Hartoon Jeweler’s marks 100 years

Lost in the sands of time is the exact date of Hartoon Jewelers’ founding.
One thing is certain: the firm at Federal and Harrison is at least 100 years old.
The earliest records that third-generation owner Phil Hartoon and his wife Jan could find when they took over the family business, dated back to 1908.
But, “we have grandpa’s original cash register he used when he went into business. It says 1907 on the back,” Hartoon said this week.
Then several years ago, Tim Cannon, a Tecumseh friend, found an old newspaper while remodeling a structure called “Old Parker Nursery” in Tecumseh.
The newspaper carried an advertisement for C.B. Hartoon, watchmaker. It was dated 1906.
“But we’ve been advertising 1908” as the jewelry store’s 100th anniversary, “so we’ll go along with that date,” Hartoon said.
A second fact is certain: C.B. “Charley” Hartoon, Phil Hartoon’s grandfather, started the business in Tecumseh, soon after it became the county seat. 
A 1908 photograph shows Charley Hartoon standing in his book store-news stand-pencils, cigars and coffee shop in the first floor of Tecumseh’s then-Opera House.
With him are his one employee and other merchants who owned businesses on that floor. “It was like a little mini-mall except there were no walls or locks or keys,” Hartoon said.
Charley Hartoon primarily sold books to the students of Indianola Business College in Tecumseh, until it burned. After the fire, he and his employee, a girl named Mattie, were married.
A Mr. Bennett, a German watchmaker in Shawnee, taught him his trade, according to family lore. Charley Hartoon expanded his business into watch repair and sales.
Before long, that grew into wedding rings and other jewelry.
            Hartoon was born in Maud. His father was an Ohio infantry veteran of the Civil War who, with his wife, had moved to the Maud area sometime after the war.
When Charley Hartoon was about 12, he helped a surveyor survey the original Tecumseh townsite. “He did different things following that to make a living,” Phil Hartoon said. “He was a pretty young man when he went into business.
“He probably bought out a watchmaker named Mr. Allen who was getting older, had health problems, and had his business on the first floor of the opera house,” Hartoon said.
Charley Hartoon remained in that Tecumseh location. He ran the business until about 1953 when he succumbed to cancer.
“But he had taught my father, Ralph Hartoon how to fix watches when he was a boy. So it was passed on in the family,” Hartoon said.
Ralph Hartoon used his skill as a watchmaker on a Navy repair ship during World War II. He rose to chief warrant officer, supervising some other watchmakers on the repair ship.
He came home after the war and worked for a jewelry store in Shawnee- Hartoon thinks it was Shoshone’s. When Charley Hartoon died, Ralph Hartoon and his wife, Gladys Hartoon, took over his dad’s business.
Ralph Hartoon built a new building in Tecumseh in 1958. Phil Hartoon, about 10 at the time, cut the ribbon for its official opening.
“It was at 109 N. Broadway and where we were in business until about 10 years ago when we moved to Shawnee,” Phil Hartoon said.
“I worked in the store doing everything from janitor work to waiting on customers and doing watch repair,” Hartoon said.
His dad taught him. “I was probably about 10 when he sat me down at a desk with an old pocket watch, took it apart and had me put it back together.”
Hartoon explained that pivots on the gears are to go through holes in the jewels in a watch’s mechanism. 
“I didn’t have it lined up correctly and when I tightened the bridge up on the wheels, the end of the wheels broke the jewels and the gears.
“That was my first experience in watchmaking. My dad not so carefully explained to me what I did wrong,” Hartoon recalled.
By the time he graduated from high school, Phil Hartoon was proficient at even ladies’ watches which are smaller and more difficult to repair, and automatic lines. “You start out with pocket watches because they’re bigger and easier to see,” he said.
Hartoon began as a draftsman, then was a highway designer for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation at ODOT’s central office in Oklahoma City until 1981. “It was very interesting work,” he said.
In 1981, Hartoon and his wife took over the family business in Tecumseh. Later, like his grandfather and father, he needed to move to expand and grow the business.
Hartoon Jewelers opened at its present Federal-Harrison location in time for Valentine’s Day business in 1999.
Hartoon soon branched out into jewelry repair, something else he learned from his father; and jewelry manufacturing
He now does custom gold casting, all types of repair including laser welding, “about the latest in high tech repair,” and works on all types of jewelry: platinum, white or yellow gold.
The store carries a full line of jewelry plus some gift items. Merchandise ranges from fancy miniature trinket boxes for rings or whatever, that start at $20 up to Tacori diamond-set-in-platinum, hand engraved wedding rings in the upper end price range.
“And everything in between,” Hartoon said.
Present employees are Elaine Abbott and JoAnn Young, full-time staff who have been with Hartoon’s since 1981; and part-timers Tracey Dunphy, Lou Sutterfield and Ryleigh Byrum.  
“We’ve always tried to have at least one student employee,” Hartoon said. “Some have started in high school and gone on through college with us.”