at an early age showed a natural inclination for mechanics and the solving of mechanical problems. After leaving the firm of Dennison, Howard and Davis, he went to Newark, N. J., and entered the employ of Jas. M. Durand, the watch case maker, and in 1857, with his brother David, he opened a jewelry store, and later continued the business alone for a number of years, and finally moved to Binghampton, N.
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Y., where he opened a jewelry establishment. He died on March 18, 1894.
James Baker, of whom we have spoken, was born in Newport, N. H., in March, 1827, and was educated in the district schools of that town. He worked at farming until
David S. Marsh.
he was nineteen years of age, when he went to Nashua to learn the machinist's trade. Later on in life he went to Boston, when he entered the employ of Leo & Blodgett, manufacturers of the first practical sewing machine made in this country. In 1852 he commenced work for Dennison, Howard & Davis as a tool maker and machinist, but was soon set at work on the escapement, making the pallets,
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forks and wheels, and he worked on the first watch which was turned out in that factory. As the business gradually developed, Mr. Baker was promoted to the position of fore- man, and when the company moved to Waltham, he went with them and remained with the company nearly all the time during a period of thirty-seven years. He was a clever mechanic and painstaking man and was peculiarly fitted for this duty. He died on December 21, 1897.
N. P. Stratton had a varied experience in the early watch factories in this country. He was born in Northfield, Mass., in June, 1820, and was educated in the schools of that town. In 1836, he was indentured apprentice to Henry and J. F. Pitkin, who were at that time jewelry manufac- turers at East Hartford, Conn., and who failed during the financial crisis in 1837. In the fall of that year Henry Pitkin conceived the idea of manufacturing watches, and Mr. Stratton commenced work on tools and machinery for this enterprise, continuing work during the remainder of his apprenticeship. Ambrose Webster, who was pretty well acquainted with all of the early watchmakers, stated that the Pitkins made a thousand watches in all and that they attempted to make uniform interchangeable watches, cutting the wheels in stacks and making all parts inter- changeable as far as possible with the crude appliances of those days. Mr. Stratton also declared that they secured an interchangeability equal to that secured by the present methods. After the discontinuation of the Pitkin factory, Mr. Stratton worked at various mechanical pursuits until 1849, when he entered the employ of A. L. Dennison as watch repairer. In this position he stayed but a short time, as Mr. Dennison had arranged with Howard and Davis to engage in the making of watches by machinery. It has been suggested by those who were very conversant with the early history of watchmaking in this country that it is very possible that Mr. Dennison got his idea of interchangeable watch parts from N. P. Stratton. On March 1, 1852, Mr.
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Dennison offered Mr. Stratton the position of assistant superintendent in the Roxbury factory, which he gladly ac- cepted, manufacturing being more to his taste than repair- ing. ' When the new company undertook to , gild their movements, they found that they were undertaking some- thing of which they knew nothing, and so great were the obstacles that they finally sent Mr. Stratton abroad to learn the electroplating process, which was then coming into use in England. Mr. Stratton first introduced the hubbing of wheels, to save staking them on pinions, and also intro- duced the peep holes in order to study the action of the escapement. The first attempt to copy an English watch with ratchet tooth 'scape wheels caused so much difficulty in the manipulation of the wheel that the club tooth became necessary, and Mr. Stratton urged its adoption very strong- ly, and his views were finally acceded to. For many years, Mr. Stratton was assistant superintendent, and during Mr. Dennison's absence in England, acted as superintendent of the Waltham factory, and his mechanical skill and energy are quite an important factor in the development of that in- stitution. He was sent to England as purchasing agent of the company, where he remained in all some seventeen years. He crossed the Atlantic thirty-two times in the in- terest of watch companies. When the American Watch Company decided to introduce their watches in England Mr. Stratton's acquaintance with the English market proved valuable, and he opened the London office for the company in 1874. A further reference to Mr. Stratton will be found in the history of the Nashua Watch Company to follow. He retired from business in 1880 and died Dec. 29, 1888.
Jas. T. Shepard was another of the early watchmakers. He was born in Springfield, Mass., in 1824, and was edu- cated in a private school and afterward in a high school. He first took up architecture, but his natural taste soon led him into the working of metals, and he secured a situation in the Springfield Armory, where he remained a number of
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years. Through the influence of his brother-in-law, Mr. Stratton, he secured a situation with Dennison, Howard and Davis'in 1853, where he first worked on fitting trains and was afterwards given steel work, such as regulators, hair spring studs and what is termed flat steel work generally. In the making of regulators, great difficulty was experi- enced in securing flatness during the tempering, and Mr. Shepard introduced a system of straightening by pressure while the temper was being drawn. He also introduced the use of pulverized Arkansas oil stone for grinding purposes, which proved far better than any grinding powder that has ever been used. Mr. Shepard moved with the company in 1854 to Waltham and for a number of years had charge of the flat steel work. In fact, from the time when only one boy was employed on the job until 1893. All the stem winding and all the flat steel and regulators, clicks and click springs were made in this department, also the dam- askeening on the steel work and the fitting of the stem winding of all grades of watches and the gold wheel finish- ing. Before the factory had adopted the better methods of machinery building, Mr. Shepard developed many crude devices, which were afterwards worked up in machinery of a better class, such as machines used for rounding regu- lators, etc., and being a man of good taste in the matters of finishing, he showed a great deal of skill in finishing and polishing steel work, raying and combinations of polish. etc. Mr. Shepard severed his connection with the Waltham factory in 1893, and is now living quietly in Waltham.
E. C. Fitch. President of the American Waltham Watch Co.
CHAPTER VII.
Mr. Ezra Charles Fitch has been president of the Ameri- can Waltham Watch Company since 1886. He comes from a somewhat noted ancestry, being a descendant of Thomas Fitch, governor of Connecticut, and Ebenezer Fitch, presi- dent of Williams College. Another relative was John Fitch, the real inventor of the steamboat.
His father was a sea captain in the mercantile service, and during one of his trips, accompanied by his wife, Ezra was born in Bremen in 1846. As a boy he attended the public schools in Worcester, Massachusetts. His business career began with his employment in Worcester, Massachusetts, to learn the trade of watch-making or repairing. Later he en- tered the employ of Bigelow, Kennard & Co. in Boston, as a clerk, but after a comparatively brief term of service with that firm he entered the employ of Robbins, Appleton & Co. of Boston, selling agents of the American Waltham Watch Company. After a few months of service in Boston he was transferred to the New York office of Robbins & Appleton, for whom he traveled over a good portion of the United States in the interest of Waltham watches.
But after a year or two of this experience he was retained in the New York office, of which he became the manager, and also became a member of the firm. His experience as a salesman, both on the road and in the home office, brought him in contact with all the important watch dealers in the United States, and gave him exceptional opportunities to learn the wants of the watch trade; and his dealings with men qualified him for a field of work and usefulness which
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he had not anticipated, and which he was loth to enter. But the judgment of his associates led him to forego his personal desires, and accept the position of resident manager of the watch factory, which duties he assumed in 1883. His in- fluence was soon manifest in improved conditions at the factory; and on the death of the president of the corporation in 1886, Mr. Fitch was chosen to that office, which he has continued to hold to the present time (1904). His exten- sive commercial experience, combined with his practical ex- perience of more than thirty years in the manufacture of both watch cases and movements, have naturally given him a most prominent position among the watch manufacturers of America, so that his judgment on matters affecting the business carries great weight.
He also possesses inventive ability to an extent quite un- usual among men whose training has been largely along commercial lines. Perhaps the most important, as well as one of the earliest of his inventions, was that of the dust- proof watch case, commonly known as the screw bezel case. In this line of case construction Mr. Fitch was the pioneer, the work of later inventors being in the nature of modifica- tions of his original patent. The manufacture of these cases proved profitable, and subsequently the right to engage in their manufacture was obtained by other case makers,
The largely increasing product of the watch factory, with its multiplicity of detail, and his connection with the com- mercial branch of the business, impose a heavy burden of care, so that Mr. Fitch has within a year called to his as- sistance his oldest son, Conover, who had previously ac- quired some commercial experience in several of the distrib- uting offices of the sales agents.
Royal Robbins.
CHAPTER XV.
Mr. Royal Robbins, the treasurer of the American Wal- than Watch Company, was born in Boston, December 12, 1865. He is the eldest son of the late Royal E. Robbins. He was graduated from Harvard in 1887, "magna cum laude," and was married in 1888 to Theresa, daughter of the Reverend Doctor Huntington of New York, and has two children.
In 1887 he became a member of the firm of Robbins & Appleton, and in July, 1902, he succeeded his father as treasurer of the American Waltham Watch Company.
Many inducements have been held out to him to enter politics, but aside from 1892, when he represented the Back Bay district in the Boston city council, and in 1893 and 1894, when he served the same district in the Massachusetts house of representatives, he has steadily refused to accept the proffered support of important people for various offices. He evidently believes in the advantages that accrue from concentration of effort, and has devoted himself pretty ex- clusively to the watchmaking business, although, in 1903, he was appointed by Governor Bates to represent the em- ployers of Massachusetts on the Special Commission on Relations of Employers and Employes, and served with effi- ciency and distinction on that committee. The Boston Home Journal, in speaking of him, in August, 1902, said : "He is a man of earnest and thoughtful character, and Wal- tham feels great confidence in his ability to continue the industry in the lines that have made for success in the past, and built up an important town to be a prosperous and flourishing city."
He is a member of the University, Essex County and Eastern Yacht Clubs, and is a director of the American Loan & Trust Company and the Home Market Club.
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CHAPTER VIII.
Duane H. Church was born in Madison County, New York State, in 1849, and at the age of sixteen began his apprenticeship as a watchmaker under the instruction of J. E. Gridley of St. Paul, Minnesota, whose constant ad- monition to the young mechanic was "Never leave a piece of work until you have done the best you can do"; Mr. Church said that he believed his own success was largely due to having this injunction so often repeated to him by Gridley, who was most conscientious and highly successful in his vocation. The words may have furnished a formula expressive of the dominating motive of his work, but even a slight familiarity with what he has done is quite sufficient to convince the observer that Mr. Church could not possibly construct a new tool which was not very much superior, both in general conception and in details, to all that had gone before. After completing his work under Gridley's instruction, Mr. Church worked for seventeen years as a watchmaker at the bench, principally for Matson & Co. of Chicago, and for St. Paul establishments, all of this time giving no hint of his latent powers as a tool-maker, though he was accounted one of the best of watch repairers ; finally he attracted the attention of the officers of the Waltham company, which at that time needed the best watchmakers obtainable, and entered its service, first traveling one month on the road in "missionary" effort, asserting machine-made watches to be superior to all others-a proposition much more nearly true now than it was then. Next he was for another month in the Boston office of the company on ex-
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Duane H. Church.
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perimental work, and finally, in 1882, reached the factory and at once took the position of master watchmaker, which he held for eight years, during which he greatly improved the general design of the watch movements and devised the highly important form of pendant setting watch which en- ables stemwinding movements to be placed in cases not spe- cially fitted to them-the most valuable feature, commer- cially, ever applied to watch construction.
Finally, after twenty-five years of intimate association with watchmaking in all of its forms, Mr. Church began his great work of advancing the use of Maudsley's slide rest and Stone's turret to what is now by far the most exalted plane of development known, and giving those elements powers which appear impossible of farther advancement, these tools being fully automatic, and in all instances com- pleting the piece produced before letting it go, no matter how many or how complicated the operations to be performed.
Mr. Church added to the slide rest and turret two new elements-first, that of compressed-air-driven piston-and- cylinder actuation of his automatic-machine members, and, second, a perfectly exact series of transfer elements, having the power to take a piece of work from one machine and place it accurately in another machine, with a beauty of ac- tion and precision of effect which seem to the experienced observer, when he sees these automatic machines in opera- tion for the first time, to fall very little short of the mirac- ulous.
In addition to the pneumatic and transfer elements, Mr. Church originated an automatic grinding machine, which produces cylinders and cones with absolutely no measur- able variation in dimensions, wholly without human inter- vention, and at a saving of at least three-quarters of the cost of producing ground work under manual attendance. The production of cylinders of uniform diameter is an indispen- sable necessity of the highest development of tool-making, and this automatic grinding machine was one of the most
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wonderful advances in the whole history of tool-making. The possibilities of the machine are as yet almost wholly unknown to the world of mechanics, and apparently equally unappreciated, the tools not being in use anywhere outside of the Waltham shops, although the inventor is perfectly willing they should go into authorized general use. Space does not permit a full description of the machine. It may be said that the use of the grinding-wheel periphery as the effective abrading surface is wholly abandoned, grinding rings being used in place of grinding wheels, and that the grinding ring is advanced toward the axis of the work in process of grinding until its working surface touches a dia- mond, when the machine draws the ring back, removes the ground piece of work from the machine, places another piece in position, and starts the ring to grinding it. This machine is adapted to be used on work of any ordinary size, and can produce true cylinders and cones at far less cost than anything else known.
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