He was a young man of great ingenuity and good native
talent. He moved to the town of Plymouth, Litchfield county, in 1793,
and commenced making a few of the same kind, working alone for several
years. About the year 1800, he might have had a boy or one or two young
men to help him. They would begin one or two dozen at a time, using no
machinery, but cutting the wheels and teeth with a saw and jack-knife.
Mr. Terry would make two or three trips a year to the New Country, as it
was then called, just across the North River, taking with him three or
four clocks, which he would sell for about twenty-five dollars apiece.
This was for the movement only. In 1807 he bought an old mill in the
southern part of the town, and fitted it up to make his clocks by
machinery. About this time a number of men in Waterbury associated
themselves together, and made a large contract with him, they furnishing
the stock, and he making the movements. With this contract and what he
made and sold to other parties, he accumulated quite a little fortune
for those times. The first five hundred clocks ever made by machinery in
the country were started at one time by Mr. Terry at this old mill in
1808, a larger number than had ever been begun at one time in the world.
Previous to this time the wheels and teeth had been cut out by hand;
first marked out with square and compasses, and then sawed with a fine
saw, a very slow and tedious process. Capt. Riley Blakeslee, of this
city, lived with Mr. Terry at that time, and worked on this lot of
clocks, cutting the teeth. Talking with Capt. Blakeslee a few days
since, he related an incident which happened when he was a boy, sixty
years ago, and lived on a farm in Litchfield. One day Mr. Terry came to
the house where he lived to sell a clock. The man with whom young
Blakeslee lived, left him to plow in the field and went to the house to
make a bargain for it, which he did, paying Mr. Terry in salt pork, a
part of which he carried home in his saddle-bags where he had carried
the clock. He was at that time very poor, but twenty-five years after
was worth $200,000, all of which he made in the clock business.

Mr. Terry sold out his business to Seth Thomas and Silas Hoadley, two of
his leading workmen, in 1810. This establishment was the leading one for
several years, but other ones springing up in the vicinity, the
competition became so great that the prices were reduced from ten to
five dollars apiece for the bar