CHAPTER 15 Remington: Prelude to Conflict

The little smithy at Ilion Gulph by 1861 had grown into one of the major industrial complexes of midstate New York. The influence of this entity, founded by Eliphalet Remington and carried on by his sons Eli Jr. and Samuel in 1861 has never been thoroughly explored. An adequate personal, mechanical, and industrial history of Remington Arms has yet to be written. But it is certain that shortly before the Civil War began, Remington’s engineers had effected some radical improvements and innovations in manufacturing methods. To a degree they were without much local competition in the specialized labor market of arms trade workmen. It is true that they apparently paid slightly less than they might have done; Colt lured away one of their barrel straighteners by higher wages, and the man traveled many hundreds of miles to his new job. This job mobility is not uncommon now, but was very unusual then, except perhaps in the arms trade and its related machine tool industry. The loss was not crippling to the family rifle business founded approximately in 1814 as a sporting rifle shop, but it was a handicap. For 600 workmen and a million dollars in tools then, there might be as many as two or three barrel straighteners. With mass production and automation, with the most modem electronic inspecting gear in this second half of the 20th century, the art of the barrel straightener, by hand and by eye, remains supreme. When it is considered that rifle barrels by Remington demanded a premium, were highly esteemed in the trade, and that so-called gunsmiths all over the country built their reputation on Remington barrels to which they affixed their maker’s mark, it may be seen that Remington could ill afford to lose such a key employee.

Barrel Straightening 

Early in the development of gun barrel making, it became obvious that inaccuracies in shooting were due to bores which were not straight. A method described in antiquity used a straight string, held taut by a slim bow of wood, the string inside the barrel. By looking through the barrel at a light source, the shadow of the string could be seen as a wiggle where the bore was dented, and as a straight line where it was straight. Hammer and anvil came into play and the skill to correct crooked barrels was built into the workman through experience. The next stage was the discovery that a straight line, externally, could be trusted to perform the same job. In the second method, possible only after bores had begun to be mirror finished inside, the workman simply viewed a straight line, such as the edge of a window, through the bore, and its reflection was seen along the bore surface. As many efforts were made to improve this, ultimately a special barrel-straightening machine was developed, now com Eli Remington, Jr., as a lad built a rifle at Ilion Gulph which was first firearm in series of possibly 30,000,000 made to date. Gun’s ignition type has remained puzzle for modern researchers.
mon in all countries. Instead of the barrel being hit externally to offset the kink or bend revealed in inspection, it is supported on two rests, and midway a grooved press is caused to act by spinning a screwwheel that moves the press down (to affect the barrel) or up to release. By shifting the wheel slightly and rapidly, the operator can rotate the barrel in the rest while looking through it to perceive the changes in shadow that revealed the changes in straightness.
Existing descriptions of barrel manufacture during and immediately after the Civil War do not describe this machine; it evidently was a carefully guarded secret. The reputation of Remington barrels for straightness and good shooting qualities suggests that the Ilion works had a rudimentary device of this kind in use; the premium on Remington barrel straighteners placed by Colt’s hiring one suggests the trick was not generally known in the trade, but worth knowing.
At Remington other work was in progress to have a profound effect on arms manufacturing during the war. Revolvers of first quality had been developed there, and methods in turning out rifles and muskets existed which permitted considerable economy in production. This led to some revision in contract prices and caused a competitor to drastically cut his own profits to meet the Remington price.

Eli Remington, Jr., as a lad built a rifle at Ilion Gulph which was first firearm in series of possibly 30,000,000 made to date. Gun's ignition type has remained puzzle for modern researchers

Remington Zouave Rifle

One of the most colorful of Civil War arms is the so-called Remington Zouave rifle, caliber .58. The order to supply 10,000 of these was sent by Ripley on 30 July, 1861. Though listed as an order for 10,000 regulation rifles with sword bayonets, the article produced was in fact not regulation at all. It was a special model following the order:
These rifles are to be .58 inch calibre, and to have a three leaf rear sight, and a cupped ramrod, with sword bayonet stud similar to those of the Harpers Ferry rifle, Model of 1855, in other respects of the pattern of rifles without bayonets heretofore made by you for this department.
The order was acknowledged and agreed to, at $20 per rifle, on August 6 by Remington, and they at once got to work to prepare the prototype for approval.
The rifle design established used a stock of Ml855 configuration, two brass bands and fore-end cap, and a brass box in the stock for spare nipple, ball screw, or screwdriver. The barrel was heavier than the normal United States rifle musket, and the rifles of the first
order filled were rifled with 5 grooves. The lock is similar to the U.S. M1841 or Harpers Ferry rifle heretofore made by you for government, as Ripley put it. Normal finish was casehardened colored lock, bright brass trim, and blued barrel. At the same time J. Remington showed Ripley, upon the recommendation of Major Hagner, a .36 caliber Beals Navy revolver, then currently in production at Ilion.
I am procuring all of them I can for the western army, Hagner told Ripley, and hope to hear I can get all I may need. I have seen no revolver I like as well, and the price is nearer the cost than some others. Hagner endorsed the good work of Remington heartily to the Department.
New Remington Army Model .44 Revolver Acting upon these and other recommendations from his men in the field, as well as his knowledge of the past deliveries and quality of work of the Remington establishment, Ripley issued an order for a non-existent revolver:
ORDNANCE OFFICE Washington, July 29, 1861 GENTLEMEN: Please make for this department, with the greatest possible despatch, five thousand revolver pistols of the same description as the sample you showed here, but of the calibre of the Army pistol, .44 inch . . .
Remington accepted the order by J. Remington in Washington that same date, at $15 each, and thus the great New Model Remington Army .44 was bom. While General Ripley has been latterly characterized as an old fuddy-duddy and a reactionary who consistently refused to listen to inventors and held back arms progress for decades, he was in fact a man of often rapid but not hastily-considered decisions, who had a very good grasp of the needs of the service and acted within this framework for supply. Giving Remington fairly substantial orders for non-existent patterns of arms (one of them the patented revolvers which Ripley is supposed to have hated so much, as some careless writers have put it), reveals him to be able to make a quick choice and a good one. Remington’s past performances were well known at the Department.
Remington Background These past performances stand out with certain dates importantly in mind. Their significance is that they tend to profile the importance of the Remington estab-

Another rifle often pictured as Remington’s first is shown being fired in competition with modern Remington .280 Model 740 autoloading sporting rifle. The flintlock handled by the Dan’l Boone character is a fraud, having a Common Rifle lock of military type glued into an 1840-pattern sporter with putty and plastic wood to fill the gaps. Gun originally had common percussion lock.
lishment in the upper Mohawk Valley, much as the Colt and Whitney enterprises affected industry in their Connecticut Valley ethos. The gun collector and the student of engineering history finds in the Remington saga some puzzling paradoxes, and some incomplete details. A major mystery in the arms history of industrial America is the origin of the enterprise that became Remington Arms.
Among many things not clear are a few certain items; 1816 marks the date of fabrication of a rifle by Eliphalet Remington Jr. The senior Remington was a farmer, having emigrated to the Mohawk Valley from Connecticut about 1800 and taken up 300 acres of good land at a locale known as Ilion Gulph. Operating such a manor required a decent forge and the acquisition of metal working skills by the thrifty farmer and the boys of the family. Young Lite excelled in such skills. Some time before 1816, at the occasion of the marriage of his sister, he was sent to Herkimer with a bag full of silver dollars to have them made into a set of table silver. The young man, just reaching maturity, saw in the hammering and cutting of the silversmith nothing beyond his own capabilities and returned to the homestead with the same silver dollars and no spoons. Instead, with his own hands he hammered the coins into sheet metal and cut the spoons, some of which, simple but well made, are still preserved by the Remington family.

First rifle often pictured in Remington literature is actually percussion half-stock American sporter of 1840’s and was made several decades after Eli Jr. founded gun firm. Cheekpiece on right as well as left of stock is sometimes found on Remingtonbuilt early rifles.

In 1816 when the farmer’s son was 23, he asked his father for money with which to buy a rifle. Though the Pennsylvania smiths were turning out first class
Long Rifles, New York was the trade center to which Ilion Gulph looked, not Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and in New York rifles were only found as imports. In 1816 few indeed were imported; the majority of arms characteristic of the New York region were smoothbore muskets doubling as duck guns or extra-long barreled sporting arms, musketlike in style of fittings, known as long fowlers. By that date the United States Army itself had only a few thousand rifles, half-stock arms resembling a cross between the British sporting rifles and the Kentucky rifles. Rifles had been made in New England, but they were not common articles of trade. The story that father Eliphalet refused young Lite the money because they were too poor, did not gain much currency until the early part of the 20th century. The Remingtons were in fact quite rich. Father Remington’s land purchases commenced with 50 acres bought March 22, 1779, from James Smith in Litchfield, New York, for $275. Times and fortunes moved slowly for over 20 years; then on 20 April 1807 he obtained 195 acres for $585 from Samuel Merry, and the next year bought 71 acres more. The Remington homestead was rapidly growing, for in addition to farming, the Remingtons had turned their manor smithy to good account making farm tools and metal repairs for the surrounding community of farms. But as an example of how legends grow, we refer to published accounts of the building of the first Remington rifle—the first of perhaps thirty million arms manufactured since then at one or more Remington Arms Company plants.
A most interesting account appears in The Remington Centennial Book, 1816-1916. Perhaps the most authoritative text about the building of that first Remington rifle is one said to have been typed on Remington Typewriter No. 1. In 1916 this anonymous typescript was in the possession of Philo Remington’s daughter, so the author is reputed to have had his facts straight. He did not embroider the matter too much, but it is suggested that Philo himself or one of Eli Junior’s generation may have written the essay, as it speaks of family land purchases, pre-1800, in some detail.
The narrative first recites the story of a young man who improvised a gun with which to shoot a bear. Then it goes on to recount the history of a young man residing in Litchfield whose inclinations pressed him in the same direction as the young man already spoken of. A footnote in this typescript refers to the boy who shot a bear. Confusion in chronicles caused Irving Crump in his highly glamorized How A Boy Made The First Remington, also published in 1916, to make out that Lite Remington himself made the gun and shot a bear. Mr. Crump is in error, comparing with the more ancient scriptures.
What actually happened is subject to conjecture, nothing more. The young man who refused to patronize the silversmith because he could take raw metal and do as good a job cheaper, now turned his talents to making a rifle. In 1816 there was strong
sentiment at the close of the War of 1812 to buy American. Youthful Lite Remington’s patriotic ardor first vented itself in poems; he was a scholarly lad and possessed a faculty for memorizing. But the need to build the rifle kept pushing itself forward. Some say his father refused him the money to buy one. This may be true; prices after the War of 1812 on imported commodities so far in the hinterland must have been sky-high. Competent craftsmen that they were, the Remingtons may have scorned to buy something which they could make better and cheaper. But another item rings the bell of memory, makes the arms scholar think that the demand for his guns was based upon Remington’s adoption, even momentarily, of one technological advance which occurred in arms making at this time—the use of the detonating pill-lock.
The First Remington Rifle Remington lore has it that Remington’s first rifle was a flintlock rifle. Surviving in collections of Kentucky rifles produced by hand in far fewer numbers than the Remingtons must have made guns are flintlocks of scores of little-known but skilled makers. If the Remingtons followed the ordinary path, between 1816 and 1830 they would have made enough rifles for at least one specimen to have turned up showing its flintlock origin origins, no matter how much transformed. Alas, the only Remington flintlock rifle in existence is a fraud, made into a flinter by the Remington Arms Company at some time in its existence for promotional purposes. The arm is a plain halfstock rifle of simple form, the cheapest of the Remington mass-produced single shot sporters of 1840. It has two ramrod thimbles, open buckhorn sight and blade front, and double set triggers. Unusual is the lock; rounded at the rear but without marks, it resembles the flintlock from a Common Rifle. The inletting about the plate once accommodated a differently shaped and slightly larger percussion lock; indeed, one of America’s most famous rifles is seen to be a recon
verted fake. More probably a first is another rifle shown in Centennial (1916) Remington literature as The First Remington Rifle. This arm has a shadbelly stock curve, and cheek piece on the right side of stock, possibly right and left cheek pieces as came to be almost a sculptured trade mark of the Herkimer output. The common side lock has a drum in barrel to support the nipple and is a simple original percussion of the 1830-50 style. But it could also have been pill-lock.
Pill-lock Rifles The pill-lock rifle is a little-studied phenomenon associated with the New York State rifle industry. When in 1807 Rev. Alexander Forsyth in Scotland shot down his first goose using a detonating compound to ignite the main charge, he ushered in not an era of firearms advance, but an era of confusion and experiment. By 1814 Captain Joshua Shaw of Philadelphia had formed iron and later copper capsules, open at one end, containing detonating or priming compound in their closed end. The capsule was slipped over a steel tube leading to the main charge, and when the hammer struck it, the flash passed through the tube to ignite the main charge. Though Shaw’s innovation caught on, not all sportsmen recognized it as the universal solution to applying a detonator to gunfire. Shaw’s device required the fabrication of caps to carry the detonator compound. Inventors such as Joseph Manton believed the primer could best be handled as a tiny pellet of mixture and binder, applied directly to the gun in a sort of basin or hole. By the 1830’s one J. Miller had patented a revolving breech rifle. It was a pill-lock, the surface of the cylinder having small' holes into which the priming pellets were placed. A long nose on the hammer punched the pellets securely into the holes and detonated them. As some claim that gum arabic was used in making the pellets, it is possible they had a tacky quality to cause them to adhere to the Miller gun’s cylinder. Gunmaker

Pill lock ignition with striker on side of lock is found on some New York State rifles like this handsome Albany rifle of 1840’s with Clark patent false muzzle. Design resembles Jenks sidehammer percussion arms made by Remington for Navy, suggests first rifle of Remington history may have been novelty to shooters in that it was percussion system or pill lock.
Billinghurst of Rochester, New York, made a number of these arms; Jonathan Browning, father of J. M. B., also used this design. The pill-lock in America is almost invariably associated with New York State guns.

Pill lock ignition with striker on side of lock is found on some New York State rifles like this handsome Albany rifle of 1840's with Clark patent false muzzle. Design resembles lenks sidehammer percussion arms made by Remington for Navy, suggests first rifle of Remington history may have been novelty to shooters in that it was percussion system or pill lock

Perhaps the reason there are no flintlock Remington rifles in existence after a century and a half of searching is that none were made. Early Remington arms were pill-lock, quickly converted to percussion by the drum alteration method. Later Remington arms obsoleted the pill-lock as the cap lock caught on, and following the vogue of the day, were naturally percussion.

Remington’s First Barrels

In the Remington story, certain dates are significant.
In 1816 Remington made his first rifle barrel. Alden Hatch in his romantic book Remington Arms describes the activity in detail:
The job was done at last. Lite had a tightly wound spiral of metal some forty-two inches long with a .40 of an inch hole running through it. Once more he laid it in the bed of coals and this time brought it to white heat. Then he sprinkled borax and sand on it (sic) to make it weld, and seizing it in his tong pounded it vigorously on the stone floor. This was called jumping. It jarred the malleable edges of the spiral strip against each other so the heat-activated molecules, running together, were welded into a solid tube of iron. Because only eight inches could be heated at once, Remington repeated this process six times. There was the rough barrel of the gun.
In addition to confusing the fabrication of a Damascus or wire twist barrel with what must certainly have been a simple wrought-iron lap-welded barrel, Hatch compounds his error and the error of old hands at Remington Arms by describing a method of using a plumb line to test for barrel straightness; such a method almost never existed. The important thing is that straightness of the barrel was acknowledged by all sources, secondary and tertiary though they be, as important in the commercial success of Remington’s first gun.
A commercial success it was; idyllic essays on winning shooting matches, or dramatic corruptions of record that Remington shot a bear with his first gun, do not gloss over the fact that other folks wanted one. He made them. If the first had a lockplate salvaged from scrap and, as the anonymous Remington Typewriter scribe said, The spring and other parts wanting he made himself, the business that emerged from the flare of the forge at Ilion Gulph was a hard, sound, commercial success.
The date of 1816 coincided with a move by the Remingtons, father and son, to a new and enlarged shop. Tradition has it that young Lite walked over the hills 15 miles to Utica to have his barrels rifled by a gunsmith there. But if there was a genuine gunsmith in Utica, he would have been able to supply the wants of the communities even as far off as Ilion. Tradition also links the name of Morgan James of Utica with that of Remington, and declares that James rifled the First Rifle Barrel. Hatch makes out Morgan James to be quite a gray-beard, possessed of sage advice and wisdom on gunmaking for the stripling riflemaker. Actually, James was from Litchfield, Connecticut, and had moved to the region near that other Litchfield, of New York, to engage in gunsmithing about 1820. Satterlee and Gluckman date him in Utica as early as 1820, and at the corner of Fayette and Seneca Streets in 1859-1866. Prior to 1859 he was for a time associated with George H. Ferris as James & Ferris, specializing in heavy match rifles with scope sights. James, if he was in Utica in 1816, was no wise old gaffer; he was a green young man, doubtless a journeyman gunmaker, hardly two years Remington’s; senior. Apparently this was a case of two sharp lads getting together to fill the market, and turn out rifles. Remington had the forge and grindstones, furnaces, and hammers, to shape out the tubes. James, if he did not have a rifling machine, knew how to make one from wood using steel pegs in a spiral channel on the outside of a drum, to turn the rifling cutter through its spiralling arc.
Tradition continues to note that Remington got orders from neighbors, hammered out more barrels, went over to Utica to have them rifled, and brought them back. The trip was 30 miles on foot. Six or seven barrel skelps, say 10 pounds each in the rough for a load of 70 pounds, gave Remington a mighty hefty pack to tote for the march. Production was limited to the number of barrels he could carry— hardly more than ten or twenty barrels a week and certainly not that many finished rifles.
But business continued, and Remington looked upon it as a sober means of livelihood. Though most arms historians have supposed that Remington was famous for barrels only, there seems little doubt that he made complete rifles. The economics of the frontier, together with the breakthrough in transportation afforded by the new Erie Canal, now gave him a water level route to a wide market in the state. Not only gunmaking but other metal goods such as farming tools, continued to be made in the Remington shops. By 1828 father Remington bought a large farm in Ilion itself and there, on the canal, the present plant of Remington Arms Corporation was founded. Eliphalet Remington senior died that year, his son Lite succeeding to managership of the factory.

The First Factory

Factory it was, this stone foundation mill with two upper floors of frame construction. A list was apparently in existence in 1916, quoted in The Remington Centennial Book, of machinery installed in the new works under Lite Remington’s watchful eye: A big tilt hammer, several trip hammers, boring and rifling machines, grindstones, and so on. The elusive catchphrase and so on we hope has damned this booklet writer to a perdition of unending research, for it would be exceedingly interesting to know exactly what potential for arms making Remington possessed in that new and enlarged factory, first in Ilion. But by 1828 the percussion system was generally in vogue

Morgan James rifle made by Remington’s Sons at Ilion Gulph and stamped on barrel utica n y/ m james in two lines with city on top. While arm now on display at Remington museum from author’s collection confirms link between two famous men, gun’s construction dates it as 1840’s. Hammer is only percussion hammer fitted by Remington Arms in 20th Century due to loss of original when rifle was sent to factory for display.

among the better gunmakers, though for military arms flintlock held on for two decades more. Assuming that the first Remingtons were pill-lock, almost all must have been converted to percussion system as soon as their owners could rely on getting the new fangled percussion caps. It was more expensive but less dangerous than rolling pellets of detonating compound oneself.
We are informed by The Remington Centennial Book that The lapwelded barrel was standard until 1850, and he got together a battery of trip hammers for forging and welding his barrels. Finer dimensions became a factor in his business when the output grew large enough to warrant carrying a stock of spare parts for his customers, and so he improved those parts in ways that gave at least the beginnings of interchangeability. No claim can be made that Remington invented interchangeable parts, but the development of a small arms factory can be read between the lines. By 1836 Remington’s barrels had become known in Baltimore and New Jersey. Sam Colt, laying in barrels for his rifles to be made at Paterson, New Jersey, wrote about the barrel maker in Litchfield. While we had followed John E. Parsons in supposing this related to some Connecticut barrel maker, we tend now to wonder if, in the absence of further facts, this did not refer to the lad from Litchfield, Lite Remington.
By 1846 Remington had matured considerably in skills and technology. In that year he first exhibited a barrel solid-drilled from a steel rod, less likely to -develop weakness such as happened along the seam of weld. But it appears he may have applied this technology somewhat earlier, for he had experience in fabricating 5,000 U.S. Rifles, Model 1841, our first truly interchangeable military arm. In 1844 Lite Remington took into partnership his son, Philo, changing the name to E. Remington & Son. In 1845 the firm landed a contract for Ml841 rifles which had been defaulted by the original contractor, John Griffiths, of Cincinnati, Ohio. Since obtaining the contract in December 6, 1842, Griffiths had not delivered one gun. The Remingtons filled this order so well that a second order was obtained in their own name for 7,500 M1841 rifles, which they duly filled. Meanwhile, casting around for more work, during 1846-7 they arranged to take on a contract held by N. P. Ames for Jenks carbines.

Jenks Carbine

The Navy’s breech-loading carbine designed by William Jenks of Columbia, South Carolina, was like other arms familiar to the New York gunmakers. It used a New York State type side hammer, although in prototype form some few fitted with a back-action flint lock are known. As perfected, and made in several slightly different styles by several contractors, the Jenks had a sliding breechblock and a finger lever on the top of the small of the stock. The side-striking hammer had a hook or curve at the top edge that, when the hammer was snapped, served to lock over the breech. Generally if the breech was partly open, the hammer would not reach the side-placed nipple to fire.
Sidehammer plain sporting rifles, with full stocks of the Kentucky or common American style of 1830, are known bearing New York or upper Pennsylvania association and marks. One of these formerly in the noted Independence Hall Association exhibition in Chicago on Devon Avenue had a pill-lock ignition, definitely a New York State rifle and perhaps a Remington. Whether these sidehammer guns are before or after the Jenks gun is a moot point. But the carbines Remington finished for the Navy were all sidehammer. N. P. Ames probably sold the contract for a profit, since Ames was noted as a conscientious contractor. Remington’s version incorporated the Maynard tape primer in the lockplate. It is said that Jenks, reputed to be a competent mechanic, came with the contract to Herkimer County. As Hatch puts this episode, it becomes a curiously garbled mixture of documented fact and old wives’ tales—or old workmen’s tales, than which there is nothing more unreliable:
At Chicopee Falls, in Massachusetts, (Eli Remington) visited the plant of the N. P. Ames Company . . . Recently they had gone into gunmaking with a Navy contract for a new-fangled breech-loading carbine invented by William Jenks. Mr. Ames was not happy with his experiment. He had no experience with the manufacture of firearms, and was rapidly acquiring too much experience with governmental red tape. He was ready to listen to a proposition. Remington looked at the excellent Ames machinery and coveted it. He examined the Jenks carbine, and decided that it was a practical
mechanism. With his inventor’s perception, he saw that he could make it into the best breechloader yet seen. And he took an instant liking to William Jenks.
Jenks was a Yankee, of Welsh descent, with curly hair, round eager eyes, a straight chiseled nose, and a thin, unhappy mouth. He looked like a minor poet, but his appearance of delicacy was strangely deceptive. For Jenks had the fire and imagination of a true genius, and a resilient inner core that had enabled him to buck bureaucratic indolence and red tape for nearly a decade, until by sheer perseverance (plus the excellence of his invention) he had dragooned the Navy into ordering a few of his guns. In Remington, he saw a chance to realize his ambitious dreams.
The upshot of Remington’s visit to Chicopee Falls was that he bought the whole Ames gun business, including machinery, contracts, guns in all stages of completion, and, most important of all, the services of William Jenks. The price was exceedingly moderate. In addition to a small down payment, Remington gave Ames two notes on the Phoenix Bank of New York payable in eight and ten months. Each note was for $1,290.50, making a total of $2,581.00.
Hatch concludes this passage by noting that there was a momentary delay in production while Lite and Philo Remington, at the insistence of the Government, filled a hurry-up order of ancient flintlocks—the last ever issued to American troops! Like the Unicorn and the Dodo, these alleged flintlock muskets by Remington are no longer with us, nor were they ever; no such arms are on record as having been ordered, no record exists at Remington to indicate they were fabricated, and no specimens exist in any collections in this or any other land.
But these are not the only catches in the Hatch story of Jenks. That he was a Yankee may be agreed, if of the galvanized kind, he coming from South Carolina in the preceding decade where he invented his breech mechanism. As to Remington perceiving it could be made into the best breechloader ever, there seems little need to say that Remington made what the Secretary of the Navy and the Board of Navy Commissioners ordered. And that Ames, who remained a faithful and diligent Government contractor through the War and whose corporate identity still survives (in somewhat reorganized form) today, was filled up with red tape is absurd. Ames, at the time he relinquished the Jenks contract, was on the verge of completing or had completed his contract for fab¬
ricating the novel Model 1843 U. S. Navy pistol or boxlock pistol. Perhaps Remington had gotten the barrel drilling method down pat and figured he could buy Ames out and still make a small profit, and at the same time end up with vastly increased production power. No great virtues need be attached to William Jenks coming along for the ride, though Lite Remington gave house room to every stray cat of an inventor who had an idea.
Such philanthropy seldom paid oft’, but the typewriter was a notable conception. If Jenks left his mark by improving machinery and processes, it will take a lot more digging to substantiate it. He fades from sight, there in his new home on the canal in Ilion, while beside the original armory building of 1828 a new works goes up, far more impressive in size and power. A new mill race is put in, and the Ames machinery, including stock-turning machines of the most advanced patterns of Thomas Blanchard, begin to spew their fine red dust as they chew out the shapes of the gun stocks.

Sporting Rifles

Remington continued production of common American sporting rifles in at least four basic sizes. Shipped South, they became essential armament in 1861 for volunteers; in the North, some match rifles were carried by Sharpshooters.
The smallest size is a buggy rifle or possibly a boy’s rifle, having a barrel less than 30 inches and with a slim stock. Calibers are not uniform and are as yet uncatalogued as to bore; perhaps barrels that did not finish well to one size were cut up to the next size, lacking uniformity, but all with a proper ball mould for each barrel.
Next in size would be described as the Basic Sporter. Such a rifle in this writer’s collection is utterly plain in finish, but very well made. The lock is plain outside, with old or original fire-blacking to its surface. Inside in a tiny arc the initials B. FA Co are placed between fixed limb of spring and arm of tumbler, in British fashion.
The cognomen X Fire Arms Co. was not too common in the British trade of the time; not one in

Long strip on top of Jenks carbine lifts up by hook thumbpiece to uncover trough for loading combustible cartridge. Hammer must be cocked by pulling on hook end. Gun was designed for Navy use.

stance comes to mind of traditional maker or parts supplier being known by that title in the 1840’s. In the United States the custom had greater use, and there is little doubt that this is an American-made lock, essentially hand made but well finished. It has an unusually long limb to the tumbler, to which the spring stirrup is attached, and this gives a good and easy action to the striking of the hammer. The halfcock notch on the striking motion is protected by a hardened steel flipper or fly to guide the sear out of catching in the notch. The bridle itself, which supports the tumbler and the sear, is of forged and either swedged or milled construction. Along the edge there are two ridges where some sort of tool came together. It may have been the end of arc of some curved punch which blanked out the bridle in several operations, but more likely it is the edge remaining where shaped cutters imperfectly continued the arc made by a preceding cutter on the adjoining edge. A combination of machine work and hand work can be seen; not so fine as a typical No. 1 Enfield lock, but as good as thousands of first-class imported locks used in shotguns and sporting rifles. The inletting of the lock is not machine made, except possibly for the outline. The stock itself appears shaped by machine; finished by hand. The butt plate screws for example are slightly

Top short rifle is buggy or boy’s rifle, smallest seen of Remington-Ilion fabrication. Next is medium weight full octagon sporter with bullet starter. Rear peep sight is turned sidewise to show shape. Bottom is long plain sporter, a work rifle, with back-action lock. Same character of arm is shown in second cut on wood background in which top arm is M. James rifle (with hammer on it before loss) compared with fancy Remington-made match rifle having barrel turned round. Flattened planes on round breech section are called Rigby flats after British maker who affected this style. Medium-heavy match rifle takes bullet starting cone over muzzle. Stamped Devendorf, of Cedarville, Pa., this gun is unquestionably Remingtonbuilt in its entirety. Powder horn, hunting knife and celluloid-handled Dont sheathe me without honour gentlemen’s fighting knife and round ball mould are associated items.

off center and filed into unique positions; one would not interchange with any other. The oval escutcheon on top of the small of stock with a threaded hole for the screw-disc rear peep sight is held by two screws, their grooves filed almost away.
Among possible suppliers of locks marked B. FA Co., which is also listed (by Gluckman and Satterlee) as B.F.A., are Joseph and Robert S. Bartless, Binghamton, New York. Between 1829 and 1834 they made flintlock Kentucky rifles and then percussion arms. If Gluckman’s recording of this is accurate, the dates may bracket a general change from flintlock or even pill-lock to the common percussion system among New York State gunmakers. At first located on Court Street, they moved to larger premises when the site of the first shop was taken over for a Canal project. At their new building on Franklin Street (now renamed Washington) they employed as many as 25 hands. If B. FA Co. is in fact their maker’s mark, a not unlikely conjecture, then there may be Remington barrels fitted to arms bearing their names as makers.
To the stock and lock, Remington fitted a barrel 33Vi inches long exactly, 1 inch across the muzzle, 1% inches across the breech, tapered octagonal, and bored 14/32-inch or .45-inch caliber, seven equal grooves and lands, twist one turn in 24% inches. The muzzle for 5/16-inch is turned round, to accommodate a brass sleeve inside which a plunger fits for starting the bullet. Each rifling groove is filed out a trifle on the muzzle end to help the patch start without cutting. The combination of statistics suggests use of a picket ball at fairly high black-powder velocity. A scope may once have been fitted; located 11% inches, 12 inches, and 12% inches from the breech face are three Vs-inch holes, plugged, on top of the barrel. A rear mount at that place could have been used with a mount in front dovetailing into the front sight slot. The present gunmetal base and blade is cut in 1 1/16 inches from the muzzle face; at 13/16inch from the muzzle a line is scribed across the top flat, and a zero line scribed in the centerline of the flat, with divisions for windage right and left marked in with lines and tiny prick-punch dots. The front sight and present rear sight appear to have been fitted when the gun was expertly refinished sometime before the turn of the century. The rear sight of buckhorn sporting type with elevating wedge is machine made and appears like the Remington, Lyman, or Winchester sights of the 1880’s. Near the breech the bottom flat of the barrel in a not very precise fashion bears faintly the mark Remington. On top, located 5 inches from the breech, in two lines with the city address uppermost, is stamped Utica, ny/m. James. Unquestionably, Morgan James knew the Remingtons, at least as business clients; he sold their rifles.
This same basic sidelock rifle can be found in a heavier barrel model, with general characteristics similar including the peep sight. Sometimes the rear peep stem screws directly into the end of the breech tang; on others it fitted to an escutcheon on top of the stock. Where a sight stem is threaded into the tang, an escutcheon may be fitted as a decorative initial plate, for the owner’s cypher.
The plainest form of this rifle has only a brass butt plate and a white metal fore-end cap; there are no stock escutcheons for the cross bar that holds barrel to wood. Perhaps on order, optional extra, or simply a logical innovation in the regular production, Remington soon fitted little plates on each side of the stock for the wedge to bear in, strengthening the stock in recoil. About the time the gun collector is ready to observe these plates were characteristically rectangular with mitred corners, in shape, a rifle fitted with long oval plates turns up. In this same standard rifle size, locks can be either bar style, or back action. More likely the back action locks were fitted as an improvement late in the 1840’s after the back action style became common from the French inspiration in their infantry muskets, Fusil a la Ligne Mdle 1840, systeme a piston, or percussion. In heavy barreled styles, sometimes two wedges were used to hold stock and barrel together. A patent breech was also used, and a very odd Remington rifle in the writer’s collection has Rigby flats on a round barrel, turned smaller for false muzzle.
This arm gives evidence of its Remington origins in two ways: the first is the form, but we will revert to this point later on. The bottom of the barrel also bears faintly . . . ington, showing the barrel has been set back slightly and re-breeched. As this arm has a patent breech permanently screwed into the stock, with the barrel breechplug keying into it, the breech may be an addition to take up the space if the back was cut off, removing the Rem of the maker’s name.
This handsome rifle has seen better days but still shows its original high quality. All furniture, instead of being common yellow brass, is bright German silver. The rifle-style butt is cut with double cheek pieces, one for each side. On each cheek flat is inset a floral silver cut-out; along each cheek flat is a stylistic groove; below each is a silver strip 4 inches long. The round barrel is 34 1/16 inches from muzzle to breech. Extending forward 10% inches from the breech are flats; one on top and one each side. These flats are not parts of any octagonal form; the round shape of the barrel is projected between each flat all the way to the breech. This is a cylindrical barrel with three tables or pads shaped integral, that on Ballard rifles of the 1880’s had come to be called Rigby flats. It is thought that John Rigby & Company, Dublin and London, first affected this cross between the round and octagon in their rifles, but the flatted areas were much smaller and close to the breech than on this handsome Remington match rifle. The barrel tapers from 1% inches at the breech to 1 1/16 inches at muzzle; the round for starter is 1 inch across. Rifling is .50-inch, 6-groove; it has been relined. On the top flat, 1% inches from breech, partially covered by an old Indian or frontier rawhide sleeve stock repair, is the stamp of L. Devendorf/Cedarville. Louis Devendorf of Cedarville, New York, is listed as having made percussion target rifles. On one at least, he put his sales stamp; the rifle was made by Remington.
Among little details of outline and shaping which come to spell Remington to the collector’s eye is a shape of the stock that is characteristic. Not all Remingtons have this shape; but of all rifles seen with this shape, of the half-stock percussion American sporting rifle type, all were in some part identified Remington. The inescapable conclusion is that the arm complete was made by E. Remington & Son, Ilion, New York, using bought locks and sometimes bought hardware, but own-make barrels, ironware, and stocks. This detail is the unusually tapered teat shape to the stock cheeks on either side; on the right where the bar lock sets in, and on the reverse where there may be a simple escutcheon for the cheap single lock-screw that holds on the hardware company lock. The M. James rifle has an odd liver shaped escutcheon; the Devendorf rifle a fancy scrolled silver plate. To fill Devendorf’s order, Lite Remington bought a lock from Warren/ Albany as the outside is incised. But Warren, sometimes in association with a partner, as Warren & Steele, is known to have used English parts in his own gunmaking. Perhaps, to judge from the jammed-up position of the names compared with the spread out cheap engraving, this was an imported lock they marked and then sold.
Remington Arms was soon to fill a large role in the greatest War on the North American continent. To prepare for it, the family, the sons of Eli Remington II, needed more preparation than desultory rifle barrel making.
The fact is that E. Remington & Sons from the time in 1832 when only 20 men were at work to the mid1850’s had achieved success and production capacity by making sporting rifles. They had made and by the friendly Erie Canal shipped thousands of them; an average annual production capacity of even 1,000 common sporting rifles from 1830 to 1850 would yield a total of 20,000 rifles actually produced and sold by the time Colonels Talcott and then Craig turned to the Herkimer County firm as a contractor. A total of 12,500 Ml841 rifles were turned out, and Remington passed from the handicraft stage to machine production. The Jenks contract was bought from Ames and with it stock turning equipment of high production. Transformation of 20,000 Springfield pattern muskets to Rifled Muskets, .69, with special Remington made Maynard locks shows the firm had more than nominal capacity. It was under date of September 9, 1854, that E. Remington signed a contract to alter 20,000 flintlock muskets to Maynard primer at $3.15 per musket. The new Remington primer lock was slightly different from the usual Maynard linkage inside but was under Maynard’s recent agreement (of February 3, 1854) permitting unrestricted use of his invention by the Army and Navy, upon payment of $50,000. The new locks made by Remington, who would hardly have undertaken a lock contract unless they had extensive lock making machinery already on hand, was marked Remington’s/Ilion. n. y./I 857/us behind the hammer.
The Rigby flatted barrels exist on larger sizes of rifles; one absolutely plain specimen, but with double cheek piece, examined at an Ohio gun collectors convention, is a gut-buster weighing about 25 pounds and measuring just under 2 inches across flats. Caliber as Closeup of locks from boy’s rifle and long back-action sporter of preceding plate show REMINGTON lock markings. Boy’s rifle lock and guard resemble same parts on pilllock rifle shown previously, though lock probably is not a conversion but is original percussion. Remington had extensive lock-making machinery at work by time of Maynard primer government contract.

recalled is about .50-inch, not exceptionally large. It was turned for false muzzle and had the unusual long Rigby flats, on an otherwise round ribbed barrel. A full stock Remington sporter is not known, though such may exist. Superposed rifles, fitted with back action percussion locks, engraved Remington and finished in other details like those described, have been handled. In the Remington Arms Company offices sharing dishonors with the fraudulently flinted percussion rifle, is an honest old side-by-side rifle and shotgun, twist barrels, back action locks, with a fanciful Germanic-style trigger guard. A combination rifle and shotgun, side by side, believed of Remington make, appears to have the barrels bored parallel from a single block of cast steel.

Closeup of locks from boy's rifle and long back-action sporter of preceding plate show REMINGTON lock markings. Boy's rifle lock and guard resemble same parts on pilllock rifle shown previously, though lock probably is not a conversion but is original percussion. Remington had extensive lock-making machinery at work by time of Maynard primer government contract.

To the statement that Remington made a great number of sporting rifles, noted rifleman and arms authority John T. Amber, editor of The Gun Digest, snorted, If Remington made so many rifles, where are they? The answer is only now beginning to be searched out; they are behind the misleading lock marks like Warren, Albany or the retail salesmen’s stamps like Utica, n. y./M. James.
Any gunmaker worth his salt could slave over spokeshave and drawfile until he had created by hand a masterpiece of artistry for the discriminating customer, all by himself. But with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in upper New York State, young Lite Remington harnessed the tumbling water race of a brook in Ilion Gulph to his dream and turned out as yet uncounted thousands of good, and often fancy, standard American rifles for frontiersmen who wanted the best but could not afford to pay for needless foofurraw. To these men Remington offered his arms with the marks hidden on the bottom of the barrel. Let the local gunmaker gain the trade and the credit; Remington knew that soon the postman would bring in another order and onto the canal boat as it passed beneath the Remington dock the Remington shipping clerk would drop not one rifle but perhaps a dozen, addressed to L. Devendorf, Cedarville, or Utica N. Y„ M. James.