Boston Watchmakers Collection
Scope and Contents
This collection documents the business activities of John P. Adams from 1871-1902. Adams sold and repaired watches from his location at 10 State Street. Included are letters and invoices received by Adams from such Boston manufacturers and suppliers as the E. Howard Watch and Clock Company and Nelson H. Brown. The correspondence consists of inquiries from both suppliers and customers regarding purchases and repairs. Of interest is the business transacted between Adams and the E. Howard Watch and Clock Company, which was founded by Edward Howard and Charles Rice. This firm made watches according to Howard’s own innovative designs and were among the first watchmakers to introduce a stem-winding watch. Included is the trade card that explains how to wind the new watch.
Dates
- 1871-1902
- Other: Date acquired: 07/00/2010
Conditions Governing Access
The collection is open for research.
Conditions Governing Use
Items in this collection may be subject to copyright restrictions. In most cases, the Boston Public Library does not hold the copyright to the items in our collections. It is the sole responsibility of the user to make their own determination about what types of usage might be permissible under U.S. and international copyright law.
Extent
16.00 Items (16 folders)
Language of Materials
English
Arrangement
Arranged alphabetically.
Source of Acquisition
Stuart Lutz
Method of Acquisition
Purchase
Processing Information
Finding aid written by Lauren Pey, October 2010.
Processing Information
This electronic finding aid is transcribed from legacy data. In many cases, transcriptions were not verified against collection materials at the time of transcription. As a result, this finding aid could be incomplete and might only reflect a partial understanding of the material.
Statement on harmful description
Archival description reflects the biases of time periods and cultures in which it was created and may include direct quotations or descriptions that use inappropriate or harmful language. Creator provided descriptions may be maintained in order to preserve the context in which the collection was created and/or used. Legacy description and potentially offensive content may be made available online until a collection can be reprocessed because the access that they provide to primary source materials is uniquely valuable to the research community at large. Our efforts to repair outdated descriptions and to describe our collections more equitably are iterative and ongoing.
- Adams, John P., Boston watchmaker
- Boston (Mass.) -- History -- 19th century. Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Clock and watch makers. Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Clock and watch making. Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Clocks and watches -- Repairing. Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- E. Howard Watch and Clock Company.
- Howard, Edward, 1813-1904.
- Title
- Boston Watchmakers Collection
- Date
- 10/21/2010
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
About this library
Part of the Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections Repository
