The Shawk & McLanahan Revolver

The original Confederate Colt is considered to be the brass-framed revolvers of Colonel Griswold made near Macon, Georgia. But to touch on the original, it is necessary to backtrack to a period, as in the militia musket confusion, immediately prior to the War. Militant nervousness, distance from protection of the Federal forces in the East, and a spirit of taking care of one’s own problems oneself, brought William Abel Shawk, of Pennsylvania, J. K. McLanahan of Cincinnati, and William Tegethoff, loan broker of St. Louis, together in Carondelet, Missouri. There was produced for a very short time the Shawk & McLanahan preCivil War Missouri revolver. A brass-framed .36 sixshooter somewhat resembling the Whitney, the “usual” specimen is marked on backstrap of butt, Shawk & McLanahan, St. Louis, Carondelet, Mo. But S & McL pistol serial No. 2 bears the mysterious stamping william tegethoff, a neat die stamp, on barrel, frame, and cylinder. Research by St. Louis gunsmith Robert H. Vaughn who owns this interesting pistol revealed that Tegethoff was in the loan business, either a pawn shop or the predecessor of today’s “building & loan associations,” and was a backer of Shawk in making these guns. No. 2 presumably was given to Tegethoff, who used the same die with which he might have marked silverware which he sold, to indicate ownership of this gun. No. 16 is recorded by Fuller; how many S & McL pistols were made is anybody’s guess.

The link between Shawk and Charles H. Rigdon, of the St. Louis firm Rigdon & Harmsted, scale makers, is tenuous. Shawk had made a fire-engine and sold it to the city of St. Louis in 1855 and went there to demonstrate it. Rigdon later served as “engineer” of the fire-engine. That the two met seems probable. Albaugh says Rigdon supplied the machinery with which Shawk made the revolvers.
In 1858 Shawk petitioned the authorities of the St. Louis suburb of Carondelet to allow him to establish a factory for the manufacture of locks and fire-engines. The firm name was Shawk & McLanahan. There Shawk invented a rifling machine and there built the revolvers. Rigdon’s “machinery” if there was any obtained by Shawk, may have been fixtures for making the gun. The weapon is well made and the skilled professional engineering hand of Rigdon seems evident in the S & McL pistol. The market for this weapon was big. The popular sentiment in the South was, that a man should be allowed to carry a gun if he wanted to. Perhaps the Code Duello was relied upon too heavily for disciplining hotheads, but pistol carrying while travelling as well as the right to “keep a gun around the house” was inborn in the population. Numerous state laws protected this right. While Richmond authorities later were to go around the country scavenging sporting arms and private weapons, the situation provoked Governor Clark of North Carolina to issue a proclamation that Confederate agents “have no lawful authority to seize your private arms, and you will be protected in preserving the means of selfdefense.” The conflict between a good Navy six for oP Granny to protect the ol’ manse, and the needs of the cavalry, fighting in a far state, were given substance by the Constitution of the Confederate States of America. Article I, Sec. 9, Par. 13 states: “A wellregulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The appointment of former presidential candidate John Charles Fremont as general commanding the Western Department with headquarters in St. Louis terminated Shawk’s revolver venture. Shawk, a Pennsylvania Quaker (man of peace?) remained a loyal Union man; Rigdon sided with the South and took his machinery with him. The actual fixtures for shaping the 5    & McL pistol doubtless remained behind in Carondelet, ultimately to be junked. Rigdon’s contribution to the South seems to have been a barge load of basic machine tools, and his engineering savvy.