Eli Terry Tall Case Clock

Description:

Between roughly 1790 and 1820, American clockmaking changed from a handicraft to an industry. The principal setting for this transformation was western Connecticut, the principal product was the wooden clock movement, and the main character was Eli Terry (1772-1852).

Terry began his clockworking career traditionally enough. He acquired the metalworking skills to make brass movements during an apprenticeship with Daniel Burnap of East Windsor, who in turn had been apprenticed to the British immigrant clockmaker Thomas Harland. Terry's teachers for wooden movements were probably Timothy or Benjamin Cheney, clockmaking brothers from East Hartford.

Once on his own, Terry specialized in thirty-hour wooden movements for tall case clocks, although he accepted commissions for brass movements as well. Over a period of years, he experimented with many variations of thirty-hour movements, one of which is in this clock. The town of Plymouth, Connecticut, named on the dial, was incorporated in 1795; Terry made this clock some time between 1795 and 1807. After 1807 Terry's wooden movements had different characteristics. In that year he introduced large-scale factory methods and water-powered machinery into the manufacture of wooden tall case-clock movements. His pioneering application of mass-production technology to the clock industry and his highly successful mass-produced shelf-clock won Terry a prominent place in American history.