In the spring of 1824, I went into company with two men by the name of Peck, from Bristol. We took two hundred of these movements and a few tools in two one horse wagons and started East, intending to stop in the vicinity of Boston. We stopped at a place about fifteen miles from there called East Randolph; after looking about a little, we concluded to start our business there and hired a joiners' shop of John Adams, a cousin of J.Q. Adams. We then went to Boston and bought a load of lumber, and commenced operations. I was the case-maker of our concern, and 'pitched into' the pine lumber in good earnest. I began four cases at a time and worked like putting out fire on them. My partners were waiting for some to be finished so that they could go out and sell. In two or three days I had got them finished and they started with them, and I began four more. In a day or two they returned home having sold them at sixteen dollars each. This good fortune animated me very much. I worked about fourteen or fifteen hours per day, and could make about four cases and put in the glass, movements and dials. We worked on in this way until we had finished up the two hundred, and sold them at an average of sixteen dollars apiece. We had done well and returned home with joyful hearts in the latter part of June. On arriving home I found my little daughter about five years old quite sick. In a week after she died. I deeply felt the loss of my little daughter, and every 7th of July it comes fresh into my mind.
In the fall of 1824, I formed a company with my brother, Noble Jerome, and Elijah Darrow, for the manufacturing of clocks, and began making a movement that required a case about six or eight inches longer than the Terry Patent. We did very well at this for a year or two, during which time I invented the Bronze Looking Glass Clock, which soon revolutionized the whole business. As I have said before, it could be made for one dollar less and sold for two dollars more than the Patent Case; they were very showy and a little longer. With the introduction of this clock in the year 1825, closed the second chapter of the history of the Yankee Clock business.
CHAPTER IV.
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.