Hampden Watch Company

The Hampden Watch Company was a large scale producer of pocket watches for the American market during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The origins of the firm trace to the New York Watch Company, which was, counter intuitively, a Providence, Rhode Island based manufacturer. When that firm moved to Springfield, Massachusetts in the late 1860s, demand for its pocket watch models “Springfield” and “State Street” raised the profile of the company to among the world’s leading pocket watch makers of its day. By the late 1880s, a Canton, Ohio based manufacturer of watch cases, by the name of John Dueber, purchased a major shareholding of the company in order to take advantage of the two related markets. The factories continued to produce both watch cases and 17 jewel watches until 1927 when the firm was sold and the equipment was sent to Russia.