E. Howard & Co.

Edward Howard (1813–1904) was apprenticed to the Boston clockmaker Aaron Willard Jr. In 1842 he and David P. Davis began making high-grade wall clocks as Howard & Davis, and from about 1843 tower clocks as well; the partners also made sewing machines, fire engines and precision balances. In 1850 Howard joined Aaron Lufkin Dennison in the venture that became the Boston Watch Company, an early attempt to make watches by machine with interchangeable parts.

When the Boston Watch Company failed in 1857, its factory and machinery went to the investors who founded the Waltham company, and Howard moved to Roxbury. With Charles Rice he finished the watches left in progress, then from December 1858 made watches of his own design signed "E. Howard & Co."; the firm was one of America's leading makers of luxury watches into the 1890s. The clock and watch businesses were combined in 1861, reorganised in 1863 as the Howard Watch & Clock Company and again in 1881 as the E. Howard Watch & Clock Company, and Howard himself retired in 1882.

Regular watchmaking stopped in 1903, when the Howard name for watches was sold to the Keystone Watch Case Company; Keystone's watches signed "E. Howard Watch Co.", made in Waltham, were new designs unlike the earlier Howards. The clock company carried on, best known for weight-driven wall regulators and tower clocks, moved to Waltham in the early 1930s and continued under later owners.

How to recognise the work: watches made by the original firm (1858–1903) are signed E. Howard & Co., Boston, and use Howard's own movement designs; watches signed E. Howard Watch Co. were made from 1903 by the Keystone Watch Case Company in Waltham to new designs. Howard clocks are usually weight-driven wall regulators and 'wall timepieces' in walnut or oak, often numbered by model.