Morning journal and courier., 1892-01-15
ON LITCHFIELD,s BLUE HILLS

IN LITCHFIELD,S BLUE HILLS
That Coming Celebration In Terry
willie - The First Yankee Clock
Maker.
At Terryville, among the blue hills of
litchdeld county, Eli Terry, Connecti-
tut genius, began to make Yankee clocks
N 1873, and they were the first clocks
in America. In 1898 Ter
ryville is going to have grand centennial
celebration in honor of Eli and the begin
ming of the wooden clock-making industry |
In this country. It is likely that all the
clock making towns in Connecticut will
assist in making the Terryville centennial
q striking one. We take the following
facts from the Middletown letter to the
Sun:
Mr.. Terry was born at East Windsor,
ner Hartford, in 1772. He was a
:" heaven born mechanic, +" and when he
was a eight yeare old WAS able to white
wonderfully ingenious things out of pine
stick with his New England jackknife.
Before he was twenty-one years old he
made q frst-class wooden clock with his
jacknife. Wiseacres in his neighborhood
who had heard that he was tinkering at
things in his fathers little shop, jeered at
him behind his back, and said his clock
wouldn't go; but when it was completed it
went beautifully. It is q tradition in
East Windsor that Eli, after he
had marked out his patterns on board
with square and compass, used only his
jack-knife in making the clock. His first
timepiece was copy of the old time Euro
fkar tho o1oo6 moo
done the young mechanic called one or two
neighbors into his shop, opened the clock
door, gave the pendulum a swing, and it
licked right along. The disconnected
critics didn't say much at the time, but
later they admitted reluctantly that they
always "knowed that Eli had something
in his head" 49,. ........
When he was twenty -one Mr. Terry i'm
migrated into the almost unbroken forest,
where is now the thrifty village of Terry
vile. In 1898 he put up the first Ameri-
can clock factory in the little hamlet. It
was twelve feet long, eight feet wide, and
feet above the ground. He dwelt in
little house a few rods away, which is still
intact. In bis rude shop Eli labored alone
for eight years, and turned out ten tall
wooden clocks a year. He took them to
market on horseback, selling to thrifty
settlers along the banks of the Hudson
river. He got $25 apiece for them, and
often took pay in salt pork or other
produce of the country. In 1901
or 1902 he had two young men working
for him, and his business grew rapidly.
Frequently the three mechanics were at
work on dozen clocks at one time, but
the only tools they used even then, be-
sides compass and a square were jack
knives and saws. About 1907 Waterbury
company gave Terry large order for
clocks. and in the following year the Terry
shop began to construct 500 clocks at
once. At that time Eli had rugged up
some rude machinery in his factory, which
partly supplanted the jackknife and saw
in the work of clock making.
A little later Seth Thomas, one of Ter
RVS young men, whose name has been
household word in New England for more
that sixty years, went into partnership
with Silas Hoadley. fellow workman, and
they purchased Eli Terry's clock-making
business and removed it to Plymouth Hol-
low, which is now Thomaston. Thomas
ton is also household word in Connect.
cut, and in old farm houses in remote rural
districts in the state, one may find scores
of blackened and time-worn old clocks, in
side whose cases is the almost illegible
trade inscriptions: "Seth Thomas clock,
Thomaston, Conn" These ancient clocks
are from fifty to seventy five years old !;
they have hard cherry wheels that creaked
and rattle now and then while they revolve;
they have big. rusty, old iron or leaden
weights, but they tick right along almost as
| accurately as a chronometer, and they
| rarely get sick enough to need the helping
hand of a clock doctor. They are queer
| looking, ancient old fellows, and one gaz-
I ing into their wise-looking and wrinkled
| faces is impressed with the strange notion
somehow that they are sentient beings,
stored with the multifarious memories of
several generations of the family with
whom their lot has been cast. These old
Seth Thomas clocks seem to beat, not tick,
for they were built when time was seri-
GUS thing. The note of the slow-moving
warning; there is none of the rig a-gig- gig
levity and hilarity of the little modern
clock about them.
It was in 1910 that Thomas & Hoadley
removed the clock factory to Thomaston,
and no clocks have been made in Terry
vile since. Terry, however, kept on
making inventions in clock machinery,
| and sold them to Thomas and other man
ufacturers. Thomas & Hoadley did q
prosperous business, but compositions
| crowded into the clock-making field, and
in 1916 prices declined so that good
clock sold for from s. to $25. In 1926
Terry and Thomas had made a fortune OF
500, 900 each, and the latter kept on in.
| creasing his fortune for many years. Fol
quarter of a century longer Connecticut
continued to make almost all the clocks il
America.
In 1918 Joseph Ives invented the meta
clock, but the brass wheels were so big
and the iron plates SO long, that it took {
case five feet in length to hold them
hence they were never very popular
They hadn't the stiff Puritani
cal conscience of the old wooden CLOCK
either, and it appeared to be of no conse
quence to them if they gained or lost five
or ten minutes every twenty-four hours
It was not long before the Ives patte1r
was modified and simplifed, SO that it wal
easy for clock making firm to produc.
100000 timepieces in year. Then tn
making of wooden clocks was ended, ani
thereafter people spoke of them in tn,
ribald way they did about wooden nut
megs. But there never was more trusty
timepiece than was the old Seth Thomas
wooden clock. The wooden clocks wer'
sent into all parts of the country, and i
was Seth Thomas clock that Connect
cut genius carried into Kentucky at tn
same time he sold a lot of wooden nutmeg
to the simple Kentuckians.
There is an odd story, seventy five year
old, that is still related with gusto in Con
necticut rural regions, about Seth Thorn
as clock that went wrong in a Kentucky
household day or two after it had beer
purchased from Yankee peddler. TIL
Kentucky householder had never seen
clock before, but he went to work conf
IDENTIFY trying to repair his timepiece. HI
labored two days necessarily, at the end O.
| which time the clock went all right, but h.
had wheels enough left on his hands tina
he couldn't replace in the timepiece, b.
said, to make two more clocks.
Later on in his life Eli Terry established
several large clock factories with the aid O
| his sons, and he did an immense and sue
cessful business. He died in 1862. Terry
house in Terryville is now the home of ,
village farmer, and is known as the Wood
ruff place. Though additions have beer
made to II, the Terry part of the habitatio1
is distinct from the rest of it. The littl,
1916 Terry clock factorf also is standing
is gray and weather beaten and has beer
untenanted for years.-New York Evan
gelist.
Gray's Death Purely Accidental.
Coroner Mix has decided that the deatt
of James Gray, which occurred at the
Florence house, was purely accidental, tht
cause of death being conclusion of thu
brain, the result of falling down stairs
There will be no police investigation into
the matter.
Insane Over Religion.