Colt Model 1855 revolving rifle, the proven and ever-present Remington Rolling Blocks and the .45 caliber Springfields which were cheap, plentiful and frequently seen in the company of a pioneer family. No worthwhile collection of Western items is complete without a Sharps rifle, and Maquire’s was an early conversion to fire metallic cartridges. Confederate and Union rifles that had made their way westward with discharged or deserted veterans were reminders of these guns in the overall picture of the American West’s settling. Maquire didn’t consider the shotgun to be deadly enough for “men of our class,” but one specimen merited a place in is collection. This was a double barreled hammer gun carried by Niel House, who used it to ride Express guardsman for Wells Fargo to Virginia City from Sacramento in the early days.
Several other accumulations of Western artifacts were profiled during this period. One of the more significant was the 47-year weapon collection of George Shull. In 1873, Shull’s collection started as an innocent gathering of working guns and wound up as an assemblage of remnants of the Western tradition. His guns included Civil War battlefield pick-ups, brass framed Winchesters, Spencers, even Evans rifles and the rest, totaling nearly 50 reminders of better times. A white-goateed Mr. Shull posed with his assortment of mementos for a picture taken at his Iowa home, and it was published in the January, 1920 number of the Magazine of the West.
Jas. N. Sterling submitted a photo and brief descriptions of his 30-year gatherings in December of 1917. In the collection were three Sharps rifles, the first a bona-fide killer of bison. Chambered for the massive .45-120-550 case, it tipped the scales two ounces over 17 pounds. The aristocratic brother of the Sharps buffalo gun and champion at the thousand-yard line was the Sharps Creedmoor. Mr. Sterling’s elegant example sported a wind gauge front sight, and two vernier rears, one of which was mounted on the rifle’s heel for use in the supine, or back position.
Among the quality relics of buffalo days were two Remington percussion revolvers and a pair of .44 caliber cap and ball Colts. There were a couple of Spencers, one of which was a dazzling long-barreled factory sporting rifle. The lever action was represented by the 1866 Model Winchester, and a Henry nice enough to command six figures on today’s market.
An entire page of the January 1916 Outer’s Book was devoted to a stunning photograph of the Colt collection of Charles W. Parker of Concord, California. Nearly every model and every variation of sixgun and revolving rifle that was ever assembled at a Colt plant was represented. Sadly, only the photo was published. For the Western history buff, missing were the details of individual pieces and how they might have figured in the struggle to win the West.
The muzzle loader of the Kentucky class got its fair share of attention and exposure. A fair number of readers furnished reports on the gunsmith crafted flintlock and cap lock arms they had manage to retain, inherit, or acquire. During this era, many guns made by artisans such as Jas. Golcher, Simon Miller, John Shell, Isaac Palm, all famous in their time, were brought to the attention of the readers across the pages of Outdoor Life and the other outdoor magazines. Mark Woodmansee, as one example, submitted a delightful photo of his five Kentuckys, together with their accouterments for his fellow enthusiasts to enjoy. One of these was retrieved from where it was dropped by one of Pickett’s Virginia rebels at the Battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1865.
However, all the wishing in the world wouldn’t bring back the frontier conditions of the early West or its spirit. A Missourian who chose to sign his namee “L ‘Encuerado” shed some interesting light on the use of the Henry rifle, both in the Civil War and on the plains of the West. In April of 1908, he furnished Outdoor Life readers with an anecdote involving a tiny band of steely-nerved Rebel veterans and a larger group of Indians being exposed for the first time to the repeating rifle. The incident took place somewhere in the Northwest.
At one of their camps, they were attacked by a band of hostile savages who feigned a charge, hoping to draw the fire of the white men. The Indians intended to rush them before their guns could be reloaded. They succeeded in drawing the anticipated fire, and charged the defenders furiously, only to be met by a murderous and rapidly successive fire at a range close enough to see the flabber-gasted expressions on the faces of the red men. The few survivors retreated at full speed. L ‘Encuerado was later given one of the Henrys associated with the lopsided battle as a memento.
A sketch of three seldom-seen pistols was presented in Outdoor Life for March of 1917. Don Maquire provided the opportunity as well as a couple of photographic cuts. Of the three, he seemed to be the most proud of a pristine Sharps single shot breechloading pistol patterned after the Sharps side-hammer rifle principle. Its inventors had hopes that this arm would fall into favor of the military when it was brought out in the mid-1850s. The Colt revolver was a formidable competitor, however.
Don Maguire’s three relic pistols pictured and described in the March, 1917 issue of Outdoor Life. From top: Sharps 44-caliber single-shot breechloading percusssion pistol; 58-caliber Remington rolling block pistol; Walsh Firearms Co. five-chambered, 10-shot revolver. The loads were superimposed in each chamber. The right hammer fired the front charge through a tube in the cylinder wall. The left hammer fired the rear load. Needless to say, the Walsh never really caught on.
The second was a particularly well preserved specimen of a Remington 58-caliber rolling block pistol that Mr. Maquire had acquired at a sale of government surplus items. Maquire told how this model was issued to cavalrymen who discovered that it was just the thing for “riding close to buffalo.” Galloping alongside a bison and shooting it from atop a fast mount was considered to be grand sport for a horse soldier stationed on the range.
The third rarity was a dual-hammered Walsh ten-shot revolver of 1859 vintage. The inventor of this gimmick must have had visions of superseding the Colt sixshooter. There were a few bugs in the design and the gun wasn’t a success, although a few made their way into the holsters of Confederate troopers during the Civil War. Maquire’s example was retrieved on the battlefield of Corrinth in October of ‘62, from the person of a Rebel captain who, as war trophy seekers have remarked throughout history, “no longer had a need for it.”
Dr. B.J. Ochsner was one of the great surgeons of the West and one of its most devoted handgun cranks. His pistol collection was profiled in the December 1916 issue of Outdoor Life. There were pistols of all descriptions, from French duelers to the ultra-modern Luger. Included were two scarce Pope-barreled handguns, a Smith and Wesson .38 and a Stevens. The high point of the collection to the Old West buffs certainly, was the brace of Colt Navies, presented by a former superintendent of the Mesa Verde National Park, and were known to have killed several men on the frontier. A. H. Hardy, Peters exhibition shooter and author of the piece, failed to mention whether the dead men were good guys or bad guys.
Correspondent Don Wiggins showed up in 1914 with a primitive-looking North and Savage revolving rifle of 1852 vintage that was a genuine Indian weapon. Harry Bennet, the rifle’s proud owner in 1914, had secured it from the Hood River Indians 10 years previously. The buck who sold it to him passed along that his father had carried the gun while fighting under Chief Joseph. A number of brass tacks, about fifty, ornamented the stock in typical red man fashion. Hood River legend had it that each tack represented the scalp of a white man.
As the metallic cartridge came into common usage in the late 1870s, the percussion system was effectively obsoleted. The cartridge revolvers replaced the cap and balls, and some of their owners neglected their old sixshooters, allowing them to decay like a pair of old shoes. Sometimes the old guns were simply discarded and considered good riddance. It was maintained that the old system was an untrustworthy and dangerous one, and there was some risk associated in shooting them. In an improperly managed cap and ball, wayward sparks at discharge would jump from cylinder to cylinder, detonating
