Black Forest Clockmakers in Ireland and Cornwall: Migration, Industry, and the Zimber Family

 

In the nineteenth century, the small towns and villages of Germany’s Black Forest region sent skilled craftsmen across the world. Among them were members of the Zimber family, who established long-running clock and jewellery businesses in New Ross, County Wexford, and Bodmin in Cornwall. Their story reflects a broader history of migration, industrial change, and family enterprise that connected rural Germany with provincial Ireland and Britain during the age of industrialisation.

The history of the Zimber family can be understood not simply as a story of emigration, but as part of the wider transformation of the Black Forest clock industry itself. As traditional rural clockmaking came under pressure from industrialisation during the nineteenth century, many families adapted by creating international trading and retail networks that stretched far beyond Germany.

The Black Forest and the Origins of Clockmaking

The Black Forest (Schwarzwald), in southwestern Germany, became one of Europe’s great clockmaking regions from the eighteenth century onward. Unlike the large urban workshops of England or France, Black Forest production was overwhelmingly rural and domestic.

A clock-making workshop

The industry developed in isolated farming communities where:

• winters were long,
• agricultural income was limited,
• and families needed supplementary work during the colder months.

Clockmaking evolved as a decentralised “cottage industry.” Rather than large factories, production was spread across households:

• one family carved wooden plates,
• another produced gears,
• another painted dials,
• while itinerant traders carried clocks across Europe for sale.

  A traditional clock peddlar

This social structure created a highly cooperative local economy. Entire villages became dependent on clockmaking, and specialist skills were passed down through generations. The work was organised through networks of kinship, apprenticeship, and local merchants rather than industrial corporations.

Early Black Forest clocks were typically:

• wooden-framed,
• weight-driven,
• and relatively inexpensive compared with English or French clocks.

By the early nineteenth century, the region was exporting enormous numbers of clocks internationally.

The Crisis of the 1870s

By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the traditional Black Forest system was under increasing pressure.

Industrialisation transformed clock production:

• factory-made brass movements replaced handmade wooden mechanisms,
• mechanised manufacturing reduced prices dramatically,
• and large firms in Germany, America, and France outcompeted small rural workshops.

The old cottage system struggled to survive.

Zimberhausle and clock workshop

The 1870s were especially difficult:

• population growth increased pressure on already poor rural communities,
• profits collapsed,
• and many craftsmen fell into debt.

German unification in 1871 accelerated industrial concentration in urban centres, while remote artisanal regions like the Black Forest were left economically vulnerable.

For many clockmaking families, emigration became both an economic necessity and a business opportunity.

Migration Without Breaking Family Ties

Importantly, emigrants from the Black Forest rarely severed contact with home. Instead, many families created international trading networks.

A common pattern developed:

• some relatives remained in Germany to maintain supplier relationships and production,
• while others emigrated to establish retail and repair businesses abroad.

The Zimber family appears to have followed exactly this model.

Members of the family came from the Black Forest clockmaking tradition before establishing themselves in Ireland and Cornwall during the nineteenth century. Their businesses demonstrate how emigrant craftsmen often combined technical expertise with family-based commercial networks that stretched across borders.

The Zimbers were not unique in bringing Black Forest clockmaking traditions to Ireland. During the nineteenth century, several German clockmaking and jewellery families established businesses in Irish towns and cities, forming part of a small but significant network of emigrant craftsmen. For example the Dold family settled in Kilrush, County Clare, the Faller family became established in Galway, and the Hartmann family operated in Limerick. Like the Zimbers, these families combined clock and watch repair with jewellery retailing, importing German-made clocks while embedding themselves deeply within local commercial life. Their presence illustrates how Irish provincial towns became connected to continental European manufacturing networks through migration, trade, and family enterprise.

The Zimbers in New Ross

Aaron Zimber, my great-great-grandfather, and his brother Richard settled in New Ross, County Wexford, where they established a clock and jewellery business around 1870. The business continued trading until the 1930s, latterly being run by his daughter, Albertina and her husband, John Holmes. The business was sold to Brooks Jewellers, who are still trading in the Charles Street premises today.

Zimber Bros, Quay, New Ross

At the time, New Ross was still an important commercial port town with strong links to Britain and overseas trade. Nineteenth-century New Ross was closely connected to Liverpool and Bristol through shipping and mercantile networks.

The timing of the Zimber arrival was significant. During the 1870s and 1880s:

• Ireland imported large quantities of German-made clocks,
• Black Forest products dominated the affordable domestic market,
• and German-trained clockmakers enjoyed a reputation for technical skill and reliability.

The New Ross shop likely sold:

• Black Forest wall clocks,
• spring-driven domestic clocks,
• watches and jewellery,
• and later factory-made German clocks from major manufacturers.

Many imported clocks carried only the retailer’s name rather than the original manufacturer’s mark. As a result, clocks sold by the Zimbers may have appeared entirely local while containing German-made movements inside.

Like many emigrant craftsmen, the family probably maintained regular correspondence with relatives who remained in Germany. Such networks helped retailers abroad:

• source stock,
• monitor changing fashions,
• and obtain credit or supply connections.

The Bodmin Branch

Karl Friedrich Zimber, another brother, established a business in Bodmin, Cornwall. Remarkably, this shop survived in family hands until the 1970s.

Charles Zimber's shop in Bodmin

Its early decades likely resembled the New Ross operation:

• importing German clocks,
• repairing watches and timepieces,
• and serving a local market with specialist technical skills.

Cornwall’s maritime connections made imported continental goods readily available through Bristol and London wholesalers.

The longevity of the Bodmin business shows how successfully the family adapted across generations. By the twentieth century, the shop would almost certainly have diversified:

• selling British-made clocks and watches,
• expanding into jewellery,
• and relying increasingly on repair work rather than imported Black Forest stock alone.

Surviving through two world wars and into the late twentieth century required considerable flexibility, especially given the disruption to German imports during and after World War I.

Family Networks and the Black Forest Tradition

The Zimber story illustrates how Black Forest clockmaking families adapted to industrialisation not simply by abandoning their trade, but by internationalising it.

The traditional Black Forest industry had always depended upon networks:

• networks of labour,
• kinship,
• apprenticeship,
• and trade.

Migration extended those same networks internationally.

A brother in Germany might still source movements or maintain supplier relationships while brothers abroad operated retail businesses in Ireland or Britain. In effect, these families became informal international trading firms spanning multiple countries.

This combination of migration and continuing family cooperation helped many artisan families survive the collapse of the old cottage industry.

A Local Story Within a European Transformation

The history of the Zimber family is more than a genealogy of shopkeepers and clockmakers. It is part of a much larger European story.

Their journey reflects:

• the decline of rural artisanal economies,
• the rise of industrial mass production,
• the expansion of international migration,
• and the resilience of family enterprise during a period of immense economic change.

From isolated villages in the Black Forest to the commercial streets of New Ross and Bodmin, the Zimbers carried with them not only technical skills but an entire cultural tradition of craftsmanship and family cooperation.

Today, surviving clocks, shop signs, business records, and family memories preserve traces of that world — a world in which a Black Forest cottage industry became part of the commercial life of Ireland and Cornwall for more than a century.

My Zimber Bros pocket watch

For a full family chronology and documentary timeline, see: “Zimber Bros. – From Schwarzwald to New Ross (Family Record)”

Possible Holmes family origins

Origins of the Holmes Surname in Ireland

Tracing the origins of our branch of the Holmes family in Ireland points most strongly toward an English origin rather than either a Scottish one or a Gaelic surname (Mac Thomáis) that later became Anglicised, both of which are found elsewhere in Ireland. In our case, the family can be traced to north-east Laois and the adjoining areas of Kildare and Offaly, with a long-standing Church of Ireland (and more recently Methodist) background. That combination fits well with the history of English settlement in the Midlands during the Tudor and early Stuart plantation periods.

The Laois connection is especially interesting. Formerly known as Queen’s County, Laois was one of the earliest plantation areas established by the Tudor government in the sixteenth century after the suppression of the O’Mores. English settlers — including soldiers, tenant farmers and estate workers — were introduced into the region in significant numbers, and many Protestant farming families in the Midlands ultimately trace their roots to those plantation-era communities or to later Cromwellian and Williamite settlement.

Coolbanagher Old Church

Coolbanagher Church, designed by Gandon

Family Traditions

I have also heard of a long-standing family tradition that “the first Holmes came to Ireland with Baron Arlington,” the founder of Portarlington. While such stories are often simplified over generations, the tradition is not implausible. Sir Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, was granted extensive lands in Queen’s County in the seventeenth century and promoted Protestant settlement around Portarlington. The story may not necessarily mean that an ancestor personally arrived in Arlington’s immediate retinue. Still, it could well preserve a genuine memory that the family became established in the area during the Arlington plantation era.

Interestingly, there is also a tradition of a sword handed down from a Williamite — or possibly Cromwellian — soldier. Whether literally accurate or not, that tradition fits naturally with the broader history of military settlement and land redistribution in the Midlands during the seventeenth century.

Estate Connections

Emo Court, designed by Gandon

From at least the late eighteenth century, our branch of the Holmes family also appears to have been closely associated with Emo Court and the surrounding estate, where family members are said to have worked as gamekeepers. These included my 3rd great-grandfather, John Holmes and his father Benjamin. That detail fits very naturally into the social world of the Protestant rural Midlands. Estate employment — as gamekeepers, stewards, craftsmen or tenant farmers — was a common path for long-established Church of Ireland families of modest but respectable standing who were connected to the great landed houses of the region. More recently, my great-great-grandfather John Holmes worked as a Clerk-of-Works on Moore Abbey demesne, continuing that tradition.

A Family with Deep Historical Roots

The surname Holmes itself is especially associated with Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and the wider East Midlands/South Yorkshire region — areas shaped by strong Norse and Danelaw influence, where “holm” originally referred to a river meadow or raised ground in marshland. Interestingly, some of my Ancestry DNA results also appear to point toward that same part of England, which aligns closely with the historical distribution of the surname.

At the same time, families like this did not always come directly from England into Laois in a single movement. By the seventeenth century, there were already long-established English-descended Protestant communities in Dublin, Kildare and the wider Pale. Many families moved gradually westward into newly opened plantation lands. It is therefore entirely possible that the Holmes family originally came from England — perhaps from the East Midlands or Yorkshire region — but had already spent one or more generations elsewhere in Ireland before settling in Laois and Offaly.

The family’s Church of Ireland identity over many generations is also suggestive. While religion alone never proves ancestry, it does make it more likely that the family belonged to the long-established Protestant farming and tenant class that emerged from these settlement patterns. Many such families were not major landowners, but ordinary rural families who nevertheless maintained a distinct religious and cultural identity over centuries.

One subtle but important point is that even if the original surname source was English, the family may still have been established in Ireland for many centuries. Some families became thoroughly woven into Irish life over generations, moving within the Pale and Midlands long before modern records began. So while the surname may ultimately have English roots, the family’s Irish identity could still be very deep chronologically.

Finding Albertina

I wrote a post a while back where I located all my ancestors who were alive at the time in the 1901 census. The only thing was I couldn't find my great-grandmother Albertina Zimber. I found her brothers, step-mother, uncles and an aunt but she was nowhere to be found.

Albertina Zimber

Well, I finally tracked her down to Dungarvan,  Co Waterford where she was living over a shop where she worked as a Drapers Assistant. The thing was her surname was significantly misspelt (I submitted a correction and it has now been changed) and her first name was given as Bertha so no wonder she proved elusive.

It might prove useful to note how I did locate her. I used the advanced search options and searched using her age and religion (Methodist) and tried a number of variations on her first name which finally came up trumps.

The Death of Joseph Zimber

I recently found out how Joseph Zimber my great-grand-uncle died. I knew he died in an accident in Montreal on 1st February 1905 only a few months after arriving in Canada (see here).
I have just found the reports below in the Montreal paper "Le Canada". The first report from the 2nd February edition does not name him but the second report from the following day's paper does.
For the benefit of those who cannot read French, he died in an explosion at the Gohier Tannery alongside a Russian Jewish immigrant named Lewis Schoff (or Schoss). The report also indicates that the explosion may have been caused by a barrel of gasoline left too close to the furnace.

Le Canada - 2nd February, 1905

Le Canada - 3rd February 1905

Fred Zimber Photo

I recently got a copy of this photo of Fred Zimber my great-grand-uncle from the National Library.

Fred Zimber (1887-1915)

Fred died in the First World War and you can read more of his story here.