On the following pages in my simple language, and in a bungling manner, I have told the story of my life. I am no author, but claim a title which I consider nobler, that of a "Mechanic." Being possessed of a remarkable memory, I am able to give a minute account and even the date of every important transaction of my whole life, and distinctly remember events which took place when I was but a child, three and a half years old, and how I celebrated my fourth birthday. I could relate many instances of my boyhood and later day experiences if my health, and strength would permit. It has been no part of my plan to boast, exaggerate, or misrepresent anything, but to give "plain facts."
A history of the great business of Clock making has never been written. I am the oldest man living who has had much to do with it, and am best able to give its history. To-day my name is seen on millions of these useful articles in every part of the civilized globe, the result of early ambition and untiring perseverance. It was in fact the "pride of my life." Time-keepers have been known for centuries in the old world; but I will not dwell on that. It is enough for the American people to know that their country supplies the whole world with its most useful time-keepers, (as well as many other productions,) and that no other country can compete with ours in their manufacture.
It has been a long and laborious undertaking for me in my old age to write such a work as this; but the hope that it might be useful and instructive to many of my young friends has animated me to go on; and in presenting it to the public it is with the hope that it will meet with some favor, and that I shall derive some pecuniary benefit therefrom.
NEW HAVEN, August 15th, 1860.
CONTENTS.
[CHAPTER I].—MY EARLY HISTORY.—Birthplace; nail making; death of my Father; leaving home; work on a farm; hard times; the great eclipse; bound out as a carpenter; carry tools thirty miles; work on clock dials; what I heard at a training; trip to New Jersey in 1812; first visit to New York; what I saw there; cross the North River in a scow; case making in New Jersey; hard fare; return home; first appearance in New Haven; at home again; a great traveller; experiences in the last war; go to New London to fight the British in 1813; incidents; soldiering at New Haven in 1814; married; hard times again; cottton [sic.] cloth $1 per yard; the cold summer of 1816; a hard job; work at clocks.
[CHAPTER II].—EARLY HISTORY OF YANKEE CLOCK MAKING.—Mr. Eli Terry the father of wood clocks in Connecticut; clocks in 1800; wheels made with saw and jack-knife; first clocks by machinery; clocks for pork; men in the business previous to 1810; [ ] a new invention; the Pillar Scroll Top Case; peddling clocks on horseback; the Bronze Looking Glass Clock.
[CHAPTER III.]—PERSONAL HISTORY CONTINUED.—1816 to 1825; work with Mr. Terry; commence business; work alone; large sale to a Southerner; a heap of money; peddle clocks in Wethersfield; walk twenty-five miles in the snow; increase business; buy mahogany in the plank; saw veneers with a hand saw; trade cases for movements; move to Bristol; bad luck; lose large sum of money; first cases by machinery in Bristol; make clocks in Mass.; good luck; death of my little daughter; form a company; invent Bronze Looking Glass Clock.
[CHAPTER IV].—PROGRESS OF CLOCK MAKING.—Revival of business; Bronze Looking Glass Clock favorite; clocks at the South; $115 for a clock; rapid increase of the business; new church at Bristol—Rev. David L. Parmelee; hard times of 1837; panic in business; no more clocks will be made; wooden clocks and wooden nutmegs; opposition to Yankee pedlars in the South; make clocks in Virginia and South Carolina; my trip to the South; discouragements; "I won't give up;" invent one day Brass clock; better times ahead; go further South; return home; produce the new clock; its success.
[CHAPTER V].—BRASS CLOCKS—CLOCKS IN ENGLAND.—The new clock a favorite; I carry on the business alone; good times; profits in 1841; wood clock makers half crazy; competition; prices reduced; can Yankee clocks be introduced into England; I send out a cargo; ridiculed by other clock makers; prejudice of English people against American manufacturers; how they were introduced; seized by custom house officers; a good joke; incidents; the Terry family.