Discouraged by his venture into worldly affairs, he turned again to his former occupation of preacher and evangelist, and consoled himself with the remark that he "had here a profession high above his secular vocation." In those days, protection and free trade had not yet become the rival rallying cries of two great political parties; otherwise we might have found this early manufacturer entering politics instead of the pulpit. While he is credited with manufacturing the first American watches, however, it is doubtful whether he and his workmen really did more than to assemble imported parts. More than twenty years now passed before another effort was made to produce watches in America—this time by two brothers—Henry and James F. Pitkin of Hartford, Connecticut. In 1838, they brought out a watch, most of the parts of which were made by machinery, but it proved more or less a failure. After a brief struggle, they gave up in discouragement. Henry Pitkin died in 1845, and his brother, a few years later. While the Pitkin Brothers were struggling with their problem in Hartford, Jacob D. Custer of Norristown, Pennsylvania, was engaged in a similar task. He succeeded in making a few watches between 1840 and 1845, thus gaining his niche in history as the third American watch manufacturer. But all of these were merely forerunners, for now there stepped upon the stage a young man whose ability and perseverance were destined to launch American watch-making fairly upon its way. This young man was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1813, and his name was Edward Howard; it was born in him to be an inventive and ingenious craftsman and to feel toward the mechanism of time-keeping the devotion of an artist to his art. At the age of sixteen, he was apprenticed to Aaron Willard, Jr., of Roxbury, one of the cleverest clock-makers of his time. Young Howard took to clock-making as naturally as a Gloucester man takes to the sea. Some of the clocks he then made are still ticking as vigorously as ever. Having presently learned all he cared to know about clock-making, he cast about for other fields of action. His bent, as he himself said, "was all for the finer and more delicate mechanism," and it was natural that these qualities of the watch should absorb his interest. It was equally natural, since he was an American clock-maker at a time when that trade was being revolutionized by machine-work, that he should dream of applying such methods to the watch.