FALL 2019
wealthshieldedhim,butformanycattle-
men,thatwintersnuffeda lifealready
imperiled by fences and feedlots.
Election to New York’s State Assembly
presaged TR’s career in public service.
Appointments followed. At war’s onset in
1898, he organized the 1st United States
Volunteer Cavalry. A charge up Kettle Hill
during the Battle of Santiago won Roosevelt
and his Rough Riders wide acclaim. Elected
governor of New York that year, he ran
afoul of the Republican machine. Its plan
to shelve him in the office of vice president
backfired a year after the election of 1900.
William McKinley’s assassination made
Roosevelt, at the age of 42, the youngest
president of the United States.
He brought to the outdoors the same
energy he committed to politics. Six of
his 39 books focus on hunting. An avid
rifleman, Roosevelt admitted that he had
poor eyesight and mediocre marksman-
ship. He favored lever-action rifles that
could be cycled from the shoulder. “Idon’t
shoot well, but I shoot often,” he usedto
tell his friends. His rifles evidenced costly
indulgences, like crescent cheekpieces and
Freund sights. He ordered half-octagonal
barrels; half-magazines; engraved, color-
casehardened receivers; fancy walnut;shot-
gun buttstocks and pistol-grip wrists.(He
gaveoneofhiselegantWinchesterModel
1876stohisDakotahuntingguideand
ranch manager, William Merrifield.)
Lever-Action Lineage
Roosevelt’s next Winchesters included a
Model 1873 in .32-20 and another 1876
in .45-75. Their lineage dates to Walter
Hunt’s “Volitional Repeater,” inventedin
1848, a decade before TR was born. The
rifle fired hollow-base “rocket balls,” with
black powder inside ignited by an external
spark from primers advanced in a pillbox
device. Hunt sold the patent rights to fellow
New Yorker George Arrowsmith, who hired
Lewis Jennings to improve the mechanism.
Arrowsmith flipped the Hunt rifle to rail-
road investor Cortlandt Palmer, who chal-
lenged Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson to
develop a metallic cartridge for it. In 1854,
Palmer formed a partnership with them.
A year later, 40 investors bought out
Smith, Wesson and Palmer to found the
Volcanic Repeating Arms Company. Oliver
Winchester became its director and moved
Volcanic to New Haven, Connecticut.
When tepid sales forced receivership in
1857, Winchester paid $40,000 for all assets
and hired Benjamin Tyler Henry to refine
the Hunt rifle for the firm, reorganized later
as New Haven Arms Company.
“Where is the military genius [to]
modify the science of war as to best develop
the capacities of this terrible engine—the
exclusive control of which would enable any
government...to rule the world?” So Oliver
Winchester urged the U.S. Army to adopt
the 1860 Henry repeater. Few were issued.
But the 15-shot rifle became a curse to
Confederate troops.
Winchester’s subsequent Model 1866,
with a wooden forend and a side loading
gate, was hamstrung by the anemic Henry
.44 Rimfire cartridge, nudging 216-grain
bullets at 1,025 fps. The 1866’s successor,
the 1873, chambered Winchester’s first
centerfire round, the .44 WCF, or .44-40.
Its 200-grain bullets left the muzzle at
ROOSEVELT’S RIFLES
30 GUNS OF THE OLD WEST
Roosevelt preferred a few different
Winchesters, including the Models 1876
(above), 1894 (above right) and 1895 (right).
