Clocks

The oldest major Connecticut industrial enterprise (after distilling, ship building, and iron forging) is the manufacture of clocks. There are a number of works on the subject:

Bailey, Chris H. Two Hundred Years of American Clocks and Watches. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1975. This is a slick, copiously illustrated, oversize work. It perforce pays a lot of attention—about half the book—to Connecticut clockmakers, and it includes a very good bibliography and index. It looks to me like a good starting place. See also Seth Thomas Clocks, An Illustrated Catalog, compiled by Bailey (Bristol, Conn.: K. Roberts Publishing Co., 1973).

Brearley, Harry C. Time: Telling Time Through the Ages. New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1919. A comprehensive work, sponsored by the Ingersoll Watch Company, covering the clock and watch industry.

Dyer, Walter Alden. “Clock Makers of Connecticut,” in his Early American Craftsmen. New York: Century Company, 1915, pp. 104-30. A popular ac­count, nicely illustrated, strictly for the casual reader or school children who can read and understand phrases like “seldom an indication” or words like “characteristic.”

Hodges, Theodore B. Erastus Hodges, 1781-1847. Connecticut Manufacturer, Merchant, and Entrepreneur. Pub. for Torrington Historical Society and National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors by Phoenix Publishing, West Kennebunk, Me. 1994. This book, based on hundreds of documents including account books and day books, reveals in great detail early 19^th century doctoring, cheese-making, and the whole spectrum of the clock business from manufacture through peddling, and pioneering brass making, and the early 19^th-century cotton manufacture. Hodges, of Torrington, was a "manufacturer," that is, he successfully established -- more or less sequentially -- cheese, cotton, clock and brass factories. Also Hodges father, an M.D. who also ran a retail store in Torrington -- Chs. 1 & 2 are excellent detail on the record-keeping and transactions (money barter) of a Revolutionary M.D. and storekeeper -- esp. pp. 8-32.

Hoopes, Penrose R. Connecticut Clockmakers of the Eighteenth Century. New York:

Dodd Mead, 1930. An excellent discussion though, of course, highly limited in time. There were seventy-nine men making docks in Connecticut before 1800. A good history and a beautiful volume. Some of it is summed up in Hoopes’s Tercentenary pamphlet XXIII (1934), Early Clockmaking in Connec­ticut. Hoopes was an engineer and inventor.

—Shop Records of Daniel Bumap, Clockmaker. Hartford: CHS, 1958. “This book is an informal survey of the work of a typical small metal-working shop in central Connecticut during the years immediately following the Revolutionary War.” (p. vii) The town is East Windsor. Burnap was making brass clocks as early as 1779. He was also an instrument maker, silversmith, and brass founder. Eli Terry apprenticed under him. Biographical sketch; accounts with explanatory material integrated; section on shop methods and equipment; numerous plates of clocks, tools, etc. A model of its genre.

Ingraham, Edward. “Connecticut Clockmaking.” Papers of the Connecticut Soci­ety of Civil Engineers (1939-1940): 74-91. A popular account, given as a speech by the then president of the E. Ingraham Company. Includes anecdotal infor­mation not likely to be found elsewhere.

Jerome, Chauncey. History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years. New Haven: F. C. Dayton, 1860. The reminiscences of one of the giants of the busi­ness. Chock full of valuable information and insights. A “must” work.

Jones, Leslie Alien. Eli Terry: Clockmaker of Connecticut. New York: Fairer, Rinehart, 1942. Popular. Fictionalized dialogue. Jones used family-owned pa­pers. Includes a modest bibliography.

Roberts, Kenneth D. The Contribution of Joseph Ives To Connecticut Clock Technology, 1810-1862. Bristol, Conn.: American Clock and Watch Museum, 1970. Roberts was curator of the museum. This is a somewhat technical, scholarly study peppered with illustrations, many full-page. Too many long quotations from sources. Citations and a useful bibliography.

—EU Terry and the Connecticut Shelf Clock. Hartford: Bristol Clock and Watch Museum, 1973. Attention to Plymouth, Bristol, and neighboring towns where concerns begun before 1833 were located. Oversize photocopied typescript, with many illustrations.

Sands, Anna B. Time Pieces of Old and New Connecticut. N. p., 1926. This was the first and only one of what was to have been a series of articles and pamphlets published by the Manufacturers Association of Connecticut. It looks like a fairly competent little work.

Terry, Henry. American Clock Making, Its Early History. Waterbury, Conn.: J. Giles and Son, 1872. A nineteen-page pamphlet, interesting for what it says about the 1870s.