Jerome C

NAME: Jerome, Chauncey

ACHIEVEMENTS:  Invented brass clock.

NICKNAME/ALIAS:  None

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:  June 10, 1793, Canaan, CT

DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH:  April 20, 1868, New Haven, CT.  Aged 74

DISCIPLINE: Clockmaker/Manufacturer

FIELD:  Clock making

LANGUAGE:  English

PARENTS:  Unknown

SIBLINGS: 3 brothers, 2 sisters

SPOUSE:  Salome Smith

CHILDREN:  Chauncey

EDUCATION:  Rudimentary

MAJOR WORK:  "History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years and The Life of Chauncey Jerome, Written by Himself"

LIFE AND TIMES:

At age 16 Jerome struck a deal with his employer, a carpenter, to have four months off each winter so he could make dials for long clocks for a nearby clockmaker.  When he felt he had learned as much as he could, he hired himself out to a clockmaker in Plymouth, MA.

In 1813 Jerome fought briefly with the militia during the war with Britain, then was sent to help guard the city of New Haven, CT.  After peace was declared in 1815, Jerome married, settled in Farmington, and worked as a carpenter for a year until he got a job with <worked for> Eli Terry*, who had developed a wooden shelf clock as an alternative to the wooden clock that hung on the wall.

In 1817, Jerome started his own clock-making business:  buying the movements, then making the cases, and traveling the countryside to sell them.  In 1824, he formed a clock-making firm with his brother, Noble, and began experimenting with a clock made out of metal.  Jerome had heard about the work of Joseph Ives who had invented an iron clock with a brass wheel.

But this clock had an extremely large movement and needed a case that would be five feet long.  Jerome made his own clock out of bronze and revolutionized the business.  Wooden clocks were slow to make: finding the right wood was difficult and it took a year to season the wood.  When Jerome's "looking-glass" bronze clock came on the market, it was an instant success.

Because goods made in the southern states could be sold without license, Jerome and his brother started up a factory in Richmond, VA.  Cases and parts were made in Connecticut and shipped to Virginia where they were assembled. The enterprise was so successful the brothers opened another factory in North Carolina. In 1837, the Jerome’s designed a very successful cheap one-day brass clock with a zinc dial. 

When Jerome found out that other clockmakers had copied the design, he bought out as many as he could, but since he had no patent on the clock, the fierce competition brought him close to ruin. Looking for markets elsewhere, he came up with the idea of exporting his clocks to England, having heard that the old type Dutch wall clock was still in fashion there.  The first consignment to England sold out.

Jerome adopted the mass-production techniques pioneered by <used techniques of> Eli Whitney* and built new factories in Bristol and New Haven, CT.   He was soon exporting metal clocks all over the world, and became extremely rich. He financed the building of a Congregational church in New Haven and was elected mayor in 1854. 

His life was filled with problems. In the mid-1840s, one of his factories was set on fire and burned to the ground, and a few years later he was swindled by an associate.   In 1850, he had became part of a joint-stock company, the Jerome Manufacturing Co.  In 1855, unknown to him, impresario <collaborated with> Barnum* joined the company and six months later it collapsed.  

Barnum claimed he had been swindled, but Jerome charged that Barnum had had secret debts when he joined the company and that this was what caused the company to fail.

ASSESSMENT:  His mass production techniques modernized clock-making.

EXTRA CONNECTIONS:  None

ONELINER: Chauncey Jerome, early New England clock maker

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

Hoke, Donald,  Ingenious Yankees, 1984 Columbia Press