History of the Waterbury Clock Company, 1857

A History of the Waterbury Clock Company

(1857 – 1942)

The Waterbury Clock Company, founded in March 5, 1857, began as a venture into the lucrative clock market by the ambitious Benedict & Burnham Corporation, heretofore the “B&B Corp.” Being a company specializing in the production of brass, and with clock movements being made of brass, the B&B Corp. made its first attempt at utilizing its goods for the measurement of time by investing heavily in the business of a clockmaker named Chauncey Jerome with the understanding that Jerome would buy brass from no other brass company. Thus began a short cooperation that ended with Jerome striking out upon his own business with $75,000 of B&B’s brass, which they sold to Jerome at a profit. Having only begun to satisfy the needs of impatient people waiting for, and trying to catch trains, B&B began their own clock company: The Waterbury Clock Company!

It started in an old mill, very near to the main factory of the B&B Corp. Strapped for good clockmakers, the corporation decided to honor Jerome’s brother, Noble Jerome, with the title “chief foreman of movement production.” So began the famous clock making business in Waterbury, CT on March 5, 1857 as a company of the Benedict & Burnham Corporation. The Waterbury Clock Company was described in its time by Chauncey Jerome in his autobiography as being a company of famous “first citizens of that place” including a senator and one of the richest men in the country. He also spoke of his brother, the chief movement mechanic, as being “as good a brass clock maker as can be found.” A great grief struck the Company in 1861, however, when Noble Jerome was killed by a falling balustrade while strolling in the merry month of May. Silus B. Terry replaced Noble as master clockmaker. Silus B. Terry, apprenticed by his father Eli Terry, later founded the Terry Clock Company with his sons. Incidentally, Eli Terry also apprenticed the famous clock maker Seth Thomas who created his own company when Silus B. was but two years old.

After the Civil War, in which most of Waterbury’s employees participated on the Union side, the Company erected two large case-building shops. They were hardly used, though, before both caught fire and caused $25,000 damage, equaling about $270,000 in 2002 currency. Half of that was safely insured, and another case shop was built upon the same site. From here, the Waterbury Clock Company kept getting larger and more flushed with employees. In 1867, the first known catalogue of Waterbury clocks was released by the New York Sales Agency. Waterbury clocks occupied only a small fraction of the myriad of companies represented by the catalogue but that was soon to change. The company continued to grow and by 1875, had opened several offices in Chicago and San Francisco. By 1881, their own catalogue contained 94 of their own clocks on 122 pages. Ten years later they had grown to a full 175 pages offering 304 models of their own design.