For a few, brief years in the 1870s the Mozart Watch Factory of Ann Arbor was on the rise to rival the best watchmakers in America. Don Joaquin Mozart was one of Michigan’s “most promising inventors.” Called a “genius” in the New York Times, he patented 11 inventions related to clockwork. Yet his business skills never quite lived up to his innovations and he died in the county poorhouse. 

A Family Missing & A Family Made

The details of Mozart’s early life are uncertain. He was born in Italy sometime between 1820 and 1826 and moved to America with his family near the age of three. His father’s occupation varies by the source: he was a watchmaker and his son took after him, or a street musician distantly related to the more famous Mozart, or a man of wealth who fled Italy for political reasons and was assassinated in America. None of these are particularly likely, but what can be said with more confidence is that he died when Don was young. 

The remaining Mozart family ended up in the Boston area. It was near the harbor there, when Don was around the age of 9, that he was lured onto a ship “by the promise of curious shells” and taken out to sea. It wasn’t uncommon for ships to capture young men or boys as crew members when they couldn’t find volunteers for arduous journeys, and they often preyed upon poor immigrants. Young Don Mozart sailed for seven years. He searched for his family when he returned, but his efforts failed and he never saw his mother or siblings again.

Fending for himself, Don found work as a tradesman where his skill at mechanics became clear. By age 30 or so he was the established owner of a jewelry store in Xenia, Ohio and filed his first patent for an “automatic fan” propelled by clockwork. The patent advertised a quieter machine that would be particularly useful for fanning the sick or sleeping, and keeping bugs away. With his profession secured, he married Anna Maria Huntington on September 4, 1854.

Don and Anna started their family in Ohio, welcoming their first daughter, Donna Zeralla, on February 28, 1857 and then their second, Estella Gertrude, on November 28, 1858. Don continued to invent, patenting an improved clock escapement (the mechanism that moves the timepiece’s hands at precise intervals) in 1859 wherein he listed himself as a resident of Yellow Springs, Ohio. By 1862 the family had relocated to New York City and welcomed one more daughter, Anna Violet. 

Career Clockmaker

As a resident of New York Don patented another improved clock and watch escapement in 1863 with Levi Beach and Laporte Hubbell credited alongside him. The three men followed this in January 1864 with a simplified and more compact calendar clock that claimed to register leap years and run for a year with one winding.

Don’s talents gained him enough recognition that a company was created to produce his patents. The Mozart Watch Company was established in the spring of 1864 in Providence, Rhode Island and the family relocated there. Capital of $100,000 was secured along with a factory and machinery. Then, before any product seems to have been produced, the stockholders pulled out in the spring of 1866. No distinct reason could be found to explain their change of heart, other than a new belief that they wouldn’t earn a return on their investment. Don was replaced as superintendent, the company was renamed the New York Watch Company and, in contrast to the name, moved to Springfield, Massachusetts. 

Less than a year later, in January of 1867, Don Mozart began anew in Ann Arbor. Advertisements for “Mozart & Co,” a dealer in clocks, watches, jewelry, and silver-plated ware, ran in the Michigan Argus. The shop was located in the Gregory Block on the corner of Huron and Main. Still tinkering with timepieces, his first patent in this new era was filed in July of 1867 wherein he listed himself as living in New York despite his new store in Michigan. Regardless of the residency, the patent was granted on December 24, 1867 and became the basis of his even greater business venture in Ann Arbor. 

Michigan’s Mozart Watch Company

By the summer of 1868 the second Mozart Watch Company was progressing in Ann Arbor. According to a July 24, 1868 article in the Michigan Argus, “the capital for testing the invention has been furnished, a building secured in which to commence operations, an engine put up, the best of machinery purchased, and a force of experienced mechanics set to work, not exactly making Watches, but making tools with which to stock the factory.” The goal was to produce watches based on the recently issued patent that contained no dead-center or setting-point and required only a small number of parts, allowing for cheaper production.

The company’s growth continued, occupying three stories of Dr. Chase's building according to the February 19, 1869 issue of the Michigan Argus. The article concluded, “We shall expect to see the company soon turning out A. No. 1 watches.” On New Years Eve 1869 a gold watch was presented to Reverend Charles H. Brigham of the First Unitarian Church, confirming that the Mozart Watch Company had managed to start production.

Just six months later the Michigan Argus was pleading with citizens to prevent the company from leaving the city. It had “turned out a number of beautiful watches,” but “the few men who took hold of the enterprise find themselves without means to prosecute the work on the large scale which is necessary to make it a success, and that they have not met the encouragement and support which they had a right to expect from the community at large.” 

Advisors to businessmen from Milwaukee and New York had visited the factory to assess the machinery and patent’s chances of success. “The agent of the Milwaukee parties – a practical man – pronounces the watch, and clock soon to come out, a perfect success…If Milwaukee men stand ready to invest $300,000 in it, cannot our capitalists be induced to invest one third of that sum to retain it here?”

The appeals went unanswered and a group from Rock Island, Illinois bought out the Mozart Watch Company, renaming it the Rock Island Watch Company. Then, like in Providence, the company failed to produce anything before the stockholders withdrew their support. A lawsuit commenced in the fall of 1871, alleging fraud in the sale. The battle concluded in the fall 1873 when it was dissolved after an appeal.

Panic & Final Patents

Just as the court case was wrapping up a greater worry replaced it. The financial panic of 1873 swept the nation and the local banking house of Miller & Webster closed its doors for good in September of that year. The Michigan Argus reported that “a large share of the losses will fall upon parties illy able to bear them,” and this seems to have included Don Mozart. 

Don had always been reliant upon his strengths in innovation. He is recounted as saying, “that he never knew the time when, if he was short of money, he could not hide himself in a hole for a month, and work out an idea that would bring him $1,000.” The article concludes that “money has come to him so easily he has valued it little, has spent it with a prodigal generosity, not to say reckless, and having, most of his life, no special occasion for what is called business shrewdness has in later years been victimized by speculators in his genius.” As he had all his life, he persisted, and that same fall the Michigan Argus included an advertisement for watch repairs by Don Mozart.  

Before the loss of his savings, Don had filed a series of three patents that were approved in July of 1873: another improved escapement, an upgrade to calendar clocks, and a self winding watch. This trio held the potential to earn his savings back. They were designed to be used together in one watch that would include dials showing the month, day of the month, day of the week, AM or PM, quarter seconds, seconds, minutes and hour. It would be wound by the user opening and shutting the watch case five or six times a day and no damage would be sustained by heavier use. He is said to have gone to New York to find funding, but the wealthy residents who would be able to offer the capital were away at their summer homes and he was told to return later.

Always seeking improvement, he took a portion of the watch apart during the interim and lost a piece of it in the process. He was never able to figure out how to put it together again. Before he could return to New York, he lost control of his mind. On December 2, 1874, Don Mozart was taken to what was then known as the “Michigan Asylum for the Insane” in Kalamazoo. Reports claimed that his “fits of temporary insanity” had been going on “for some time” and that up until his removal to Kalamazoo “he was talking extravagantly but coherently enough, of his brilliant prospects and the wealth and success that awaited him, and detailed to friends minutely the terms of an agreement that he claimed to have just made with persons in New York, though he had never gone to that City after his visit in the early Summer.”

The papers attributed his loss of reality to “the strain upon his mind made by his newly invented watch” and the failure of Miller & Webster. In 1875 he was moved to the Washtenaw County Poor House, and died there on March 15, 1877 at the reported age of 58. He was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery and obituaries were carried in papers across the country. 

Collectible Chronometers

It is difficult to determine exactly how many Mozart watches were finished. Estimates vary from 13, to 30, to only a few. The examples that were reported on or have since been located often contain personalized engravings indicating that they were made for investors and friends. They remain as exemplary samples of American watchmaking and their rarity makes them highly sought after by collectors. 

In 2016, a "Chronometer-Lever Escapement" watch signed "Mozart Watch Co., Ann Arbor, Mich., No. 7, Don J. Mozart Patent Dec. 24, 1868" was sold by the auction house Bonhams for $5,250 (the patent date seemed to be a mistake, corresponding instead with the patent of December 24, 1867). Sotheby's auctioned another in 2004 as part of their “Masterpieces from the Time Museum” group. 

Remaining watches can be found as part of the National Watch and Clock Museum, the Paul M. Chamberlain collection, which was displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1921 and found a permanent home at Michigan State University, and the Washtenaw County Historical Society.