Maryland independent. [volume] (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1874-current, 1931-01-23
Little Journeys in
Americana
What Came Of Whiting
BY LESTER B. COLBY

lame OF w hitting
kNLI TERRY was considered worth
- less-utterly. Some of his neigh.
Dors intimated that he was daft.
rev advised his young wife to leave
him, and she finally came mind
20 DO so. She went home on ong WIS.,
US TO her people, because there was
little food in Eli Terrys mouse.
Folk who lived in Waterbury, Conn.
considered Eli Terry shiftless and no.
account because he spent all his time
whiting. All day he Whitfield instead
OF working. He got old. dried lumber
and planned it down to smoothness
Then he would take a compass and
make drawings on it.
Peculiar wheels and levers with
notches came out of the wood. But
there was no money in all this and
Mrs. Terry soured. Neighbors we're
critical and the gossip grew. Then one
DAY Ell Terry put all his wheels to-
gether and he had wooden clock
1t was a good working clock, large and
dmpressive-and it kept good time.
A neighbor, who had wealth. bought
1t of Eli Terry for thirty dollars That
night there was plenty of faod in Eli
iTerry's lone and his wife thought
better of him. All of the thirty dollars.
however, did not 90 for food He
spent a part of it for tools. He loved
tools and he had work for tools to do.
The next time he made a wheel he
would finish twenty-five wheels just
IKE it. When he had his parts all
made he began to assemble them Soon
e had twenty-five completed clocks.
cabinet-maker, under contract, had
en- making cases for them
Try soon everyone who could at.
TO buy one wanted one of eli
$ clocks. The price went to for
lars for case and clock This
making began about 1900. In the
SO7. Eli Terry purchased an old
md equipped it for turning out
parts by machinery.
veral prominent citizens of Water
y, Conn.,, agreed to back him and
company was formed. In 1903 Terry
arted to make clocks in lots of 300.
his was the largest batcL of clocks
nat up to then had ever been made
at one time in the history of the
world.
Improvements followed, quantity
production was undertaken, operations
were speeded up and Eli Terry be-
came the Henry Ford of the clock
making world overnight. Wealth
poured in. But his period as an active
clockmaker was brief.
Seth Thomas and Silas Hoadley,
workers trained in his plant, pur-
chased the business in 1910 and Ter
ry retired But his wealth was mostly
reinvested in clock making plants and
plants of this kind sprang up
thick in Connecticut.
Eventually the wooden clock craze
died out. Better clocks were made of
BRASS Finer machinery was possible
Cost was cut down. The wooden
clocks vanished. But not the clock in
dustry that Eli Terry had fathered in
Connecticut.
For more than hundred years Con-
necticut has made more clocks in
more factories than were made in any
similar spot anywhere on the face of
the earth. There must have beeL some
pride, too, in the hearts of old Eli
Terry and old Seth Thomas. Ell
founded a city which he called Ter
ryville and Seth founded another
which he named Thomaston.
Eli died in 1852, his muzzle whitened
by his eighty years His family, for
the next half century, thrived on the
gold that old Eli had laid away. When
he died, Eli Terry and his sons con-
trolled about all the wealth In Terry
vile. But latterly, the Terrys have
gone-like their wooden clocks. Van
ished. There are no more Terrys in
Terryvilles-
10. 1929. Lester B. Colby.)