Information on Canton Ohio pocket watch

[doug sinclair]

Richardb,

Could that be the Hampden Watch Co. or the Dueber-Hampden Watch Co. of Canton, Ohio?

Regards,
Doug S.

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[Kent]

Richardb:

The history of The Dueber-Hampden Watch Co. is told in "From Springfield To Moscow: The Complete Dueber-Hampen Story" by James W. Gibbs. It was origially published in 1954 and was enlarged as a supplement to the Bulletin of the National Assoc. of Watch and Clock Collectors in 1986. Briefly, John C. Dueber established a watch case company in Newport, KY in the late 1870's. In the mid-to-late 1880's he purchased a controlling interest in the Hampden Watch Co. of Springfield, MA. In 1888-1890, both operations were moved to a dual, attached set of factory buildings in Canton, OH. The company continued in business, producing both watches and cases until falling sales in the mid-1920's led to receivership in 1927. The manufacturing equipment, parts on hand and work in progress were sold to Russia. Operations ceased in 1930 when the machinery was shipped to Russia. It is believed that all factory records either went with the equipment, or were destroyed, and there are no surviving records from which to match serial numbers of watches against models and grades. Nevertheless, Messrs. J. Hernick and R. Arnold, by collecting descriptions of Dueber-Hampden watches, with serial numbers, over a decade or more, were able to partially reconstruct the serial number list. This was published in 1997 as NAWCC Special Order Supplement #1, "The Hampden Watch Co."

According to that serial number list, and consistent with the data base that Ed Ueberal and I maintain, your watch, serial number 1,280,320 falls in the middle of a run of John Hancock (http://www.knology.net/~ksinger/john_hancock.jpg) grade watches, built in about 1900. The serial numbers of this run, listed in Hernick and Arnold, and in our data base are:

1,280,077 JH
1,280,086 JH
1,280,127 JH
1,280,148 Unidentified
1,280,159 JH
1,280,320 Your Watch
1,280,394 JH
1,280,404 Gulf System Special
1,280,483 JH

However, since you didn't mention John Hancock, and since the John Hancock grade watches seem not to be marked "Canton, Ohio," I suspect that yours is a special order watch, one for which the retailer didn't wish to disclose the manufacturer or grade.

We would appreciate it if you could post a picture of the movement, the clearer and sharper, the better. We would like to take a look at it and add it to our data base. You didn't mention it above, but I suspect that your watch is marked "21 Jewels - Adjusted." A digital camera would be very helpful. For an open-face, screw back & bezel watch you can get good results by placing the movement on a flatbed scanner. A hunting-case movement, or an open-face movement in a hinged case would have to be removed from the case for this to work. Otherwise, its back to the camera. Larry Jones has written up a useful article on Image Posting (http://www.larjones.com/data/imagehelp.html), which may be helpful. If you have a problem posting the picture, you can attach it to an e-mail to me (by clicking on the speeding letter at the top of my post) and I'll post it for you.

Its also helpful if you can post all the markings that are on the movement (the "works") in case they can't be seen in the picture(s).

Kent

[Cary]

Kent, what types of DH watches do you and Ed keep in your Database. Just certain grades or nice Dueber's that we run across.

Reason I am asking is I just did a SUCCESFUL overhaul on a model 109 for a coworker. She actually cried when I gave her back her grandads watch. Luckily most of the detraction was cosmetic, I was able to clean the metal dial, I was very impressed with the paint quality : ) cleaned up great, I replaced the crystal and c/o the mvmt and put on a new bow. She didnt know I was going to do anything but look at it and tell her about. Anyway, I had never considered a DH watch, but it was easy to work on, kept great time and was a 16s mvmt but I thought it was a size 14 at first because of the case size, looks much smaller. Nice Gentlemans watch.

Shugarts confused me a little though. The dial is signed Dueber Hampden but the mvmt is signed Hampden and the SN dates it to 1919, but Shugarts shows DH not used till 1923. Could it be that mvmt was made in 1919 and dialed and sold till the mid 20's?

Cary

[Kent]

Cary:

For quite awhile, Ed and I added into the data base every Hampden S/N & description that we could find. But that was because we knew that Hernick & Arnold were amassing them for their book. After we sent all the S/N's to them and the book was published, we trimmed away everything but the railroad and near-railroad grades and that's all that we add now.

Personally, I think that the Hampden watches are under-valued, but then, they seem to have been a second tier supplier. This is evidenced by the fact that so many examples have blurred lettering, as though the stamping dies were wearing out and hadn't been replaced soon enough. Also, the general finish doesn't seem to be as high a quality as that on Hamilton, Illinois & etc.

The most likely reason that a dial may be newer than the movements its on is that the original dial was damaged and a replacement was installed. This could have happened two years after the watch was originally sold, or any time since.

Kent