War has always been an important resource used to protect investments made by one segment of a society from being lost. It can also be a means of making money. The following research shows that a company, set up in Massachusetts and invested in by many former China-trade opium merchants, was a prime mover in colonization of the Kansas Territory. Were these New Englanders that committed against slavery, or were they more concerned with selling weapons like the Sharps Rifle, manufactured in Connecticut, to protect other investments they made in frontier Kansas?
The Sharps Rifle Episode in Kansas History
by William Henry Isely
Sharps rifle instructions The New England Emigrant Aid Company was accused by politicians and pro-slavery partisans of having initiated the policy of arming. A large portion of the press and the non-resistance, Garrisonian abolitionists joined in the cry of condemnation. 'Sharps Rifles' became a byword for dispute and controversy. It absorbed the attention of the United States Senate. Congress appointed committees to discover how, when, and by whom arms were sent to Kansas....
Eli Thayer of Worcester, Massachusetts, came forward as the man of the hour. He would checkmate the pro-slavery programme by colonizing this new territory with free-state men. To accomplish this end he at once chartered the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, later rechartered as the New England Emigrant Aid Company, with an authorized capital stock of one million dollars.
Thayer received the most financial assistance from, among others:
- Amos A. Lawrence,
- Edward Everett Hale,
- Dr. Samuel Cabot,
- James M. S. Williams [of Glidden and Williams],
- Horace Greeley,
- Charges J. Higginson,
- George Luther Stearns,
- Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, and
- John Carter Brown [scion of a slave-trading family and president of the Company].
President Lincoln's opponent in 1860, the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, in his Congressional committee, according to Edward Everett Hale "ascribed this movement to a desire to make profit on the part of New Englanders." [page 85, ]
Notwithstanding the New Englanders' intention in 1854, when $30,000 in Emigration Company stock was sold, of making Kansas a state where slavery would not be allowed, the 1855 elections held in the territory were almost unanimously for pro-slavery candidates. Shortly thereafter, Thayer received the following letter from one of the colonists the Company had recruited and financed:
To Hon. Eli Thayer, Worcester, Mass.Our people have now formed themselves into four military companies, and will meet to drill till they have perfected themselves in the art. Also, companies are being formed in other places, and we want arms. Give us the weapons and every man from the North will be a soldier and die in his tracks if necessary, to protect and defend our rights. . . .Cannot your secret society send us 200 Sharps rifles as a loan till this question is settled? Also a couple of field-pieces? If they will do that. I think they will be well used, and preserved. I have given our people encouragement to expect something of the kind, and hope we shall not be disappointed. Please inform me what the prospect is in this direction. If the Governor sets this election aside, we of course must have another, and shall need to be up and dressed.
In great haste,
Very respectfully,
C. Robinson
After receipt of 100 Sharps Rifles, packaged as Books, the Kansas residents requested more, whereupon another 100-rifle shipment "packed in casks, like hardware," was sent to the agent for the Kansans with the following letter:
Mr. James B. Abbott, care of A. Rogers, Hartford.Boston, August 20, 1855.
My Dear Sir: This installment of carbines is far from being enough, and I hope the measures you are taking will be followed up until every organized company of trusty men in the Territory shall be supplied. Dr. Cabot will give me the names of any gentlemen here who subscribe money, and the amount—of which I shall keep a memorandum, and promise them that it shall be repaid either in cash, or in rifles, whenever it is settled that Kansas shall not be a province of Missouri. Therefore, keep them in capital order, and above all, take good care that they do not fall into the hands of the Missourians after you once get them into use. You must dispose of these where they will do the most good, and for this purpose you should advise with Dr. Robinson and Mr. Pomeroy.
Yours truly,
Amos A. Lawrence.
It should be noted here that the largest subscriber to the stock besides Lawrence, for whom Lawrence, Kansas was named, was John Murray Forbes, retired from the China opium trade, who was then in the process of building his railroad from Massachusetts to Iowa, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy. "Burlington" was the connection in Kansas, that Forbes began buying in 1856, just as his interest in the colonization movement was being whetted. One biographer stated:
Donor checks were made payable for Kansas "Books," and accounts were kept by the Company records. Dr. Samuel Cabot was "perhaps the most active Boston director of the Emigrant Aid Company" and became a one-man special committee, the treasurer for the "rifles fund," appointed during the summer of 1855.
Possibly the most fascinating tidbit of information about the group of colonists to Kansas is as follows:
An excerpt from the self-serving essay, “John Brown in Massachusetts,” written by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, a 60-year resident of Concord, Massachusetts, appeared in the The Atlantic Monthly (April 1872); Volume 29, No. 174; page 420-433):
In politics Forbes was a Whig until 1850. Until Forbes heard Wendell Phillips's celebrated speech denouncing the murder of the anti-slavery editor Elijah Lovejoy he had been neutral or indifferent to the subject of slavery. Forbes later said, "That speech changed my whole feeling with regard to it, though the bigotry and pigheadedness of the abolitionists prevented me acting with them." He supplied money and weapons to New Englanders sent to fight slavery in Kansas and in 1859 entertained John Brown.
Donor checks were made payable for Kansas "Books," and accounts were kept by the Company records. Dr. Samuel Cabot was "perhaps the most active Boston director of the Emigrant Aid Company" and became a one-man special committee, the treasurer for the "rifles fund," appointed during the summer of 1855.
About $12,500 passed through Dr. Cabot's hands for the defense of the free-state people in Kansas. The bulk of these contributions came from New England, a few from New York state, and $2,500 from the Kansas National Aid Committee. Under expenditures, it appears that the largest sums were paid to Palmer and Company, agents for Sharps rifles; the various items, including a draft for $2,500 to Pomeroy, aggregating about $8,000 and good for about 325 rifles. Of the remainder, one thousand is paid to A. A. Lawrence on the previous rifle account, and the balance is expended for revolvers, bowie-knives, ammunition, and general expenses.
Through the efforts of [Eli] Thayer a Connecticut Kansas colony was organized in New Haven, including many Yale graduates; and it started west on March 31, 1856. A few days before, a farewell service was held in North Church, Henry Ward Beecher delivering the address. Professor Benjamin Silliman presided at this meeting, and at its conclusion stated that no provision had been made for properly equipping the party with arms: he therefore appealed to the audience to provide fifty rifles. Beecher promptly responded, agreeing to give $625, which would pay for half the number, if the other half should be given by those present." The full amount was soon secured. On the following day the senior class of Yale College purchased an extra rifle for Hon. C. B. Lines, the leader of the party. On the day of departure Beecher was again present and presented each man in the company with a Bible and a Sharps rifle....At the only general meeting of the committee, held in New York City, January, 1857, it was reported that two thousand emigrants and fifty tons of clothing had been sent to Kansas; and that the committee had raised and expended ninety thousand dollars in the direct aid and support of the freestate cause.
This committee, before which John Brown appeared in January, 1857, had been organized the preceding summer in the midst of the excitement attending the outrages committed in Kansas on the Free State settlers there, many of whom had gone out from Massachusetts. It consisted of many members from different parts of the State, but its work was mainly done by an executive committee, of which, as of the larger committee, the late George Luther Stearns of Medford was chairman, and F.B. Sanborn of Concord was secretary.
Other members of the executive committee were Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Dr. Samuel Cabot (who were also members of a National Kansas Committee), Dr. William R. Lawrence, Judge Thomas Russell, and Mr. Patrick T[racy] Jackson, who was treasurer of the committee. In the autumn of 1856 and the following winter the labors of this committee were so active that it was thought proper the secretary should devote his whole time to them, and he did so, occupying an office in Niles’s Block, on School Street in Boston, and there receiving all persons who had business with the committee. It was in this room very early in January, 1857, that John Brown of Osawatomie —“Osawatomie Brown,” as he was then called— first introduced himself to the acquaintance of those Massachusetts men on whom he afterwards relied so much, and who aided him with money and in other ways to carry out his long-cherished design.
He came to this room early one morning, accompanied by his son Owen, who had escaped with him from Kansas; he brought a letter of introduction to the secretary from Mr. George Walker of Springfield MA [Sanborn's brother-in-law], and, on making known who he was, his welcome was a very cordial one. The fame of his exploits in Kansas had preceded him, and given him a title to great consideration; but his own aspect and manner would have made him distinguished anywhere, among men who know how to recognize courage and greatness of mind. He was then in his fifty-seventh year, but active and vigorous when not suffering from an ague contracted in Kansas; his figure was tall, slender, and commanding, his bearing military, and his garb a singular blending of the soldier and the deacon....
In a few days Captain Brown made the acquaintance of the men in Boston whom he wished to consult, -- of Mr. Stearns, Dr. Cabot, Theodore Parker, Amos A. Lawrence, Judge Russell, Dr. Howe, Mr. Garrison, and all who were then conspicuous in maintaining the cause of the Kansas pioneers. His special object was to obtain control of some two hundred Sharpe’s rifles, belonging to the Massachusetts committee, with which to arm a force of a hundred men for the purpose of defending Kansas and making excursions, if necessary, into Missouri and other slave States. His Virginia plan was then in his mind, but he did not communicate it to any person in Massachusetts for more than a year; only taking pains to say that with the arms, money, and clothing that he might get for his company, be should act on his own responsibility, without taking orders from any committee. With this understanding, and having great confidence in him, the Massachusetts executive committee, on the 8th of January, 1857, gave him an order for taking possession of the two hundred rifles, with their belongings, then stored at Tabor, in the southwestern part of Iowa. This order, however, did not authorize him to make any use of the arms, though it appropriated five hundred dollars for his expenses in getting possession of them; and it was not until April 11, three months later, that a vote was passed allowing Captain Brown to sell a hundred of the rifles to Free State inhabitants of Kansas. At the same time another sum of five hundred dollars was voted him, to be used “for the relief of persons in Kansas.” The arms thus placed at his disposal were a part of those afterwards carried by him to Harpers Ferry, and, as the true nature of the transaction by which they came, honestly, into his possession, for use in Virginia, has never been well understood, it may here be explained.
In the winter of 1855-56 a large subscription was collected in Boston by Dr. Samuel Cabot and others, expressly for the purchase of arms for Kansas settlers, and with this money a hundred Sharpe’s rifles and some other arms were purchased by Dr. Cabot and forwarded to Kansas early in 1856. These were no part of the arms of Captain Brown, which were purchased by the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee in the autumn of 1856, and forwarded, through the National Committee, having its headquarters at Chicago, by the Iowa and Nebraska route to Kansas.
They never seem to have got farther than Tabor, where they were lying when Captain Brown made his exit from Kansas by that route, in November, 1856. On reaching Chicago, soon after, he appears to have made application to Messrs. George W. Dole, J. D. Webster (afterwards General Webster, of General Grant’s staff), and Henry B. Hurd, the Chicago members of the National Committee, for the custody of the rifles at Tabor. This application was not granted, perhaps because the committee distrusted Captain Brown, perhaps because they recognized the Massachusetts committee to be owners of the arms, as the fact was. The Chicago committee did afterwards, however, lay claim to the control of these arms; and one reason for the Massachusetts order of January 8, 1857, above alluded to, was to place them in the hands of a man who had shown his ability to protect whatever was in his custody.
Before taking actual possession of them, Captain Brown attended a full meeting of the National Committee at the Astor House in New York, January 22-25, 1857 for the purpose of securing an appropriation from that committee for his company of minute-men; and, in order to settle the question, which Committee controlled the arms at Tabor, he made a request for those arms as a part of the appropriation. This request was vehemently opposed by Mr. Hurd of Chicago, who expressed great anxiety lest Brown should make incursions into Missouri or other slave States. Mr. Sanborn, who represented Massachusetts at the Astor House meeting, as proxy for Drs. Cabot and Howe, supported the application of Captain Brown, which was viewed with favor by a majority of the meeting. As a final compromise, it was voted that the arms at Tabor should be restored to the Massachusetts committee, to be disposed of as they should think best; and that an appropriation of several thousand dollars, in money and clothing, should be made to Captain Brown’s company by the National Committee. This left the Massachusetts committee at liberty to use their own property as they saw fit, and they then gave Captain Brown undisputed possession of the arms, subject, however, to future votes of the committee at Boston. In point of fact, though this was not known to the committee till a year later, the rifles were brought from Tabor to Ohio in the year 1857, and remained there till they were sent to Chambersburg by John Brown, Jr., in July, 1859, for use at Harpers Ferry.
During the year 1857 the expenditures of the Massachusetts committee, for the relief of the famine in Kansas were very large; and as advances of money were made by the chairman, Mr. Stearns, much in excess of the current receipts, it was finally voted to reimburse him by giving him the assets of the committee. These consisted of the arms above named, certain notes of hand given by the Kansas settlers for clothing, wheat, etc., furnished them by the committee, and other property of small money value. Hence it resulted that, early in 1858, when the Massachusetts committee had ceased its active operations, Mr. Stearns was the legitimate owner of all the assets of the committee, with the understanding that, if he should realize from them more than the amount of his advances, the excess should go into the committee’s treasury. No such excess was ever collected, and Mr. Stearns virtually contributed to the committee several thousand dollars which he had thus advanced; but he retained the ownership of the rifles, the money value of which would perhaps cover his contributions.
Thus matters stood in March, 1858 when, as we are told, Captain Brown first communicated to a few of his Boston friends his plan for invading Virginia. Mr. Stearns was one of these, and, as owner of the rifles, he verbally consented that Brown should use them in his expedition. They were therefore legitimately and honestly in Brown’s possession in May, 1854 when, at the suggestion of Senator Wilson, Mr. Stearns directed Brown by letter not to use them for any other purpose than the defence of Kansas, “and to hold them subject to my order as chairman of said committee.” This letter, it must be said, while intended to prevent any immediate use of the arms in Virginia, was mainly a blind to satisfy Senator Wilson and other Republican politicians, who were alarmed at rumors of Brown’s plans, and knew nothing of the real ownership of the arms. In the same spirit Dr. Howe wrote to Mr. Wilson, May 15, 1858, that “prompt measures have been taken and will be resolutely followed up, to prevent any such monstrous perversion of a trust as would be the application of means raised for the defence of Kansas to a purpose which the subscribers of the fund would disapprove and vehemently condemn.” This language was literally true, yet it did not express the whole truth, inasmuch as it did not correct the general misapprehension that these arms were then the property of the committee.
But to return to John Brown in Massachusetts. He was here a large part of January and February and the early weeks of March and April, 1857. On the 18th of February he appeared before a committee of the State Legislature to urge that Massachusetts should make an appropriation of money in aid of the emigrants from the State who had settled in Kansas, and his speech on that occasion is printed in Redpath’s Life. It was one of the few speeches made by him in Massachusetts that year, and was mainly read from his manuscript. In March he made his first visit to Concord, where he addressed a large audience in the Town Hall, and spoke without notes, in a very impressive and eloquent manner. Among his hearers were Mr. R.W. Emerson and Mr. Henry Thoreau, who had made his acquaintance the preceding day, under circumstances that it may be interesting to mention, since both these gentlemen were his warm admirers, and took up his cause when he had but few champions among the scholars of Massachusetts. Mr. Thoreau’s noble appeal in his behalf, given at Concord on Sunday evening, October 30, 1859, and repeated at the Tremont Temple in Boston, November 1st, was the earliest address in his praise to which the Massachusetts public listened, as it still is the best; and it was soon followed by Mr. Emerson’s famous mention of Brown in a Boston lecture as one who had “made the gallows glorious, like the cross,” and by his speech at the Tremont Temple relief meeting, November 18, 1859, at which John Albion Andrew presided.
The first occasion of John Brown’s visit to Concord was to speak at the public meeting just mentioned, in March, 1857, which had been called at the instance of Mr. Sanborn, then living in that town. On the day appointed, Brown went up from Boston at noon and dined with Mr. Thoreau, then a member of his father’s family, and residing not far from the railroad station. The two idealists, both of them in revolt against the civil government then established in this country, because of its base subservience to slavery, found themselves friends from the beginning of their acquaintance. They sat after dinner, discussing the events of the border warfare in Kansas, and Brown’s share in them, when, as it often happened, Mr. Emerson called at Mr. Thoreau’s door on some errand to his friend. Thus the three men, so celebrated each in his own way, first met under the same roof, and found that they held the same opinion of what was uppermost in the mind of Brown. He did not reveal to them, either then or later, his Virginia plans; but he declared frankly, as he always did, his purpose of attacking slavery, wherever it could be reached; and this was the sentiment of his speech at the evening meeting, when he told the story of his Kansas life to the grandsons of the men who began the war of the Revolution at Concord Bridge. He spoke of the murder of one of his seven sons, the imprisonment and insanity of another; and as he shook before his audience the chain which his free-born son had worn, for no crime but for resisting slavery, his words rose to thrilling eloquence, and made a wonderful impression on his audience. From that time the Concord people were on his side, as they afterwards testified on several occasions. He was again in Concord for several days in April, 1857, and on this visit was the guest of Mr. Emerson for a day; from whose house he drove across the country to Mr. Stearns’s house at Medford, one pleasant Sunday morning in that April. The journals of Emerson, Thoreau, and, two years later, of their friend Bronson Alcott, no doubt bear witness to the impression made by Captain Brown on these three founders of a school of thought and literature.
Henry David Thoreau
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the latter part of March, 1857, Captain Brown, in company with Martin F. Conway, afterwards a member of Congress from Kansas, and Mr. Sanborn of the Massachusetts committee, met by appointment at the Metropolitan Hotel in New York, and proceeded in company to Easton, Pennsylvania, where Mr. Andrew H. Reeder, a former governor of Kansas, was living, for the purpose of inducing him, if possible, to return to Kansas, and become the leader of the Free State party there. The journey was undertaken at the instance of the Massachusetts committee, of which both Brown and Conway were, or had been, agents. It resulted in nothing, for Governor Reeder was unwilling to leave his family and his occupations at Easton to engage again in the political contests of Kansas. Captain Brown had quite a different conception of his own duty to his family, as compared with his duty to the cause in which he had enlisted. Although he had been absent from home nearly two years, he refrained from a visit to North Elba, where his family then were, until he had arranged all his military affairs in Boston, New York, and Connecticut; and he finally reached his rough mountain home late in April.
... Notwithstanding the success attending some of his efforts in New England in the spring of 1857, John Brown failed to raise at that time a sufficient sum of money to equip and support his company of mounted minute-men, and he left Massachusetts, late in April, much saddened by this failure.... He had formed an elaborate plan for raising and drilling such a company of men, and, without the knowledge of his Massachusetts friends, had engaged an English Garibaldian, Hugh Forbes, whom he found giving fencing-lessons in New York, to go out with him to Western Iowa, and there train his recruits for service in the field against slavery. Disappointed in raising the money he had expected, Captain Brown was obliged to cancel his engagement with Forbes, who, as the event proved, was a very useless and embarrassing person. Forbes had travelled from New York to Tabor in Iowa, in July and August, 1857, and returned early in November, angry and disappointed, to New York, whence he soon began to write abusive and threatening letters denouncing Brown, and speaking of his plans in a way that surprised Brown’s Massachusetts friends, who had never beard of Forbes before, and who knew absolutely nothing of the grand scheme for invading Virginia. It may be that this quarrel with Forbes impelled Brown to impart his plans more fully to his Massachusetts friends, or a few of them; at any rate, he did so impart them, early in the year 1858, and in a manner which will be hereafter related. For the present it is enough to say that, up to the close of 1857, though Brown had then cherished his Virginia scheme for nearly twenty years, and had revealed it ten years before to his colored friend Thomas in Springfield MA, there was no person among the Abolitionists or Kansas committee-men of Massachusetts, so far as we know, who had even a suspicion of his main purpose. So well had he kept his secret, not by dissimulation, but by mere power of silence, that when it was revealed to a chosen few, in February, 1858, it came upon them all with a shock of surprise.
Who were these men in Massachusetts who were financing John Brown's violent attack on "Southern" slavery? According to The Historical encyclopedia of world slavery (2 Volume Set) by Junius P. Rodriguez, in addition to those named above:
 |
| Thomas Wentworth Higginson |
"[Thomas Wentworth] Higginson was one of the group of New England abolitionists that included Gerrit Smith, Reverend Theodore Parker, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, George Luther Stearns and Franklin Sanborn, that financially supported John Brown's anti-slavery activities in territorial Kansas and later his raid on Harper's Ferry, Va., Oct. 16, 1859....The correspondence between the members of the committee and Higginson discusses their fundraising activities in Massachusetts and differences of opinion over how the funds are being spent...."
We must, therefore, add that name, as well as the name of Thomas Russell, who prepared the legal document setting up the trust for not only the funds given by the New Englanders into the hands of John Brown, but also the rifles furnished him to the raid that would follow.
Boston, Massachusetts, 14 April 1857.
I, John Brown of North Elba, New York, now make and appoint George L. Stearns of Medford Samuel Cabot jr. of Boston Mass. and William H. Russell of New Haven Conn. as trustees to hold all funds and other personal property now in my hands, or in the hands of [W. H. T. Collender] of Hartford, or in the hands of any person, whether now or hereafter collected or procured, [struck: illegible to apply] [inserted: in my behalf] for the aid of the free state cause in Kansas, said trustees to hold and use such funds and property in aid of that cause, leaving the manner of such use to their own judgment. Provided that this instrument shall be void & of no effect so long as I am able to administer said funds and use said property for the aid of the free states cause in Kansas.
Signed at Boston, April 14. 1857
– – – – John Brown
In presence of {3 words in 9th line erased before signature},
& in my behalf {interlined} Thomas Russell
Mary Ellen [Mrs. Thomas] Russell visited John Brown in jail a few weeks before his execution. She said that although she had never approved of his violent methods, she admired him as a man of vision and idealism. Brown had been friends with the Russells for years, and had stayed at their home on several occasions despite the fact that Thomas Russell was a prominent member of the Massachusetts judiciary. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn of the Secret “Six” would allege long after the raid on Harpers Ferry that “Brown’s general purpose of attacking slavery by force, in Missouri or elsewhere, was known in 1857-8-9” to Judge Russell.
 |
| Lawrence |
Richard S. Lawrence - Sharps
Rifle Manufacturing Co. was organized as a holding company with
$100,000 in capital and with John C. Palmer as president, Christian
Sharps an engineer, and Richard S. Lawrence as master armorer and
superintendent of manufacturing. Sharps was to be paid a royalty of
$1.00 per gun and the factory was built on the property of Robbins &
Lawrence in Hartford, CT. The Model 1851 was replaced in production
by the Model 1853. All Sharps rifles were manufactured in Windsor,
VT until October 1856. Christian Sharps left the Company in 1853;
Richard S. Lawrence continued as the chief armorer until 1872 and
developed the various Sharp models and improvements that made the
rifle famous.
 |
| Silliman |
Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864), American chemist. Silliman initially
studied law, but in 1802 he was appointed as Professor of Chemistry and
Natural History at Yale University, USA. He was a keen populariser of
science, and founded the American Journal of Science (AJS) in 1818. He
became the first president of the Association of American Geologists in
1840, and was also a founding member of the National Academy of Science
in 1863. Although erected after his death, the Peabody Museum at Yale,
which displays mineralogy and geology, was built thanks to his work.
In 1851 Robbins & Lawrence sent a representative with six Army Mississippi-style rifles equipped with the interchangeable system to the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, held in Hyde Park, London, England,. The rifles were exhibited at the famous Crystal Palace and "excited great interest." Robbins & Lawrence received a medal for their rifles.
The medal the armory received in London led to a contract with the British Government in 1854 for one hundred and fifty machine tools for a new state armory, as well as to a parliamentary investigation into the development of labor-saving machinery in the United States. The English Committee visited many American industries in 1854, including the Springfield Armory and the Sharp's Armory in Hartford, Connecticut. The Sharp's Armory was built as the city's second fire arms company three years after the Colt Armory. The two-story, brick Sharp's Armory was constructed in 1852 and managed from 1852 to 1856 by R & L.
The Armory manufactured Sharps Breech-loading Carbine and Rifle using Christian Sharps' (1811-1874) rifle patent (1848) until 1875. Lawrence led a tour of the new Hartford factory and disclosed that the gun machinery was actually made at the Armory in Windsor. The committee next visited Windsor, and R & L received a $23,585 contract for rifles and gun machinery, which was installed in the government-owned Royal Small Arms Factory (1818-1988) in Enfield at the north end of London. This factory "became a virtual duplicate of the American System."
Company president Samuel Robbins reported in 1854 to the stockholders that the company was operating with four departments: gun, pistol, machine and car shops, and that "the business and accounts of each being kept separately." The machinery, tools and material in the shops (including a fifth, the forging shop) were valued at $133,745.04 and combined with other assets totaled $153,292.60. The report also noted, "with the exception of the car department, the business of which is necessarily somewhat fluctuating, our shops have always been filled with business."
In 1855 "the works" included the Armory and Machine Shops (valued at $20,000), a double dwelling house ($1,700), a new, four-story boarding house ($2,000) for the convenience of their single workmen and those without houses in town, and a small house on the corner of River Street ($300); for a total in the Windsor Grand List of $23,000. The decade of historical significance for the famous Armory came to an end in 1856. Ordnance orders could not be completed and money had been lost on the car shops venture. These financial troubles forced R & L to sell the company in January 1856 to Charles Fox and John Henderson, both of London, England, who shortly thereafter sold to Lt. Col. Henry Sebastian Rowan in June 1856.
In 1856 Lawrence left Windsor, Vermont, for good and became master armorer at the Sharps Rifle Company factory in Hartford, Connecticut, where he manufactured Sharps carbines and rifles and patented breech-loading firearms.
The Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society offers evidence that the president of the company which manufactured the Sharps rifle, John C. Palmer, was related to the New York capitalist, Courtlandt C. Palmer and his brother, William Palmer, who controlled the patent for the Palmer Carbine.
Who made money from the sale of Sharps Rifles during "bloody Kansas"?
Samuel E. Robbins and Richard Smith Lawrence
Information below paraphrased and quoted from
HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD
ROBBINS & LAWRENCE ARMORY
(AMERICAN PRECISION MUSEUM)
HAERNo. VT-39
ROBBINS & LAWRENCE ARMORY
(AMERICAN PRECISION MUSEUM)
HAERNo. VT-39
In 1851 Robbins & Lawrence sent a representative with six Army Mississippi-style rifles equipped with the interchangeable system to the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, held in Hyde Park, London, England,. The rifles were exhibited at the famous Crystal Palace and "excited great interest." Robbins & Lawrence received a medal for their rifles.
The medal the armory received in London led to a contract with the British Government in 1854 for one hundred and fifty machine tools for a new state armory, as well as to a parliamentary investigation into the development of labor-saving machinery in the United States. The English Committee visited many American industries in 1854, including the Springfield Armory and the Sharp's Armory in Hartford, Connecticut. The Sharp's Armory was built as the city's second fire arms company three years after the Colt Armory. The two-story, brick Sharp's Armory was constructed in 1852 and managed from 1852 to 1856 by R & L.
The Armory manufactured Sharps Breech-loading Carbine and Rifle using Christian Sharps' (1811-1874) rifle patent (1848) until 1875. Lawrence led a tour of the new Hartford factory and disclosed that the gun machinery was actually made at the Armory in Windsor. The committee next visited Windsor, and R & L received a $23,585 contract for rifles and gun machinery, which was installed in the government-owned Royal Small Arms Factory (1818-1988) in Enfield at the north end of London. This factory "became a virtual duplicate of the American System."
Company president Samuel Robbins reported in 1854 to the stockholders that the company was operating with four departments: gun, pistol, machine and car shops, and that "the business and accounts of each being kept separately." The machinery, tools and material in the shops (including a fifth, the forging shop) were valued at $133,745.04 and combined with other assets totaled $153,292.60. The report also noted, "with the exception of the car department, the business of which is necessarily somewhat fluctuating, our shops have always been filled with business."
In 1855 "the works" included the Armory and Machine Shops (valued at $20,000), a double dwelling house ($1,700), a new, four-story boarding house ($2,000) for the convenience of their single workmen and those without houses in town, and a small house on the corner of River Street ($300); for a total in the Windsor Grand List of $23,000. The decade of historical significance for the famous Armory came to an end in 1856. Ordnance orders could not be completed and money had been lost on the car shops venture. These financial troubles forced R & L to sell the company in January 1856 to Charles Fox and John Henderson, both of London, England, who shortly thereafter sold to Lt. Col. Henry Sebastian Rowan in June 1856.
In 1856 Lawrence left Windsor, Vermont, for good and became master armorer at the Sharps Rifle Company factory in Hartford, Connecticut, where he manufactured Sharps carbines and rifles and patented breech-loading firearms.
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The Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society offers evidence that the president of the company which manufactured the Sharps rifle, John C. Palmer, was related to the New York capitalist, Courtlandt C. Palmer and his brother, William Palmer, who controlled the patent for the Palmer Carbine.
In December 1849, Lewis Jennings received U.S. Patent 6973 for his improvement of the Hunt rifle design. Jennings’ improved version of Hunt’s rifle was manufactured in small numbers by Robbins & Lawrence of Windsor, Vermont, and was a commercial failure. Smith & Wesson of the Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson partnership of Norwich, Connecticut, acquired Jennings’ improved version of the original “Volition Repeater”. Financially aided by New York financier Courtlandt C. Palmer who originally purchased the manufacturing rights of the failed Jennings rifle, Smith & Wesson began to produce their version of the improved repeater in June of 1854. In July 1855, Smith & Wesson and Palmer formed the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company in order to manufacture a line of lever action carbines and pistols. Volcanic continued to improve the Rocket Ball type ammunition and the lever action guns that fired it.
As an investor in Volcanic, Oliver F. Winchester was elected a director of the company in 1855 and in the coming years played a pivotal role the evolution of the lever action firearm. In 1856 Volcanic became insolvent with the bankrupt firm’s assets being purchased by Oliver Winchester who soon reorganized it as the New Haven Arms Company. Under Winchester’s leadership, New Haven took a strong interest in developing new types of cartridges for leaver action firearm. ... The result was the Henry Rifle of 1860 and the success of the rifle established New Haven in the lever action repeater firearms market. In May 1866, the New Haven Arms Company was renamed Winchester Repeating rifle Company. ... Winchester produced some of the earliest repeating rifles that were popular among Western settlers, forever solidifying the Winchester name to “The Gun that Won the West”.
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