I recently acquired this really cool piece of ephemera on the Bay and thought I would share it with the club. It is an original 1875 Illinois advertising brochure, with drawings and descriptions of each of the models available at the time. It is small, measuring about 4" tall by 2 1/2" wide.

I think most of the info in the pamphlet is available from other sources, and maybe there are other examples of the pamphlet itself out there. The thing I found interesting is that Illinois offered both adjusted and unadjusted versions of the Bunn and Miller; the Stuart apparently was offered in an adjusted version only, and the Currier, Hoyt and Mason were offered in unadjusted versions only--at least according to this pamphlet. I don't yet have the Illinois Volume 2 book yet, so maybe that info is listed there or elsewhere, but I never knew about it.

Photos of the pages below.

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Educational!
Thanks Michael.

Roger

This margin notes on expenditures are very interesting too!

Any idea what the margin notes are referring to? It looks like there are references to "Barryville", "Macon", "Gallas" and "Kasig". If the notes were made by a jeweler or watch seller, maybe they're the last names of suppliers?

Barryville and Macon are towns in Missouri not far from Moberly. I couldn't find Gallas or Kasig.

Now I see - I think they are Callao and Kaseyville - two more towns nearby.

That's really good, Douglas! I knew that there is a Barryville in New York and a Macon in Georgia, but had no clue these were also towns in Missouri, much less near Moberly.

I wonder if the keeper of this record was a traveling business person (or salesman) recording travel costs.

Sounds like a good guess to me. If so, he must have had a really good time in Macon during the month of May!

That's a neat little book, Michael -- especially with the personalized memoranda.

kh

Thanks for the kind words and informative thoughts, Roger, David and Ken. I think the margin notes add a lot to the story--kind of puts these watches in an actual context. From what I understand, Illinois originally tried to market their movements directly to the retail trade. I could just see this fella riding on horseback from town to town in Missoura visiting local sellers, just like they did on Gunsmoke and Bonanza. He'd be riding a gray with a cowboy hat and probably a six shooter to ward off the highwaymen and such. Don't know how he'd carry his watch inventory, though. Can't imagine that riding the dusty trail with working movements in his saddle bags would be a very good idea. I suppose in reality he probably just took the train instead . . . Or maybe he had nothing to do with watches, and just picked up this pamphlet somewhere and used it for keeping track of expenses in some unrelated job.

And thanks to you, too, Debbie. I kind of thought you might add it to the Illinois research forum, but I didn't want to be presumptuous just in case this pamphlet was reproduced somewhere else and was a matter of common knowledge to collectors.

I'd also add that the year this book was published is important to me personally because it was the year my paternal grandfather Felix was born. He emigrated to the US from Ireland in the late 1800s as a young man, became a US citizen, and then enlisted in the US Army as a Private and fought in the Spanish American war. He then went on to work as a laborer on the Great Northern Railroad in Superior, Wisconsin before buying a share in his sister's general store located there. My dad was born when Felix was 52 years old, which accounts for me having a granddad born in 1875!