Aaron Lufkin Dennison

Aaron Lufkin Dennison
Born	March 6, 1812 Freeport, Maine, USA
Died	January 9, 1895 West Bromwich, England

Aaron Lufkin Dennison (March 6, 1812 – January 9, 1895) was an American watchmaker and businessman who founded a number of companies.

Aaron Dennison was born in Freeport, Maine, after which the family moved to Brunswick, Maine. He was the son of Andrew Dennison, a boot and shoemaker who was also a music teacher. As a child, Aaron earned pocket money by carrying a builder’s hod, working as a herdsman, and as a clerk to a businessman. Later he cut and sold wood and then worked for his father in the cobbler’s shop until the age of 18. While there, he suggested the making of shoes in batches rather than one by one.

In 1830, at the age of 18, Aaron was apprenticed to a Brunswick clockmaker, James Cary. During his apprenticeship, he is said to have made an automatic machine for cutting clock wheels, however in his autobiography he merely says he wanted “to cut all the wheels of a corresponding size in each [of a batch of clocks] at once and in other ways facilitate the work”. (Automatic watchmaking machinery was not developed until the 1860s and Dennison’s machine was probably a modification of an ordinary wheel cutting engine.)

At age 21, Aaron declined the offer of a partnership with Cary and went to Boston, to work with the most skillful people he could find who were engaged in watch repairing. He worked for three months without pay at the jewelers Currier & Trott and then stayed another five months on wages.

In 1834, he started his own business as a watch repairer, but after two years he gave it up and obtained a position with Jones, Low & Ball and he worked there until 1839 under master watchmaker Tubal Howe. Here he learned the methods used by English and Swiss watchmakers.

In 1839, Dennison moved to New York City where he spent several months with a colony of Swiss watchmakers engaged in various branches of the watch trade. Dennison then returned to Boston and set up a business selling watches, tools and materials and doing repair work. During this time he created the Dennison Combined Gauge for measuring mainsprings and other watch parts.

In 1840, Aaron married Charlotte Ware Foster (b 1811, d 1901) of Massachusetts. They had 5 children: Charlotte Elizabeth (1842), Alice (1845), Edward Boardman (1847), Ethie Gilbert 1850 and Franklin (1854).

During the 1830s, Aaron Dennison assisted his younger brother Eliphalet Whorf Dennison to set up in business. Together they set up a jewelry store, but it was a failure. Then silk farming was considered. The third venture instigated by Aaron was to manufacture paper boxes for the jewelry business. This business was a success, but Aaron withdrew from it because of his increasing interest in the possibility of manufacturing watches. Under the supervision of Eliphalet Dennison, the company developed into the Dennison Manufacturing Company, which existed until 1990 when it merged and became the Avery Dennison Corporation with headquarters in Pasadena, California.

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