Jerome Clocks

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Jerome Clocks

Early Life and Beginnings (1793-1821)

Chauncey Jerome was born in Canaan, Connecticut in 1793 to Sarah Noble and Lyman Jerome, a blacksmith and nail-maker. He was a young boy when his father died on October 5, 1804, and was forced to work in apprenticeship with salesmen.

Jerome began his clockmaking career as a joiner, first making wooden dials for tall clocks. Learning the carpenter's trade early in life, Jerome was employed as a case maker in 1816 by Eli Terry, a clock maker at Plymouth, Connecticut.

Working for Terry was transformative. The year 1816, when Jerome joined the shop, also saw the introduction of Terry's shelf clock. This smaller design cost less and could be transported more easily by the peddlers who sold the manufacturers' wares to outlying communities.

Starting His Own Business (1821-1837)

In 1821 Chauncey Jerome started his own business in Bristol. It encountered mixed fortunes. Things looked particularly dark in 1837 when a nation-wide depression closed many Bristol factories.

In 1822 Jerome moved his business to Bristol, opening a small shop off of West Street with his brother Noble, producing 30-hour and eight-day wooden clocks. The company installed the first circular saw ever seen in Bristol.

The Bronze Looking Glass Clock

Jerome invented the Bronze Looking Glass clock which was so successful he was able to help partially fund a new church in Bristol. The Bronze Looking Glass Clock sold so well it brought Bristol a new church in 1831. Chauncey Jerome and his partners paid a third of the church's cost, and he raised the rest of the money.

The Revolutionary Brass Movement (1838-1842)

This is where Jerome changed history:

About 1838 Jerome invented the one-day brass movement, an improvement in durability over the wood movement in a clock. Applying mass-production techniques, Jerome flooded the United States with low-priced brass clocks.

Jerome came up with the idea of a rectangular shelf clock, brass in method, and sell-able for $1, the OG clock. (OG stands for "ogee," referring to the S-curved molding on the case.)

Because of his discovery of a method of stamping rather than using casting gears, Jerome was producing the lowest-priced clocks in the world at the time.

Price Revolution

By 1837 Jerome's company was selling more clocks than any of his competitors. A one-day wood-cased clock, which sold for six dollars, had helped put the company on the map. A year later his company was selling that same clock for four dollars. The company sold one line of clocks at a wholesale price of 75 cents.

By 1841 the company was showing an annual profit of a whopping $35,000, primarily from the sale of brass movements.

Conquering England (1842)

The story of Jerome's entry into the English market is legendary:

When the first clocks arrived in 1842, valued at an improbable $1.50 each, English customs inspectors assumed that Jerome had set the figure far below cost to avoid paying the proper duties. To teach Jerome a lesson, the inspectors bought the whole shipment at the declared price. When a similar cargo at the same valuation arrived a few days later, they did the same. Only with the third shipment did they recognize that they were unwittingly becoming distributors for Yankee clock manufacturers.

Jerome sent a shipment of one-day clocks to England with two salesmen, who couldn't persuade anyone to buy the clocks. Finally they prevailed on a storekeeper to take two. The next day, they were gone. The merchant grudgingly agreed to take four more. They too were gone in a day. He ordered 12, then 200, and Chauncey Jerome was in the export business.

His clocks quickly spread to Europe and so astonished the English that "Yankee ingenuity" became a byword.

Global Reach

A missionary brought one to the Sandwich Islands. And travelers to Egypt and Jerusalem reported Chauncey Jerome clock sightings to him. As late as the 1940s, an English traveler remarked, "In Kentucky, in Indiana, in Illinois, in Missouri, and here in every dell in Arkansas, and in cabins where there was not a chair to sit on, there was sure to be a Connecticut clock."

New Haven Era (1842-1850s)

In 1842 Jerome moved his clock-case manufacturing operation to St. John Street in New Haven. Three years later, following a fire that destroyed the Bristol plant, Jerome relocated the entire operation to the Elm City within New Haven.

On April 23, 1845, two boys playing with matches behind one of his Bristol factories set it on fire. The fire destroyed seven or eight of his buildings and all of his clockmaking machinery. The insurance only covered a small part of his loss.

Enlarging the plant, the company soon became the largest industrial employer in the city, producing 150,000 clocks annually.

In 1850 Jerome formed the Jerome Manufacturing Co. as a joint-stock company with Benedict & Burnham, brass manufacturers of Waterbury. By this point, he was selling hundreds of thousands of clocks every year. In 1853 the company became known as the New Haven Clock Co., producing 444,000 clocks and timepieces annually.

Political Career

In 1854, Jerome was elected mayor of New Haven, where he served as mayor until 1855. He also served as a legislator in 1834, a Presidential elector in 1852.

The Tragic Downfall (1855-1856)

At the height of his success, disaster struck:

In 1855 he bought out a failed Bridgeport clock company controlled by P.T. Barnum, which wiped him out financially, leaving the Jerome Manufacturing Co. bankrupt. He indicated that his son, his company's secretary, made the mistake.

A merger of his company with a troubled clock company controlled by P.T. Barnum ruined him financially. In his biography, Jerome says he didn't know about the deal, indicating his son, the company's secretary, made the mistake. Jerome's nephew, Hiram Camp, took over the company. Chauncey Jerome was 63 years old and hopelessly ruined. He didn't have enough savings to support his family for a year.

Adding Insult to Injury

He moved from the beautiful mansion he loved to a rented house in Waterbury next to a new church with a tall steeple. During a snowstorm in January 1856, the steeple toppled over and crashed through his bedroom. He was lucky to survive.

Final Years (1856-1868)

Jerome went to work for wages, in Waterbury, then in Ansonia, Connecticut, and then near Chicago.

Traveling from town to town, Jerome took jobs where he could, often working for clock companies that had learned the business of clock making using Jerome's inventions. Returning to New Haven near the end of his life, he died, penniless, in 1868 at age 74.

Legacy and Autobiography

In 1860, Jerome wrote his autobiography, History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years and Life of Chauncey Jerome, Written by Himself. "I am no author, but claim a title which I consider nobler, that of a 'Mechanic,'" wrote clock-maker Chauncey Jerome in the opening pages.

Always humble, of his own life he wrote: "The ticking of a clock is music to me, and although many of my experiences as a business man have been trying and bitter, I have satisfaction of knowing that I have lived the life of an honest man, and have been of some use to my fellow men."

Nevertheless, Jerome had made a historic contribution to his industry when he substituted brass works for wooden works, said to be "the greatest and most far-reaching contribution to the clock industry." He made, and lost, a fortune selling his clocks and was perhaps the most influential and creative person associated with the American clock business during the mid-19th century.

The New Haven Clock Company After Jerome

Jerome's original Greek Revival wood factory (located on the St. John Street side of the existing complex) burned down in 1866 and was immediately replaced with a larger neoclassical brick building that is the oldest wing of the factory still standing today.

During World War I, the factory produced glow-in-the-dark watches with radium-laced dials for servicemen overseas. Some of the workers were young women who became known as "Radium Girls" because they experienced radiation poisoning or other health complications as a result of their work.

During World War II, the company produced timing fuses and relays for mines, resuming clock production after the end of the war. Increasing foreign competition and slackening demand led to the factory's closure in 1956.

Chauncey Jerome's story is truly American: innovation, massive success, tragic failure, and an enduring legacy that democratized timekeeping for millions.