In the spring of 1824, I went into company with two men by the name of Peck, from Bristol.  We took two hundred of these movements and a few tools in two one horse wagons and started East, intending to stop in the vicinity of Boston.  We stopped at a place about fifteen miles from there called East Randolph; after looking about a little, we concluded to start our business there and hired a joiners’ shop of John Adams, a cousin of J.Q.  Adams.  We then went to Boston and bought a load of lumber, and commenced operations.  I was the case-maker of our concern, and ‘pitched into’ the pine lumber in good earnest.  I began four cases at a time and worked like putting out fire on them.  My partners were waiting for some to be finished so that they could go out and sell.  In two or three days I had got them finished and they started with them, and I began four more.  In a day or two they returned home having sold them at sixteen dollars each.  This good fortune animated me very much.  I worked about fourteen or fifteen hours per day, and could make about four cases and put in the glass, movements and dials.  We worked on in this way until we had finished up the two hundred, and sold them at an average of sixteen dollars apiece.  We had done well and returned home with joyful hearts in the latter part of June.  On arriving home I found my little daughter about five years old quite sick.  In a week after she died.  I deeply felt the loss of my little daughter, and every 7th of July it comes fresh into my mind.

In the fall of 1824, I formed a company with my brother, Noble Jerome, and Elijah Darrow, for the manufacturing of clocks, and began making a movement that required a case about six or eight inches longer than the Terry Patent.  We did very well at this for a year or two, during which time I invented the Bronze Looking Glass Clock, which soon revolutionized the whole business.  As I have said before, it could be made for one dollar less and sold for two dollars more than the Patent Case; they were very showy and a little longer.  With the introduction of this clock in the year 1825, closed the second chapter of the history of the Yankee Clock business.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BRONZE LOOKING GLASS CLOCK.—­CHURCH AT BRISTOL.—­PANIC OF 1837.—­ CLOCKS AT THE SOUTH.—­THE ONE DAY BRASS CLOCK.

With the introduction of the Bronze Looking-Glass Clock, the business seemed to revive in all the neighboring towns, but more especially in Plymouth and Bristol.  Both Mr. Terry and Mr. Thomas, did and said much in disparagement of my new invention, and tried to discourage the pedlars from buying of me, but they did as men do now-a-days, buy where they can do the best and make the most money.  This new clock was liked very much in the southern market.  I have heard of some of these being sold in Mississippi and Lousianna [sic] as high as one hundred and one hundred and fifteen dollars, and a great many at ninety dollars, which was a good advance on the first cost.  Mr. Thomas gave out that he would not make them any how, he did not want to follow Jerome, but did finally come to it, making only a few at first, but running them down in the mean time and praising his old case.  He finally gave up making the Scroll Top and made my new kind altogether.