Phinehas Bailey

  General notes:

Silversmith, jeweler, and watchmaker

  Events in his life were:

• Apprenticed from circa 1801 to 1808 to John Osgood in Haverhill NH

• He worked from 1809 to 1810 as a clockmaker in Hanover NH as a journeyman in the shop of Jedidiah Baldwin. From his Memoirs:
November, 1808. I had arrived at the age of 21, had finished my apprenticeship with Mr. (John) Osgood, and begun to look out for myself. I went to Hanover, New Hampshire, and worked the following winter for Mr. Baldwin in making clocks. Mr. Baldwin, although a Methodist preacher, was not a very honest and upright man. He gave but little evidence of piety, but he always treated me well. The circle of my acquaintance in that place were abandonly (sic) wicked. There was a respectable Congregational church in the place, but as I was a Methodist and lived in such a [Methodist] family, I found no intercourse with respectable people. I found it [the shop] to be a good school.

• He worked from circa 1810 to 1824 as a jeweler and clockmaker in Chelsea VT first building brass clocks in exchange for a shop and tools provided by the former clockmaker Nathan Hale, who had become a wealthy smerchant and tavernkeeper. In 1816, facing the flood of cheap wooden clocks from Connecticut, he took to the road as an itinerate clock and watch mender, tinker, and general peddler. During this period, he developed a system of shorthand, which allowed him to settle and take up a serious study of religion. He eventually gave up his other trades to become a Congregationalist minister.