# Watch Inscriptions



## Shiner (Mar 2, 2011)

You see plenty of inscriptions on pocket watches to people for 25 years service etc., but I have this one which is a little more unusual. Is there any more out slightly different inscriptions out there?


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## Shiner (Mar 2, 2011)

The demi-hunter case is in superb condition. Looks like he chucked it in a drawer and never used it.


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## Shiner (Mar 2, 2011)

With a good quality Waltham movement.


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## JWL940 (Jun 11, 2010)

I've read a number of threads over the years where people dislike inscriptions feeling they devalue the item. Personally I like to see them and feel they add to the history of the watch (initials on a cartouche however are a different matter).

Although I wouldn't call it 'unusual' I have one PW presented to A Cooper for 25 years service. It is in a Dennison case dated Birmingham 1926. Mr Cooper's company was Brunner, Mond and Co Ltd. In 1926, along with three other companies they amalgamated to become ICI.

Unfortunately my photographic skills aren't quite up to your skills Shiner.


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## Shiner (Mar 2, 2011)

This is an inscription that I am researching at the moment.

This is what would be considered an average pocket watch form the late 19th century, and I have managed to trace some of it's history because of the inscription on the inside of the case.









The amateurishly inscribed inscription reads:-

Frank Underwood Williamson

129 Primrose Street

Kearsley

Farnworth

In the late Victorian era Farnworth was a small industrial town on the outskirts of Bolton in Lancashire. It would have been a grimey northern working class town whose population would have been employed mainly in the cotton and paper mills and the coal mines in the area.

I started to trace Frank Williamson and his family through the National Census and it appears that he was born, raised and worked in Farnworth all his life. I have further work to do, but Frank was born in 1874 so he would not have been the original owner of the watch as he would have been only 5 years old when the watch was made.

The 1881 Census shows that Frank at that time was 7 years old and had an older brother Thomas and six sisters, and all were living at home with their parents Thomas and Mary.

By the time of the 1891 Census Frank was 17 years old and a spinner in a cotton mill and his Father was now a widower aged 52 and both were now living at the home of one of Frank's sisters named Hester who was 19 years old and married with an infant son.

In the 1901 Census Frank was now 27 years old and described as a coal miner-hewer which meant that he worked at the pit face with pick and shovel. It would have been an extremely hard and dangerous job, and he is now living at the home of his older brother Thomas and his family. also living at that address is his sister Ruth aged 25 who works as a paper finisher in one of the local paper mills. Both Frank and Ruth are recorded as unmarried. There is now no trace of his father Thomas in the National Census.

In the Census of 1911 there is now no trace of Frank who at that time would have been just 37 years old.

So we know that Frank was not the original owner of the watch. Could it have been handed down from his father? When did Frank reside at 129 Primrose Street? When Frank disappeared from the census records in 1911 the watch did remain in the town as there is a local watch repairers paper in the back of the watch, and on the back of the watch paper are two dates for 3rd May 1928 and 19th September 1929.

I have been to Farnworth and Primrose Street still exists although all the original terraced houses have been demolished, and the watch repairers shop is still in Market Street but it is now finance brokers office.

To be continued.............


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## Roger the Dodger (Oct 5, 2009)

Not an unusual inscription, but worthy of a showing here...my Grandfathers 18ct Garrard pocket watch. The date letter is for 1845, so the watch was already over 100 years old when he chose it from a selection offered by the Lady of the Manor where he worked as carpenter in 1954. The inscription is on the curvette inside the watch.


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