Chapter 4 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.

In 1835, the southern people were greatly opposed to the Yankee pedlars coming into their states, especially the clock pedlars, and the licences were raised so high by their Legislatures that it amounted to almost a prohibition. Their laws were that any goods made in their own States could be sold without licence. Therefore clocks to be profitable must be made in those states. Chauncey and Noble Jerome started a factory in Richmond Va., making the cases and parts at Bristol, Connecticut, and packing them with the dials, glass &c. We shipped them to Richmond and took along workmen to put them together. The people were highly pleased with the idea of having clocks all made in their State. The old planters would tell the pedlars they meant to go to Richmond and see the wonderful machinery there must be to produce such articles and would no doubt have thought the tools we had there were sufficient to make a clock. We carried on this kind of business for two or three years and did very well at it, though it was unpleasant. Every one knew it was all a humbug trying to stop the pedlars from coming to their State. We removed from Richmond to Hamburg, S.C., and manufactured in the same way. This was in 1835 and '36.

There was another company doing the same kind of business at Augusta, Geo., by the name Case, Dyer, Wadsworth & Co., and Seth Thomas was making the cases and movements for them. The hard times came down on us and we really thought that clocks would no longer be made. Our firm thought we could make them if any body could, but like the others felt discouraged and disgusted with the whole business as it was then. I am sure that I had lost, from 1821 to this time, more than one hundred thousand dollars, and felt very much discouraged in consequence. Our company had a good deal of unsettled business in Virginia and South Carolina, and I started in the fall of 1837 for those places. Arriving at Richmond, I had a strong notion of going into the marl business. I had been down into Kent county, the summer before, where I saw great mountains of this white marl composed of shells of clams and oysters white as chalk. I had sent one vessel load of this to New Haven the year before. At Richmond I was looking after our old accounts, settling up, collecting notes and picking up some scattered clocks.

One night I took one of these clocks into my room and placing it on the table, left a light burning near it and went to bed. While thinking over my business troubles and disappointments, I could not help feeling very much depressed. I said to myself I will not give up yet, I know more about the clock business than anything else. That minute I was looking at the wood clock on the table and it came into my mind instantly that there could be a cheap one day brass clock that would take the place of the wood clock. I at once began to figure on it; the case would cost no more, the dials, glass, and weights and other fixtures would be the same, and the size could be reduced. I lay awake nearly all night thinking this new thing over. I knew there was a fortune in it. Many a sensible man has since told me that if I could have secured the sole right for making them for ten years, I could easily have made a million of dollars. The more I looked at this new plan, the better it appeared. My business took me to South Carolina before I could return home. I had now enough to think of day and night; this one day brass clock was constantly on my mind; I was drawing plans and contriving how they could be made best. I traveled most of the way from Richmond by stage. Arriving at Augusta, Geo., I called on the Connecticut men who were finishing wood clocks for that market, and told Mr. Dyer the head man, that I had got up, or could get up something when I got home that would run out all the wood clocks in the country, Thomas's and all; he laughed at me quite heartily. I told him that was all right, and asked him to come to Bristol when he went home and I would show him something that would astonish him. He promised that he would, and during the next summer when he called at my place, I showed him a shelf full of them running, which he acknowledged to be the best he had ever seen.

I arrived home from the south the 28th of January, and told my brother who was a first-rate clock maker what I had been thinking about since I had been gone. He was much pleased with my plan, thought it a first rate idea, and said he would go right to work and get up the movement, which he perfected in a short time so that it was the best clock that had ever been made in this or any other country. There have been more of this same kind manufactured than of any other in the United States. What I originated that night on my bed in Richmond, has given work to thousands of men yearly for more than twenty years, built up the largest manufactories in New England, and put more than a million of dollars into the pockets of the brass makers,-"but there is not one of them that remembers Joseph."