I know that this is a little bit off topic, but in collecting things that someone from this era might have carried, I found myself taking a side journey into this footpath, and I think it interesting to share here.

Joseph Morneault

• The Purchase
• Questions and the Search Begins
• Some of the Evidence
• The Search for James Gregory and “IR”, Silversmith
• James and his Will
• William Gregory
• Goals

 

The Purchase

Recently, April 202, I made the purchase of an antique verge fuzee watch, a “paired” one, from a seller in the UK.  To have a working pocket watch from “my” era has been on the top of my “bucket list” since about 1990, and this was most exciting for me!  I tried for one dated ostensibly to 1805, but while I “won” that auction, it didn’t meet the seller’s reserve price, whatever that was supposed to be.  I played the game a second time, won again, and still didn’t meet the hidden reserve price.  I made a direct offer which was turned down, and so I moved on to another lovely, silver pocket watch that was dated to 1816.  Of course, this is much later than my 1790s-18-aughts range, but this seller stated that it was working although in need of some TLC.  I won this auction and the seller sent it along.

It is rather irrational, I suppose, to hold something in your hand for the first time (children and the newborn of your pets exempted) and feel an immediate connection.  Yet there I was, in love with a watch and was glad for it!  It did not come with a key (for these are key-wound), but I have a set of different gauges, and I quickly found that it wound (anti-clockwise) and worked; that said, it could lose 10 minutes, or gain an hour, seemingly at random.  I have a guy in Maine who did, to my mind, miracles in restoring my step-father’s family clock (believed by family tradition to date to 1782/4), and did wonderous restoration to a couple of my pocket watch collection.  So I sent this, with reluctance, in the post.  A few weeks later, I was going up to the family farmhouse, and I reached out… We met and he placed it back in my hand, telling me that this type of works for a pocket watch is out of his area of comfort and would rather I take it to someone keenly focused on this style.  I honour him for his honesty, and I brought it with me. I researched who might be a good candidate and found someone in New Hampshire, but with a waiting list.  As I type this, I am still waiting for the nod to send it along…

Questions and the Search Begins

Meanwhile, I joined a Facebook group related to antique pocket watches.  Around this time, I was informed by someone else that my watch likely dated to between 1800 and 1805 based on several things that I did not yet understand.  I posted photos of my watch and told a thumbnail of the story, and one of the members posted a comment that he felt that it was a date of 1802 based on the hallmarks in the silver casing, he seeing a “g”, which meant nothing to me.  So, as I do, I began a concerted search online for data to understand watches of the era and of hallmarks.  The name of the watch maker is engraved on the back of the works – Jas. Gregory.  I know of a few people from the 18^th century whose names were Jason and used “Jas.”, so I went with that as I began my search.  Quickly learning that it was more common for “James” to use that, my search opened up.  James Gregory in Basingstoke, presumably England.  What could I discover about him?  Had I found someone’s bio on the man, that would have been enough, and I would have moved on.  But there’s scant little, and now my curiosity is piqued.  I dug here and there, gleaning some very brief references to the man and his shop on Winchester St in Basingstoke, and that he also made case clocks and sold (or made?) musical instruments… this sounds familiar to the son-in-law to surgeon’s mate Dr. Nathan Tisdale…

‘Round about this time, a woman by the name of Karen reached out to me via Facebook Messenger; she, also, had a Jas. Gregory watch by way of her grandfather, and asked if I had any information on the maker.  This was fuel to my fire, and while I shared with her what I had thus far collected, I needed to know more.  I found a copy of Bradbury’s Book of Hallmarks (for a reasonable price… some of the ones I saw listed had insane price tags on them) and made a startling discovery…

 

Some of the Evidence

The hallmarks on the silver outer and inner cases for my watch have specific hallmarks.  There’s a lion, a lion’s face with a crown on it, the letter “a” in lowercase (not the “g” my online friend thought that he could distinguish), the initials IR, and a small crescent.  Looking at the Bradbury book, it would seem that the silver was brought to London to be assessed.  The marks indicate that it was done by the London Silversmiths Office, given the lion and the lion’s face wearing a crown. Now, IF the watch silver was correctly dated to 1816, there would be an ADDITIONAL mark, or duty mark, of a sovereign’s head in profile, which there is NOT. The letter is the indicator of date: they would start with a lowercase “a” and go up the alphabet until “u”, then move on to uppercase “A” until the end and start again… to this point, “a” would be 1776, “u” would be 1795, then “A” 1796, “U” 1815, then “a” again would be 1816.  In 1784 they began using the monarch’s head in profile as the “duty mark”… the silver of my watch has the “a” and no duty mark, and so Bradbury’s would place the date of my watch silver at 1776! NOT the 1816 date the seller had originally believed!  I showed this to a dear friend of mine, who had begun his working career with a watch/clock maker, and he agrees!  The initials are “IR” and there’s a journeyman’s mark in the form of a tiny crescent.  Online I found a listing of known silversmiths and dates of the surviving examples, and my “IR” doesn’t fit any of those listed (The I is for J, thus it is really JR, and the only examples are variations of the initials in a rectangle and the dates don’t pin any of them to my watch).  So, that’s another angle of research…

My friend Steven also told me what I should have realized, but was “too close” to see the bigger picture… Clockmakers didn’t (or rarely) make the cases for their clocks.  Local cabinet makers would turn out a few on downtime (making stock) to deliver to clockmakers upon demand.  So, too, did silversmiths, they having accounts set up with watchmakers.  A silver smith might make, say, 100 watch cases and then bring them, by law, to the local assessor’s office (for Basingstoke, it was London) to have them inspected, hallmarked, and then pay the requisite tax before bringing them back to their shop and deliver to a watchmaker upon demand.  They might sit in a box of that hundred, slowly dwindling down to the bottom, so that silver hallmarked in 1776 might not be actually used until 10 years or more go by.  So, every pocket watch (again, with exceptions) are made by TWO people… the silver or gold smith making the cases, and the watchmaker who fabricates the watch and inserts the works into the ready made cases. So, in order to learn fully about my watch, I need to track down Jas. Gregory AND whoever “IR” stands for…

 

The Search for James Gregory and “IR”, Silversmith.

An internet search yielded some clues, thankfully, for Jas. Gregory.  The late Arthur Attwood, historian and publisher of “The Illustrated History of Basingstoke” was a good launch for me.  By way of him and some odd documents I was able to glean off of Ancestry.com, I learned that James Gregory was indeed a watch maker, clock maker, and seller of musical instruments in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England.  It would seem that he was working under his own name by 1790 and as late as 1819 or so.  There’s a possible indication that he had married Anne Goddard on 29 July 1801… Yet to be confirmed.  The Gregory shop appears to have been always on Winchester St… “one where the Johnson’s dry cleaners were until recently and before that on the other side of the street (north side) next to entrance to Joice’s Yard.”  So, the second location was on the south side, and Attwood indicates that Gregory was certainly at this spot by 1819.

In communication with Debbie Reavell of the Basingstoke Heritage Society, the north side of Winchester St location was The Crown Inn entrance surviving as Joice’s Yard.  The current business there is The Money Shop. There is a photo of the Greogry shop taken for the 1887 Golden Jubilee. See the images old and recent below…

 

According to the 1790 “Universal British Directory of Trade, Commerce, and Manufacture, vol. 2, p.317 (Hampshire extracts), available via Ancestry.com, James Gregory is listed as “watch maker, clock maker, and musical instruments” in the entry for Basingstoke, Hampshire, England.  The 1792 edition of this directory also lists him as a “watchmaker”. Still another source claims that he was working from 1790 through 1813, and another that he was still in business in 1819.  The Parish Registers of Hampshire, England, (also accessed via Ancestry) indicates that a James Gregory has married an Anne Goddard on 29 July 1801, but Ms. Reavell has her doubts, although does not dismiss it completely.   See: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N616-MF9?lang=en

The Hampshire Cultural Trust has a case clock listed as having been made by James Gregory.  And there are a few more examples of his clocks that I have found photos of…

 

James and his Will

The Hampshire, England, Church of England Burials, 1813-1921, via Ancestry.com, indicates that James Gregory died in Basingstoke on 5 March 1826, aged 58. If this is correct, and we know that sometimes the age recorded at death is inaccurate, this would give 1768 as James’ birth year. In his will, I have been informed, James left the business to his nephew William; and that he also asked to be buried near his father John Gregory in the Lasham churchyard, which is adjacent to St-Mary’s Church and not very far from Basingstoke.  That will is digitized and available via Ancestry, but while the image itself is clear and has a high definition, the clerk who wrote down this information for the record at the time appears to have used a wide nib while writing small… a result not unlike Donald Trump’s sharpie signature!  This makes reading the document so surmountable a task that I am forced to seek professional help to transcribe it.  I have developed a decent ability to read handwriting from the 18th century and early 19th, but this is beyond me; I can discern certain words mostly because I expected them.  I tried using an AI service – Transkribus – but it returned mangled glop that was almost suggestive of Old English of Beowulf!  I’ll include the transcript here once I have it back from the pro.

 

William Gregory

William Gregory, nephew to James, married a Sarah Ann and they had a daughter, Sarah Ann Gregory (1855 – 1912).  She seems (perhaps) to have carried on the business as a watchmaker, but never married nor had children, and there the Gregory shop ends. Sarah Ann is buried in South View (Holy Ghost Cemetery?) in Basingstoke.

Of course, the BIGGEST issue with trying to put together a family tree is that each generation of the Gregory Family seems to have a John and a Mary.  In addition to this are other Johns, Marys, and Sarahs in Basingstoke and the surrounding villages… Without a definitive family biography or tree drawn up by someone within the family, the records uncovered might apply to the “right” person or not.  I’ve started an Ancestry tree to attempt something of a graph to make sense of it all, but I’m already in the muck.  There are a couple of sources for William, and while the names all fit, they have him being born long after Uncle James had died, so how could James have left the business to him??

 

Goals

1. Find out as much about James Gregory, watch and clock maker in Basingstoke
2. Follow the family business as far as I can
3. Who is the silversmith “IR”