Chauncey Jerome

author

Chauncey Jerome

1793–1868

Known for helping make clocks affordable to ordinary American households, this inventive 19th-century maker built a booming business and later wrote a firsthand account of the trade he helped transform.

1 Audiobook

History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life of Chauncey Jerome Barnum's Connection with the Yankee Clock Business

History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life of Chauncey Jerome Barnum's Connection with the Yankee Clock Business

by Chauncey Jerome

About the author

Born in Canaan, Connecticut, in 1793, Chauncey Jerome became one of the best-known American clockmakers of the 1800s. Early in his career he worked as a case maker for Eli Terry, then went on to build his own business in Bristol, where his clocks found a wide market.

He is especially remembered for advancing the production of low-cost brass clocks, including the popular ogee style. Those efforts helped push clockmaking further toward mass production in Connecticut and made timepieces more accessible to many households.

Jerome's life also had a dramatic rise-and-fall arc. He served as mayor of New Haven in 1854–1855, but after business failures in the 1850s he lost much of his fortune. In 1860 he published History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life of Chauncey Jerome, Written by Himself, which remains a valuable firsthand window into the early American clock industry.