Civil War pocket watches

[nastt]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

Anyone can recommend a good pocket watch repair my 1858 Waltham has a cracked crystal.

[Clsinclair]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

Anyone can recommend a good pocket watch repair my 1858 Waltham has a cracked crystal.

Go to www.oldwatch.com. These folks will put in a crystal for about $30. They have put three in one of my watches cause I keep breaking them.

To answer the first question regarding non-farby you can get a good keywind pocket watch for $100 to $200. I have three model 1857 keywind Waltham Pocket Watches keeping good time. Now the 1857 model will cost you around $300 - $500.00. The serial numbers date them to 1863 (about 1000 watches from the serial number on Lincolns Watham), and two at 1865. I have an 1872 Waltham and unless you open up the back and look at the serial number it looks no different than the 1857 model. I also have a nice runnning 1881 Waltham that also looks exactly like the 1857 model. Someone would have to open the cover to view the works and serial number and name to know that it is post-war.

Regards,
Claude Sinclair

[jdanner723]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

If anyone needs help dating pocket watches I just picked up a nice reference book on American and European watches. Send me a PM and I'll try and help out.

[Dutchman Dick]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

Just won this chain on Ebay. Thought it might go good with the Waltham I just bought:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ayphotohosting

Whaddaya think? CW appropriate?

[claynpendleton]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

Found this really nice braided hair chain with shepherd's crook and original key for sale on Ruby lane (don't see too many shepherd crook chains)...if I hadn't already bought one similar, I'd snag this one!

http://www.rubylane.com/shops/nowandthen/item/3665

-Clay Pendleton

[David Fox]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

Don't discount expensive watches for enlisted men's impressions. Them dead officers were sources for all sorts of swell things, Pard.

[Dale Beasley]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

And never assume that only men of means are officers.

[DocReynolds]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

Well, fellas, one question might be "what was around your home?? What you could afdford, and what might have been in the family is something else. I have three 19th century watches. One is a Waltham, which absed on serial No# is 1879...(and stem wind), the 2nd is a Liverpol elgnalnd made fusee spring watch (1840s-early 1850s), and the last is an inlaid faced watch, which is the same c. 1840-1850 timeframe...I doubt I'd carry the last one, but if my "Iron baron father" didn;t pay my commutation...I might...
As for chains, there are wound hair chains, as well as silver out there...

Pete Bedrossian
150thNY/3rd NCT

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

And never assume that only men of means are officers.

You both make good points. Actually, as you get toward the end of the war you find complaints in the Army and Navy Journal about how the bounties of enlisted men have brought their total "pay" nearly up to the level of officers. In addition to the '63-'64 federal bounty, state and local bounties can bring the total to over $1,000.

Apart from that, recently I discovered that the state of Connecticut offered enlistees a bounty of $30 a year, paid monthly, plus $6 a month for the man's wife and $2 for each child up to two. This brought the pay of a Connecticut private to $25.50 a month (including the $13 federal). With $3.50 a month for clothing and $4.50 as the commutation value of his rations, the total compensation package approached that of a skilled worker.

This is the highest bounty deal I've come across, but I believe New Jersey also provided $2 extra a month for single men, and $6 for those with a family
to support.

Some did not necessarily need it. G. A. Sala in "My Diary in America in the Midst of War" describes a Union sentry in early '64:

The sentinel was a common soldier, very slovenly, and not at all clean in his person and attire; but he wore a handsome watch and chain, and a carbuncle ring on his finger. There are numbers of young men of education and of wealth serving as private soldiers in the American army – serving from pure patriotism and devotion to that which they deem a righteous cause – fighting and dying with perfect patience and willingness, and mixed up and confounded all the while with the lowest of the low and the vilest of the vile.

Kautz, in his example of an "Inventory of Effects" lists two items belonging to a deceased soldier: a pair of trousers worth $2 and a watch worth $25.

So there's no reason to limit the possession of a watch to the upper classes. As Mr. Beasley points out, common soldiers could afford even expensive ones. As Mr. Fox points out, they could also "find" one.

That said, if I'm participating in a campaign event and I need a watch, I'm taking the cheapest repro I can get that will pass a laugh test because that's no place for an antique.

[claynpendleton]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

For me the watch is something that I've worked into a part of my first person impression...one of the watches I carry is an 1849 English fusee which I say that I inherited from my father when he died in 1860. The braided hair watch was made from my "wife's" hair and given to me for Christmas before going off to war in the spring of '62.

Also, research of will/ probate documents of the early-mid 19th c., has shown me that even middling-low income farmers many times had a quality pocket watch and/or mantle clock... an increased obsession with time seems to have taken hold by the 1830s-40s. I could go on all day, but the long and short of it is that watches (mostly English/Swiss) and clocks (from companies in New England typically) made their way into the hands of rural folk through traveling peddlers and the like. (See: After the backcountry : rural life in the Great Valley of Virginia, 1800-1900, ed. Warren Hofstra, et. al., ch. 5 deals with such "yankee peddlers").
- Clay Pendleton

[CW Watch Collector]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

This is an interesting thread. I am a Fellow of the NAWCC and an enthusiastic collector of pocket watches with Civil War provenances. A while back, I posted a thread on the American Civil War Talk Forums website, entitled, "A Primer on Civil War Watches," which can be found here:

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/a-primer-on-civil-war-pocket-watches.113747/

The end of the first post on that thread contains a link to a Powerpoint presentation I gave on the same subject at the 2015 NAWCC Regional Meeting in Lexington, KY. Readers here may find both of these items interesting.

I find myself in general agreement with most of the observations that have been made on this thread. However, one point of difference I have with some of the views expressed here is that, based on the identified Civil War soldier's watches I have seen, as well as a range of other evidence reviewed in my Powerpoint presentation, I conclude that most watches carried by Union soldiers were probably of American manufacture. I agree that most timepieces carried by confederate soldiers were of foreign make.

[JLH]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

My 1840's Pocket Watch

[Cotton Trash]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

I wished there was a maker of a quality "Repro" pocket watch, That's a nice time piece Mr. Hernandez!!

[JLH]

Re: Civil War pocket watches

I have two more annabellum watches in the shop, will be selling them when finished.