This watch is a private label Hamilton Grade 940 that was made for jeweler Andrew Krecker Jobe of Jackson, Tennessee. The watch dates to 1901.
This is the dial of the watch.
Here is a photo of a Ball Watch Company Grade 999A-based on the Hamilton Grade 940. Notice any similarities with the other dial?
The first one is very similar to the second AND THAT WAS INTENDED to be so. Andrew Krecker Jobe was a top dealer for the Ball Watch Company. Ball permitted only a select few of their top dealers to put the Trade Mark dial on their private label watches. Private label watches were made by all of the major watch manufacturers and sold under private brand names or jeweler’s names. The buyer could have their name put on the watch movement, dial or both. Movements were usually marked at no extra cost but dials were usually fifty cents or a dollar extra. The most desirable private label watches have marked movements and dials. There was usually a minimum order of five watches for private labels.
As it turned out, Jobe was an official watch inspector for both the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway and the Illinois Central Railroad. He had stores in Jackson, Tennessee and Water Valley, Mississippi. These towns were division points on the Illinois Central Railroad Water Valley Division. This was the railroad division that John Luther “Casey” Jones was assigned to from 1892 until early 1900 as a locomotive engineer. Jones and his family lived in Jackson during this period. He would have had his Waltham Grade 35 railroad watch inspected and serviced by Jobe’s shop.
Jobe died in 1906 at the age of 40 due to typhoid fever. His three sons were also taken ill with the fever but survived. One would later die while in training at an Army camp in 1918 of the flu.
