John Pearson

Hailing from Baltimore, and originally from England where he apprenticed as a clockmaker, John Pearson made his mark on history when he and Sam Colt came together in 1834. As a practical gunmaker in Baltimore on Center Market Place, Pearson was called on by Colt to make models of firearms in perfecting the Colt revolver. While The Story of Colt’s Revolver (W. B. Edwards, Stackpole Company, 1953) contains the first mention of John Pearson, and he is ignored by lists of gunmakers compiled by various authorities, Pearson was described in a brief obituary in the Fort Smith Elevator of Friday, August 3, 1883, as follows:

Mr. Pearson was a gunsmith and we may well say master of his trade. He should have been, as we verily believe, the recipient of honors attributed to Colt for the Colt’s patent firearms. He was one of the most ingenious of men, and a scientific workman, a sober, steady, industrious and honest man. He goes to his grave at the ripe age of 80, respected by all who knew him.

Pearson’s sudden death at 10 a.m. August 1 was a surprise to many, including his fellow Masons of the Bellevue Royal Arch Chapter No. 8, of which he was a member. He became a Mason on January 28, 1853, in Fort Smith, but apparently appeared in that bustling border town prior to 1850, his second son Richard being born there in that year. Pearson’s wife was Jenny Irvine, whose brother Alfred was colonel of the Royal Enniskillen Dragoons. Colonel Irvine later moved from Fort Smith to Canada where he served as a factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. It is possible, though not recorded so far as is known, that gunsmith Pearson might have supplied his brother-in-law with some “fusils” or Indian Trade rifles. Meanwhile, in Fort Smith, Pearson set up a gun shop in the 400 block on Garrison Avenue. At the rear of the shop, facing on North 4th Street, was his home. Pearson made single-shot guns and pistols; also presumably retailed. Family legend is that Pearson was given $30,000 in cash by Sam Colt as a final settlement for any claim which Pearson might have had with his early work on the Colt designs. Pearson used this money to buy Colt’s revolvers which he sold in the West.
Circumstantial proof of this may appear in Mitchell’s Colt book, on page 75. Colonel Colt in February, 1861, left Hartford for a Caribbean cruise; not for a vacation but in the essential need to relieve the pain of his illness with warmer weather. An important letter (probably to Hugh Harbison in Hartford) dated Havana, February 18, 1860, in Mitchell’s book is an obvious error of year (see page 70, op. cit.) and begins: “We have just all landed here safe and sound and I improve the minute to say I drew a check for $30,000 while in New York in favor of the cashier of the Mechanics Bank which please enter upon your (company) checkbook and charge the same to my private account.”
Several facts are in this brief statement: Colt wrote a Colt’s Pat. Firearms Mfg. Co. check, but did not draw it in favor of anyone; instead, he cashed it at the Mechanics Bank, having drawn it in their favor instead of “cash,” or “to bearer.” He asked that this be charged

Gunsmith John Pearson lost fortune he obtained from Colt for revolver invention, by serving loyally the Lost Cause.

to his private account and not to the Company, because it did not relate to the Company affairs but to some other cause. It hardly could be assumed to relate to the Cuban cruise, for the ship was chartered, and so much in gold, enough to found a new armory, would not have been needed. That Colt paid this sum to another person is almost certain, for he certainly would not be so foolish as to carry $30,000 around in gold with him; and there seems no probable cause why he would want to do so. But, if he met John Pearson in New York on that occasion, Pearson perhaps buying for his own account or for the state authorities—this would explain the sum of $30,000 mentioned by Colt and the long-held family legend that Pearson was paid' $30,000 by Sam Colt.
When he was paid this sum by Colt is not known by the family. Knowing Colt, one is safe in saying that he paid it only when it did not pinch him to do so, say in 1861 when business was booming with millions from musket contracts in sight on the horizon. Why Colt paid Pearson is another question: guilt? or generosity? or sincere recognition of a long-standing debt? or conclusion of some private agreement to reimburse Pearson from the eventual fruits of success? No one will ever know, for in any case, Colt would not have chosen to publicize the payment. We think it very probable this $30,000 drawn by Colt in February, 1861, was given in cash to Pearson. What he did with it was to turn around and immediately buy Colt’s revolvers with it! The profits from business must have been good, for Pearson is said to have had $75,000 in gold at one time before the evacuation of Fort Smith by Confederates, buried in his yard for safe-keeping. When at last War began, in a burst of Southern patriotism, the gunsmith dug up the gold and invested the entire sum in Confederate War bonds. He put his shop at the disposal of the Confederacy, and seems to have held some position roughly equivalent to “Chief of Ordnance for the Confederacy in the Southwest.” It is possible Pearson aided in setting up manufacture of some of the Colt-type pistols of “Confederate” origin, made in Arkansas or Texas. More probable, he stayed close to Fort Smith, repairing and percussioning, until the town was occupied by Federal troops and he had to flee. His shop was broken into and papers and records as well as equipment destroyed. Attempts to return home were made hazardous by bushwhackers in Arkansas, so he turned to smuggling. He went over to Kentucky and engaged in “the river traffic,” carrying contraband, mostly medicinal drugs such as quinine and opium, from Ohio to the Confederate armies in the mid-South. At War’s end, he returned home and tried to resume business as usual, which the obituary in the Fort Smith paper seems to indicate he did successfully.
An immigrant clockmaker from England, John Pearson helped invent one of the principal weapons of the Civil War, the Colt revolver. He wore himself out working for the South, poured his life savings down the drain of the Lost Cause, and wound up running drugs on a smuggler’s errand of mercy. But Pearson was far from alone in such conduct: the “beau geste” but sincere sacrifices of thousands like him for the Southern cause were the real arms and armor that defended the Confederacy.