1815, the year after the war, was, probably the hardest one there has been for the last hundred years, for a young man to begin for himself.
Pork was sold for thirteen dollars per hundred, Flour at thirteen dollars per barrel; Molasses was sold for seventy-five cents per gallon, and brown Sugar at thirty-four cents per pound. I remember buying some cotton cloth for a common shirt, for which I paid one dollar a yard, no better than can now be bought for ten cents. I mention these things to let the young men know what a great change has taken place, and what my prospects were at that time. Not liking this place, I moved back to Plymouth. I did not have money enough to pay my rent, which however, was not due until the next May, but Mr. Deming, who by the way, was one of the richest men in the State, was determined that I should not go till I had paid him. I promised him that he should have the money when it was due, if my life was spared, and he finally consented to let me go. When it came due I walked to Farmington, fifteen miles, paid him and walked back the same day, feeling relieved and happy. I obtained the job of finishing the inside of a dwelling house, which gave me great encouragement. The times were awful hard and but little business done at anything. It would almost frighten a man to see a five dollar bill, they were so very scarce. My work was about two miles from where I lived. My wife was confined about this time with her first babe. I would rise every morning two hours before day-light and prepare my breakfast, and taking my dinner in a little pail, bid my good wife good-by for the day, and start for my work, not returning till night. About this time the Congregational Society employed a celebrated music teacher to conduct the church singing, and I having always had a desire to sing sacred music, joined his choir and would walk a long distance to attend the singing schools at night after working hard all day. I was chosen chorister after a few weeks, which encouraged me very much in the way of singing, and was afterwards employed as a teacher to some extent, and for a long time led the singing there and at Bristol where I afterwards lived. The next summer was the cold one of 1816, which none of the old people will ever forget, and which many of the young have heard a great deal about. There was ice and snow in every month in the year. I well remember on the seventh of June, while on my way to work, about a mile from home, dressed throughout with thick woolen clothes and an overcoat on, my hands got so cold that I was obliged to lay down my tools and put on a pair of mittens which I had in my pocket. It snowed about an hour that day. On the tenth of June, my wife brought in some clothes that had been spread on the ground the night before, which were frozen stiff as in winter. On the fourth of July, I saw several men pitching quoits in the middle of the day with thick overcoats on, and the sun shining bright at the same time. A body could not feel very patriotic in such weather. I often saw men when hoeing corn, stop at the end of a row and get in the sun by a fence to warm themselves. Not half enough corn ripened that year to furnish seed for the next. I worked at my trade, and had the job of finishing the inside of a three-story house, having twenty-seven doors and a white oak matched floor to make, and did the whole for eighty-five dollars. The same work could not now be done as I did it for less than five hundred dollars. Such times as these were indeed hard for poor young men. We did not have many carpets or costly furniture and servants; but as winter approached times seemed to grow harder and harder. No work could be had. I was in debt for my little house and lot which I had bought only a short time before, near the center of Plymouth, and had a payment to make on it the next spring. I proposed going south to the city of Baltimore, to obtain work, and had already made preparations to go and leave my young family for the winter, at which I could not help feeling very sad, when I accidentally heard that Mr. Eli Terry was about to fit up his factory (which was built the year before,) for making his new Patent Shelf Clock. I thought perhaps I could get a job with him, and started immediately to see Mr. Terry, and closed a bargain with him at once. I never shall forget the great good feeling that this bargain gave me. It was a pleasant kind of business for me, and then I knew I could see my family once a week or oftener if necessary.
CHAPTER II.
PROGRESS OF CLOCK MAKING.—IMPROVEMENTS BY ELI TERRY AND OTHERS.—SHELF CLOCK.
At the beginning of this book I have said that I would give to the public a history of the AMERICAN CLOCK BUSINESS. I am now the oldest man living that has had much to do with the manufacturing of clocks, and can, I believe, give a more correct account than any other person. This great business has grown almost from nothing during my remembrance. Nearly all of the clocks used in this country are made or have been made in the small State of Connecticut, and a heavy trade in them is carried on in foreign countries. The business or manufacture of them has become so systematized of late that it has brought the prices exceedingly low, and it has long been the astonishment of the whole world how they could be made so cheap and yet be good. A gentleman called at my factory a few years ago, when I was carrying on the business, who said he lived in London, and had seen my clocks in that city, and declared that he was perfectly astonished at the price of them, and had often remarked that if he ever came to this country he would visit the factory and see for himself. After I had showed him all the different processes it required to complete a clock, he expressed himself in the strongest terms—he told me he had traveled a great deal in Europe, and had taken a great interest in all kinds of manufactures, but had never seen anything equal to this, and did not believe that there was anything made in the known world that made as much show, and at the same time was as cheap and useful as the brass clock which I was then manufacturing.
The man above all others in his day for the wood clock was Eli Terry. He was born in East Windsor, Conn., in April, 1772, and made a few old fashioned hang-up clocks in his native place before he was twenty-one years of age. He was a young man of great ingenuity and good native talent. He moved to the town of Plymouth, Litchfield county, in 1793, and commenced making a few of the same kind, working alone for several years. About the year 1800, he might have had a boy or one or two young men to help him. They would begin one or two dozen at a time, using no machinery, but cutting the wheels and teeth with a saw and jack-knife. Mr. Terry would make two or three trips a year to the New Country, as it was then called, just across the North River, taking with him three or four clocks, which he would sell for about twenty-five dollars apiece. This was for the movement only. In 1807 he bought an old mill in the southern part of the town, and fitted it up to make his clocks by machinery. About this time a number of men in Waterbury associated themselves together, and made a large contract with him, they furnishing the stock, and he making the movements. With this contract and what he made and sold to other parties, he accumulated quite a little fortune for those times. The first five hundred clocks ever made by machinery in the country were started at one time by Mr. Terry at this old mill in 1808, a larger number than had ever been begun at one time in the world. Previous to this time the wheels and teeth had been cut out by hand; first marked out with square and compasses, and then sawed with a fine saw, a very slow and tedious process. Capt. Riley Blakeslee, of this city, lived with Mr. Terry at that time, and worked on this lot of clocks, cutting the teeth. Talking with Capt. Blakeslee a few days since, he related an incident which happened when he was a boy, sixty years ago, and lived on a farm in Litchfield. One day Mr. Terry came to the house where he lived to sell a clock. The man with whom young Blakeslee lived, left him to plow in the field and went to the house to make a bargain for it, which he did, paying Mr. Terry in salt pork, a part of which he carried home in his saddle-bags where he had carried the clock. He was at that time very poor, but twenty-five years after was worth $200,000, all of which he made in the clock business.
Mr. Terry sold out his business to Seth Thomas and Silas Hoadley, two of his leading workmen, in 1810. This establishment was the leading one for several years, but other ones springing up in the vicinity, the competition became so great that the prices were reduced from ten to five dollars apiece for the bare movement. Daniel Clark, Zenas Cook and Wm. Porter, started clock-making at Waterbury, and carried it on largely for several years, but finally failed and went out of the business.
Col. Wm. Leavenworth, of the same place, was in the business in 1810, but failed, and moved to Albany, N.Y. A man by the name of Mark Leavenworth made clocks for a long time, and in the latter part of his life manufactured the Patent Shelf Clock.
Two brothers, James and Lemuel Harrison, made a few before the year 1800, using no machinery, making their wheels with a saw and knife. Sixty years ago, a man by the name of Gideon Roberts got up a few in the old way: he was an excellent mechanic and made a good article. He would finish three or four at a time and take them to New York State to sell. I have seen him many times, when I was a small boy, pass my father's house on horseback with a clock in each side of his saddle-bags, and a third lashed on behind the saddle with the dials in plain sight. They were then a great curiosity to me. Mr. Roberts had to give up this kind of business; he could not compete with machinery. John Rich of Bristol was in the business; also Levi Lewis, but gave it up in a few years. An Ives family in Bristol were quite conspicuous as clock-makers. They were good mechanics. One of them, Joseph Ives, has done a great deal towards improving the eight day brass clock, which I shall speak about hereafter.