Winchester Historian Contact?|General Discussions & Questions|Forum|Winchester Collector

Thanks!  I’m on their website, now.

Email has been sent.  I know it’s a long shot, but we won’t know unless we ask.

clarence said

Joe D. Friday said I wanted to see if Winchester archives has sales records for Volcanic dating back to 1875-77 to see if one of 3 or 4 people ordered this rifle.

By that date, the Volcanic was LONG extinct!  Production ended 1860.  Doubt that ammo was even available after the Civil War.

Is it possible you mean the Henry rifle?

  

That’s a good point about production. It makes me consider that this rifle must have belonged to the ship’s captain.  He was the only officer who was commissioned in the 1860s, I think.  I’ll have to do more research on that.  But he would have been around long enough to own such a rifle soon after it stopped production.    We’ll probably never know for certain.

I do not believe this rifle is a Henry for a couple reasons:  Note the brass butt plate’s top has a small bump at the forward edge.  That matches up with the butt plate of the Volcanic.  A curator from the US Navy’s history and heritage command confirmed it to be a volcanic.  The patch box is a modification from an 1841 Mississippi rifle.  The curator theorized the modification was made to store cartridges.  But, then again, maybe the whole stock was modified and put on a Henry rifle?   Again, I think we’ll never know for certain.

The ammo question seems to be a vexing one, for sure.  I don’t know what to think about that.

Daniel Michael said
Hi Joe, the last Volcanic sales would have been from the New Haven Arms Company, maybe as late as 1862 from leftover stock, but probably not much after that as Henry production increased. The oldest sale book the museum has is for Henry rifles but there are no serial numbers referenced, just 20 guns to this dealer, 50 guns to this one.

There are no surviving Volcanic or New Haven customer records. There are a few references in the archives that they kept those records but none ever made it to the museum. I suspect that most records were lost when Winchester changed ownership in the 1930s. Edwin Pugsley wrote that at least some of the old records went into the furnace to make room at the factory. And he was describing them as old in the 1940s, so it was probably at least some of the pre-Winchester material. At least one employee’s notes from the WWI era mention the Volcanic customer records and note that many entries read “cash” which is probably how they were recording in person or individual purchases vs the large wholesale and dealer accounts.

All that to say that there aren’t Volcanic customer records and that as Clarence mentioned, it wouldn’t have been bought new in the 1870s.

  

Good info.   Thank you for sharing.