Rockwall Gun Club Presents Famous Guns in History: Samuel Colt

This time around our sights are on the famous gun maker Samuel Colt and we're sure that a majority or more members have one of his inventions in their gun safe.  The name of Colt Firearms figured in many of our Nation's wars.  At the start of the Civil War both sides bought guns from Samuel Colt's inventory. 

Samuel was born in July of 1814 in Hartford and passed away in 1862 at the young age of 48.  Colt's fame and fortune started when he was expelled from Amherst Academy as a young man.  So his father sent Sam on a long stint with a sailing ship to study navigation. While on this ship young Colt became fascinated by how the ship's wheel could spin or be locked in an affixed position through the use of a clutch.  He thought why not use this type of action on a gun with a revolving chamber capable of holding six bullets.    So Samuel went ahead and whittled away on that idea and carried a wooden model of a revolver that used similar mechanism for loading and firing ammunition. 

 Sam patented it and after receiving startup funds from the family opened the Patent Arms Company.  But the orders didn't flow in as anticipated for his three handguns and two rifles, especially from the government.  His first try at success failed in 1842, but as his luck would have it, Washington took another look at his inventions and really liked the new revolver as it could fire six shots without reloading. 

The U.S. Army ordered 1,000 weapons from Colt and he was back in business and built a new large factory with money in the bank under the Colt's name.  Now he had to produce and do it quick so Samuel invented the assembly-line production system, which allowed this armory to turn out 150 weapons a day.  This was 50 years before Henry Ford got the idea. 

Samuel Colt became one of the richest men in the world as his Colts were sold all over the planet.  Sam was also a masterful marketer and self-promoter who relied on more than the mainstream ads of that period.  These Colt ads, which are very collectible, depicted Western scenes with cowboys using his “revolving pistols”.  He even had his own writers’ pen stories about his guns for magazines features.

At times the orders were overwhelming, especially for special orders from foreign dignitaries.  One Turkish ruler ordered a gold-plated revolver, but the Mexican-American war was one of Colt's best customers along with the Texas Rangers.  Colt produced over 400,000 firearms in his lifetime and made the Colt brand the most widely known arms maker in existence.  It was a sad day when Samuel Colt died at the age of 48 in 1862.  His wife Elizabeth took over the reins of an estate worth over 15 million and did an outstanding job, especially after this huge armory went up in flames in February of 1864. 

The rumor for this fire was that a Confederate arsonist was to blame, but wisely Elizabeth took out insurance on the plant shortly after Sam's death.  It was rebuilt on the same site in Hartford and the successes continued, especially the Colt “Peace Maker” that earned its name as “The Gun That Won the West”.   Stay tuned for another chapter on the famous gun inventors in America.  Visit Rockwall Gun Club at 15950 State Hwy 205 located at Terrell, TX 75160 or by calling the Gun Club at (972) 551-0470 for more information.