I'm glad you are watching over me..

steve004 said
Wow - great stuff.  The shipment of these .30 Govt. rifles - I assume these were Govt 06 vs. Govt 03?
  

Steve-

Based on the ship dates and Brad's post I believe the ledger describes 03 rifles but I haven't had my coffee yet.

Mike

I found some information that would seem to verify these records existed when we were working on the Model 1895 book.  Winchester provided the quantities, dates and destinations for .30-03 M-1895s shipped from the warehouse and the New York dept. from August 1904 through December 1906, and the same for 152,920 .30-03 cartridges, to the government during the congressional investigation into the 1906 Brownsville Affray/Affair/Incident. 

Jesi Bennett was attempting to match them up to the warehouse ledger entries.  Feel free to contact her about submitting her results as an article for the magazine

These are shown on pages 322-323 of the Model 1895 book.

Bert H. said
Winchester's warehouse ledger records with very rare exception did not include the shipping destination, just the Order number.  I suspect that Winchester maintained separate Order number records in the shipping department that would have told us who the guns were sold to and the shipping destination.  Unfortunately, the whereabouts of those records has not ever been discovered. 
What is known, is that in mid-year 1907 (when Winchester abandoned the use of the old-style ledger books in favor of individual index cards), the shipping destination was nearly always included on the index record cards.  For the Models 1873 and 1886, the index card records were not destroyed, and they are used to create the CFM research sheets or factory letters.  In the late Single Shot ledger records (this was the last model to use the ledger book record keeping), the "Sold to" information is sometimes listed.
Bert
  

I forgot about those later index cards containing the destination location.

My guess is there were ledgers indicating the shipping location but these were sacrificed to feed the factory furnaces decades ago.

mrcvs said
I received the factory letter yesterday.  And here it is:

Interestingly, this rifle lettered to an attorney in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  He was also a Civil War veteran.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/3867820/eugene_allen-fiske
And this is why you letter your firearms.  It makes them so much more interesting.
I hate to say what should have—what could have, but why don’t Winchester rifles have a ship location on them?  How did they record this data, or how was it different than with other manufacturers?  For example, Roy Jinks has shown me entries in Smith & Wesson’s ledgers, and it usually gives a serial number, finish, barrel length, finish, etc, and then a ship location.  Some were so commonplace that they were literally rubber stamped in the ledger.
With regards to this Savage 1899, I wonder why the date accepted, I assume this means into the warehouse, was 26 October 1903 and this didn’t ship until 25 March 1905.  It seems that this would have shipped soon after ordered, either for stock somewhere, or to an individual.  But, as we know from Winchester rifles, some sat in the warehouse for years prior to shipping.
  

Good Stuff!

What is known, is that in mid-year 1907 (when Winchester abandoned the use of the old-style ledger books in favor of individual index cards), the shipping destination was nearly always included on the index record cards.  For the Models 1873 and 1886, the index card records were not destroyed, and they are used to create the CFM research sheets or factory letters.  In the late Single Shot ledger records (this was the last model to use the ledger book record keeping), the "Sold to" information is sometimes listed.

Bert

I don't know why Winchester didn't include the shipping location on most of the guns, but I'm sure someone with more knowledge of this will respond.

Thanks for posting the letter.

Al

Interestingly, this rifle lettered to an attorney in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  He was also a Civil War veteran.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/3867820/eugene_allen-fiske

And this is why you letter your firearms.  It makes them so much more interesting.

I hate to say what should have—what could have, but why don’t Winchester rifles have a ship location on them?  How did they record this data, or how was it different than with other manufacturers?  For example, Roy Jinks has shown me entries in Smith & Wesson’s ledgers, and it usually gives a serial number, finish, barrel length, finish, etc, and then a ship location.  Some were so commonplace that they were literally rubber stamped in the ledger.

With regards to this Savage 1899, I wonder why the date accepted, I assume this means into the warehouse, was 26 October 1903 and this didn’t ship until 25 March 1905.  It seems that this would have shipped soon after ordered, either for stock somewhere, or to an individual.  But, as we know from Winchester rifles, some sat in the warehouse for years prior to shipping.

Mike