Flynn was granted the construction contract for $17,500. The endeavor was encouraged by an organization called the “Peoria Improvement Association.” Contractor John L. Adams was again enlisted to assist the Howard brothers. He recommended moving the factory to Peoria. The Howards were progressive in adopting the non-magnetic balance springs of Charles Auguste Paillard, but consumers weren’t warming to watches sold through retail outlets, and Fredonia floundered. The machinery, from defunct companies in California and Illinois, was on the move again. In 1880 they decided to try their hand at manufacturing, forming the Fredonia Watch Company. They set up a business purchasing watch movements from various companies and selling them at retail establishments under the name “The Independent Watch Company.” In Fredonia, New York, the Howard brothers, Edward and Clarence, were corporate opportunists.
Only a few watches were finished in San Francisco before the operation was moved to Berkeley in 1875. The California Watch Company declared bankruptcy and closed in 1876. White workers “threatened to strike if Chinese were hired and so the company was forced to abandon this idea,” wrote Fuller. Alas, the construction of the transcontinental railroad prompted much racial prejudice. He moved the factory to San Francisco, intending to exploit the cheap Chinese labor there. The new building was completed in February of 1871, and all the machinery of the Newark Watch Factory was moved to Chicago.īut by 1874, “Cornell was looking for relief, too,” Fuller recalled. Adams suggested purchasing the Newark Watch factory.Ĭornell set aside 30 acres and invested $75,000. Adams, who had been instrumental in establishing the National Watch Company in Elgin, Illinois and the Springfield Watch Company (later Illinois Watch Company) in Springfield. Abbot in his early chronology, The Watch Factories of America.Ībout the same time, real estate developer Paul Cornell, who had purchased land in Chicago after the Great Fire, had decided to build a factory on property he was developing in the Hyde Park neighborhood. He approached one of the pioneers of American watchmaking, John C.
The story begins in 1864 with the establishment of the Newark Watch Company of New Jersey. The company began making watches “of English design” but discovered that “watch making was easier said than done.”Īfter manufacturing about 3,000 watches, Newark “fell behind” the demand, and the company folded and was sold in 1869, wrote Henry G.
It would make way for a horological school, “followed by a watch tool and eventual bicycle manufacturer, then the corn popper and coffee roaster company that ended up making automobiles - finally to be absorbed in the name and cause of higher education!” An inauspicious beginning Indeed, the Peoria Watch Company became “the story of success and failure followed by success and failure the story of embezzlement … and jail sentences the story of broken agreements and lawsuits the story of a ‘mysterious and curious’ factory fire,” the historian Eugene T. One of the finest, most innovative timepieces in the land was once made in Peoria
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