Complete Guide to Making Wooden Clocks, 3rd Edition. John A. Nelson

      Clock manufacturers were mostly individual clockmakers of family-owned companies. After 1840 however, Chauncy Jerome built the largest clock factory in the United States. He started shipping clocks all over the world. The Jerome Clock Company motivated the organization of the Ansonia Clock Company and the Waterbury Clock Company. These three companies, along with Seth Thomas Company, the E. N. Welch Company, the Ingraham Clock Company, and the Gilbert Clock Company, became the major producers of clocks in the nineteenth century. There were over 30 clock factories in this country by 1851. From 1840 up to 1890, millions of clocks were produced in this country, but unfortunately, very few still exist intact today.

       Elias Ingraham

       Elias was born in 1805 in Marlborough, Connecticut. He served a 5-year apprenticeship in cabinetmaking in the early 1820s. By 1828, at the age of 23, Elias was designing and building clock cases for George Mitchell. When he was 25 years old, he worked for the Chauncey and Lawson Ives Clock Company, which was still designing and building clock cases.

       Elias formed a new company with his brother Andrew in 1852 called the E. and A. Ingraham and Company, but 4 years later, it went bankrupt. A year later he formed his own company with his son, Edward. Changing the name to E. Ingraham and Company, the business began manufacturing clock cases. By 1862, his then successful company manufactured its own movements, as well.

       Throughout his lifetime, Elias was granted many clock case design patents. He died in 1885, but the company he started continued. Elias was perhaps the greatest clock case designer ever, and his clock designs are still being copied and produced today.

      

       Marshall and Adams Clock Factory, Seneca Falls, New York, circa 1856.

       CLOCK-MAKING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

      Most of the clockmakers who produced thousands of clocks during the 1800s failed in the twentieth century. During the stock market crash of 1929, the Ansonia Clock Company moved its operation to Russia, and the Seth Thomas Clock Company became a part of the General Time Instrument Company. From 1940 to the present, the Sessions Clock Company and the New Haven Clock Company were founded. Of the original giants of the clock industry, only three exist today: Seth Thomas is now a division of Talley Industries, the Ingraham Clock Company is now a division of McGraw-Edison, and Gilbert Clock Company has been replaced by the Sparta Corporation.

      Today there are no spring-powered movements or clocks currently produced in this country. Some of the quartz movements found in today’s clocks are produced here, but most are made abroad.

       Waterbury Clock Company

       The Waterbury Clock Company started as the Benedict and Burnham Brass Manufacturing Company and, in 1850, became part of Jerome Company. With only $60,000, the Waterbury Clock Company was formed in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1857. It was a major maker of clocks in the United States from 1857 to 1944.