Civil War Guns

Almost unrecorded is the important part which a company more distinguished for making copies of famous guns played in making an original contribution to manufacturing in the North. This firm, the Man hattan Firearms Company, variously of Norwich, Con necticut, and later of Newark, New Jersey, fabricated single-shot pistols and pepperbox arms quite similar in appearance to the Allen guns built by its neighbor firm of Allen & Thurber, of Norwich. Then, with the cessa tion of Colt’s exclusive patent rights in 1857 -8, Man hattan turned to manufacturing .31 and .36 percussion revolvers that closely resembled Colt’s arms but which contained many patented detail improvements. And lastly, in 1860 Manhattan introduced a 7-shot .22 square butt tip-up revolver which was a dead ringer for the tip-up Smith & Wesson. Though the big octagon barrelel .36 Manhattans are commonly called second ary U. S. martial pistols, in that they are the size most to be expected in the hands of troops buy...

From the catalog of Wallis and Wallis, British gun auctioneers ( 1962 ) at Lewes in Sussex, we read of the sale of a Starr revolver: Lot 1060 ... A 6 shot .44 Starr SA Army Perc Rev 14", brl 8", No. 51594, the top strap bearing old engraving Col. Colt Address New York, Good Condition but action As Found & frame screw not orig . Eben T. Starr of Yonkers, New York, might not have smiled at this latter day whimsey. Marking his re volver with the name of the man he dared challenge by launching a new revolving pistol business in 1858 was to him not funny. Though the modern gun bug who fraudulently marked this in the hope someone would bite on it as a hitherto unknown Colt double action revolver we trust was unsuccessful in his piracy, per haps the buyer at the Wallis and Wallis auction cherishes his purchase for what it is: one of the best and most modem revolvers of the Civil War era. Though complex inside at first glance, its parts are well thought out and reveal Star...

When Ripley gave Eli Remington II the contract for 10.000 rifles with sword bayonets he set in motion the wheels of industry that were brought to a shattering halt by Secretary Stanton’s proclamation. Like every one going up unto his own city to be taxed, the arms makers descended upon the chambers of Holt and Owen in Washington. In jeopardy was the contract for 10,000 rifles and 5,000 .44 caliber revolvers. The firm—for E. Remington & Sons no longer boasted the steady and patriarchal hand of Eli II at the helm, he having died in August, 1861 —was about to suffer much loss. Philo, the eldest son, born 1816 , was the inventive one, and later was responsible for the breech-loading Remington rifle upon which the firm rode the postwar tide. His younger brother Samuel was the general agent, making selling contracts and concluding purchases of materials and machines but also doing design work. Eliphalet Remington, later also to be called Junior, was the youngest of the three brothers. K...

The little smithy at Ilion Gulph by 1861 had grown into one of the major industrial complexes of mid state 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 in dustrial 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 manufactur ing 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 ...

In sunny California a lady built a house. To San Jose in 1881 after the death of her husband and only child, came Mrs. Sarah Winchester, wife of William Wirt Winchester, son of gun company founder, Oliver. Her husband had been secretary and vice president of “Winchester.” In San Jose she bought a modest eight-room house, and without rhyme or reason began at once to add rooms and remodel. Thirty years later she died leaving a crew of 16 or more carpenters busily adding on or tearing down portions of a structure which had grown to the enormous total of 160 rooms. Says Williamson in his book Winchester: Spread over six acres, within an estate of 160 acres, the house is a hodgepodge. In one room inside windows are barred, outside ones are not. There are screens on blank walls; exterior water faucets extend beneath second story windows; a balcony or skylight may be found in the middle of a room. Narrow passages and stairs with steps one or two inches high lead from one room and one level ...

Number of Spencers Purchased Spencer was born at Manchester, Connecticut, June 20, 1833 ; he remained identified with Connecticut industry all his life and died there, prosperous and founder of the famous Billings & Spencer firm, manufacturers of drop forging tools, on January 14, 1922 . Patentee of designs in silk-winding machinery, automatic screw machines and turret lathes, he is known for his development of the seven-shot Spencer repeating rifle and carbine. Buckeridge estimates 230,000 Spencer arms were used in the war; Harold Peterson in a profile on Spencer appearing in American Rifleman, more conservatively noted that 200,000 Spencer rifles and carbines are thought to have been employed in combat. The number is quite large, so large as to suggest error. Some 94,196 Spencer carbines are listed as procured in the war at a cost of $2,393,633.82; and 12,471 Spencer rifles, costing $467,390.56. Spencer cartridges totalling 58,238,294 were bought for $1,419,277.16. These pur...

If General Ripley had set out to deliberately em barrass a fellow officer who had reached a zenith in his career, he could not have done it better than by selling the Hall carbines in New York for $3.50. Gen eral John Charles Fremont, commander of the De partment of the West at St. Louis, the romantically labeled Pathfinder, who had numerous times crossed the wastes of the Great American Desert in his travels, who had a guiding hand in the short-lived California Bear Republic of gold rush days, was stopped as short in his career that might have led (as Grant’s did) to the White House, as if he had run into a brick wall. What did it was Fremont’s purchase at $22 each of 5,000 Hall carbines obsoleted by order of General Ripley and sold out of Governor’s Island (in the midst of a frantic scramble for arms) for only $3.50 each. That the guns were new, that they were rifled at an additional charge of only a dollar, and then sold to Fremont, served merely to aggravate the situation. Ci...