The "Hamilton's Last Hurrah!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Looking through Lancaster Newspaper's website for the winners of their baseball tournament they sponsor every year.  Dates back many years and I wanted to see the teams that won during the years I played little league baseball.  One of the teams listed a few times was the Hamilton Watch team which had won the tournament numerous times before they dropped sponsorship of sports teams.   I can still remember back in the mid-1960's, when I was a student at Millersville State Teachers College, when I walking in the front door of the historic Hamilton Watch building on Columbia Ave. to ask if they were interested in once again sponsoring a youth baseball team.  I must have impressed them with my presentation because I walked out of Hamilton Watch Company with a check and the promise of digging out the old uniforms so the team I had organized could play summer baseball in the city of Lancaster.  The team was a group of 13 and 14 year old boys from the southern end of the city as well as a few from the south end of Lancaster County.  

Photo from the late 1800's showing the original building
that eventually became Hamilton Watch Company.

I made a few more trips back to the factory that year and the next before they finally stopped sponsorship and eventually closed the doors of the factory in 1969.   Hamilton Watch Company began in 1892 when a group of investors bought the assets of Keystone Standard Watch Co. which went bankrupt in 1886 after four years of operation.  Keystone had purchased the old Adams and Perry Watch Manufacturing Company that was founded in 1874 and had also claimed bankruptcy two years later.  

1900's postcard of Hamilton Watch Company.

The building that had housed all three companies was designed by architect Clarence Luther Stiles in 1875.  At first it was just the eastern clock tower and a three-story wing on either side.  It eventually was enlarged in 1916, 1920, a new factory wing in 1930, an office building in 1941 and a final addition in 1963.  My mother was employed at Hamilton for several years after she graduated from high school making pocket watches on the assembly line.  

Inside the factory of Hamilton Watch Company in Lancaster, PA.

She never talked much about her years at Hamilton, but when I mentioned I was going to make a visit to ask them to sponsor the team I had started, she talked about working in the hot factory before leaving because she was pregnant with me.  Hamilton was known for their extremely accurate railroad timepieces that were used on the US railroads as well as the armed forces during WWI.  

Photo as it looks today.

During WWII consumer production was halted so the company could produce military timepieces and marine chrono- meters.  Hamilton was the first manufacturer to produce an electric watch which they introduced in 1957.  Mom and dad gave me one when I graduated from high school.  Then, three years after I had coached their team back into the Lancaster Newspaper's tournament, they stopped all production and closed the plant.  Sad day for Lancaster County and it's workforce.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

Ad publicizing Hamilton Watch as the Railroad Timekeeper of America.