Winchester Repeating Arms – History

A History in Two Parts

The beginnings of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1866 and its first rifle, the Model 1866, are more than a decade long and follow the development of the repeating rifle and Oliver F. Winchester through several companies. I have split this history into two parts, a pre-history of Winchester Repeating Arms and the company’s history after incorporation in 1866.

This history draws heavily on Winchester: The Gun that Won The West and The History of Winchester firearms, 1866-1980. Check them out for a far more in-depth history of the Winchester company.

The Beginnings of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company

Winchester’s first firearm, the Model 1866, had its beginnings with an 1849 patent granted to Walter Hunt for a ‘lever action, breech loading, repeating rifle’. This Repeating rifle was called the Volition Repeater and was designed to be used with a self-propelled conical bullet also patented by Hunt in 1848. Unable to produce the firearm and ammunition himself, Hunt sold the patents to George Arrowsmith the owner of a small machine shop in New York. Arrowsmith had in his employ a gunsmith and machinist named Lewis Jennings. Jennings set to work on improving Hunts Repeating rifle design and was awarded a new patent in late 1849. Several of the new improved Jennings twenty shot repeaters were made and promoted by Arrowsmith. The guns caught the eye of capitalist Courtlandt. C. Palmer of Connecticut who purchased the Hunt and Jennings patents from Arrowsmith. In 1850 Palmer had the producers of the Sharps rifle, Robbins & Lawrence, make 5000 Jennings Repeater rifles.

Three men now came into the picture who would shape the future of the repeating rifle and Winchester;
Benjamin Henry, shop foreman at Robbins & Lawrence
Daniel B. Wesson, gunsmith at Robbins & Lawrence
Horace Smith, self-employed gunsmith

Smith was hired by Palmer and soon made improvements to Jennings design and in 1851 was awarded a new patent. This new design was incorporated into the new rifles by Robbins & Lawrence. Even with the improvements to the repeating rifle design, it continued to be overly complicated and the self-propelled bullet lacked power. Production of the Jennings Repeater was halted in 1852 due to poor sales.

In 1854 Palmer, Smith & Wesson began a partnership under the name Smith & Wesson producing primarily pistols. At this time Wesson patented a centerfire, inside-primed metallic cartridge that would prove important to Winchester years later. Palmer, Smith & Wesson sold their business, patents and all, in 1855 to the newly formed Volcanic Repeating Arms Company for $195,000. One of the investors in Volcanic was a clothing manufacturer from New Haven, Connecticut by the name of Oliver F. Winchester.

The original president and main shareholder of Volcanic Repeating Arms was Nelson Gaston while Oliver Winchester played a small management role. Daniel Wesson joined the company at inception as a shop superintendent. Upon Gaston’s death in 1856, Winchester became the new company president. The same year the factory was moved to New Haven and the manufacturing of firearms commenced. Daniel Wesson left the company at this time, rejoined Smith and created again the Smith & Wesson pistol company. Volcanic produced pistols of original Smith & Wesson design but also introduced a line of repeating rifles based on the Hunt, Jennings and Smith patents.

The Volcanic company very quickly suffered from lack of working capital and was forced to borrow large sums to stay afloat. Despite Gaston, Winchester and several banks lending money to Volcanic, it was declared insolvent in 1857. Winchester seeing an opportunity and having his own large cash reserves, bought out the claims of Gaston and the bank which had brought the insolvency case against Volcanic. In March of 1857, a court assigned all assets of the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company to Oliver Winchester for $39,000. The other shareholders of the company were never reimbursed.

Oliver Winchester had already organized a new company in 1856, the New Haven Arms Company, while he was chasing Volcanic’s assets. He attracted investors to this new company and then sold Volcanic’s assets and the use of the patents he now owned to them for $40,000. He himself took up nearly half the shares of New Haven Arms and made himself president and treasurer. The New Haven Arms Co. continued to use Volcanic’s old premises in New Haven but one important change was the hiring of Benjamin Henry as plant manager. Henry had left Robbins & Lawrence to work with Palmer, Smith & Wesson but he does not appear to have been involved with Volcanic Repeating Arms.

The same problems that plagued Volcanic’s rifles continued to be an issue with New Haven’s and they were struggling to survive. The major problem was the self-propelled ammunition used in the rifles was not gas tight and lacked the space for sufficient gunpowder. Realising this, Winchester set Henry to work in 1858 to develop a metallic cartridge based on Wesson’s 1854 patent owned by Winchester. While developing the new metallic cartridge, Henry was also improving the design of the repeating rifle. By 1860 he had developed a .44 rimfire cartridge that had more than double the muzzle velocity of the old Volcanic ammunition. His improvements to the repeating rifle, coupled with this new ammunition, gave life to the 1860 Henry Repeating Rifle.

Built in time to see service in the U.S. civil war on the Union side, it was used in small numbers. The Spencer Repeating Rifle was seen as more reliable under the rigors of combat and so no large government contracts were issued to the New Haven Arms Company during the war. It was successful enough, however, to bring the company out of debt and into a profitable state. New Haven Arms stopped producing pistols to concentrate solely on rifles.

The Formation of Winchester Repeating Arms

In 1866 Winchester decided to restructure the New Haven Arms company and incorporated the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Shareholders of New Haven Arms could exchange shares for the new company or be bought out at a set price. Winchester kept over 50% of this new company under his control and was elected president and treasurer of it.

Winchester moved the company out of its small building in New Haven during 1866-67 and into larger premises in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Since the release in 1860 of the Henry Rifle, Winchester’s gunsmiths had been working on fixing its common faults. By 1867, Winchester was ready to start producing an improved lever-action repeating rifle called the Model 1866. It proved a popular weapon domestically but also large numbers were sold overseas, especially to Turkey.

The success of the Model ’66 gave the Winchester company much needed working capital and the ability to start removing its competition in the repeating rifle market. In 1868 Winchester bought the Spencer Repeating Rifle Company and in 1869, the American Repeating Rifle Company. By 1870 Winchester had no strong competition left producing repeating rifles and they would capitalise on this in the next decade.

The large Turkish orders for the Model ’66 had Winchester staff working 24 hours a day, in 2 shifts, and the factory output was at full capacity. Winchester decided it was time to move again to a larger facility and New Haven was once again the location chosen. In 1871 a new plant had been built at New Haven and this time it was built with further expansion already in mind.

A new Winchester rifle and one of its most famous, had been developed and was ready for sale in 1873. The Model 1873 Repeating Rifle was again an improvement over the older model, the ’66, and designed to handle the newer centerfire ammunition. Up until this point Winchester had produced its own rimfire ammunition for its weapons but it was now decided that they would go into large scale ammunition manufacturing and not just for their own weapons. The Model 1873 also brought with it the ‘one in one thousand‘ and ‘one in one hundred‘ variations based on the tested accuracy of the weapon’s barrel.

The 1873 Winchester rifle would prove to be a solid performer for many years and production didn’t stop until 1923. The decision to go into ammunition manufacturing at this time would also pay large dividends in the future. By 1875, Winchester was producing 25 rimfire and 24 centerfire types of cartridges, and 8 brass and 4 paper shotshell lines. The late 1870s saw large foreign purchases of ammunition, mainly by Turkey, totaling hundreds of millions of rounds.

Oliver Winchester had continued to chase U.S. Government contracts since the civil war but had been unsuccessful. In 1877 Winchester bought the rights to produce the Hotchkiss bolt action repeating rifle. Originally called the Hotchkiss Magazine Gun when first produced in 1880, after years of refinement it was renamed the Model 1883 in that year. The bolt action allowed a heavier cartridge to be used and it was the first Winchester firearm capable of firing the 45-70-405 Government standard round. Ultimately the Hotchkiss failed to impress the Government but it did see decent sales in the domestic market as the Model ’83.

In 1880, at 70 years of age, Oliver F. Winchester died at his home in New Haven. The Winchester Repeating Arms company at the time of his death was valued at $3 million. His son, William Winchester had been groomed as his successor but died of tuberculosis just a few months after his father. William’s brother-in-law, William Converse, became president and treasurer of the company. The Winchester family still controlled the majority of stock in the company, allowing them to fill the top positions with their own people.

At the time of Winchester’s death in 1880, the name Winchester was synonymous with repeating rifles and their ammunition was well known. They were not without significant competition though, Union Metallic Cartridge Company (UMC) was the largest U.S. ammunition producer and during 1873 there had been claim and counter-claims in court over patent rights between the two companies. An agreement was reached to share in Winchester’s Turkey government ammunition contracts so long as UMC dropped the patent breach claims. An uneasy alliance ensued until 1883 when the Ammunition Manufacturers Association was formed.

Winchester had the repeating rifle market mostly to itself but they were aware of plans by Marlin, Colt, and Whitney to enter that market. They decided to expand their line of firearms but were greatly hindered by the lack of an expert gun designer. This was remedied in 1883 when the company made the acquaintance of a family of gunsmiths from Ogden Utah, in particular, a John Moses Browning. Winchester purchased a patent from John Browning for a lever action, single shot rifle capable of firing heavy hunting cartridges, the first of many patents he would supply them. They had found the gun designer they needed.

1883 saw the 4 most successful U.S. ammunition manufacturers form an alliance, primarily to stabilise ammunition prices and stop the under-cutting of each other’s prices. The alliance was called the American Manufacturers Association (AMA) and was made up of Union Metallic Cartridge Co., U.S. Cartridge Co., Phoenix Metallic Cartridge Co., and Winchester Repeating Arms. While they did not compete on pricing, they still competed in quality and sales. The AMA members excluding Phoenix purchased the Strong Cartridge Co. of New Haven in 1884 and divided out its machinery amongst themselves. In 1889 the same companies bought the American Buckle and Cartridge Co., again dividing up the machinery. The Association would only last until 1907 when it was dissolved.

In 1887 Winchester purchased the Whitney Arms Company, producers of two repeating rifles which competed in Winchesters market. After the purchase, Winchester took the Whitney repeating rifles out of production and eventually moved the machinery to its New Haven facility. 1888 saw the purchase of another firearm producer when Winchester and UMC went halves in E. Remington and Sons who had gone bankrupt in 1886. Winchester sold out its half of Remington to UMC in 1896, with a proviso that Remington did not produce a lever-action firearm.

After their purchase of John Browning’s patent in 1883, Winchester developed a number of firearms over the next decade based off other Browning patents. They produced both lever-action and pump-action shotguns and rifles but the ultimate patent from Browning was his 1894 lever-action repeating rifle designed to handle the new smokeless powder cartridges. Winchester produced the Model 1894 for use with black powder cartridges until 1895 when the smokeless .25-30 and .30-30 cartridges were ready to sell with it. Popularly known as the Winchester .30-30 it would become Winchester’s most popular firearm and has been produced to this day.

1889 saw Winchester purchase another competitor, the Burgess Gun Company, producers of shotguns. Once again Winchester removed the competing guns from the market. Around 1903 Winchester fell out with John Browning over a recoil-loading automatic shotgun patent, he wanted a royalty deal which would have gone against Winchester policy of buying patents outright. John Browning and Winchester went their separate ways, Browning’s position as Winchester’s gun designer was taken by Thomas Johnson who was already working for the company.

Johnson had over 100 patents granted in Winchesters name as they continued to be the largest firearm producer in the pre-WW1 years. Their sales were almost purely in the domestic sporting market and their popularity was due to the reliability and performance of their firearms.

In 1914 at the outbreak of WW1, the U.S. maintained its neutrality which allowed Winchester to produce munitions for whichever side they chose to. There was never any intention to help the Central powers, however, and it was only the allies they supplied munitions to until 1917 when the U.S. joined the war. As orders started to come in for firearms and ammunition, Winchester began a large expansion of its plant in New Haven. By the end of 1915 over $15 million had been spent on expansion of the plant, an amount which would effectively use up most of its WW1 profits. Usually war provides a boom time for munition producers but in Winchester’s case it eroded years of profitability and would put them in serious financial trouble after the war.

1915 saw Winchester in need of operating capital and for the first time it needed to borrow cash in order to keep fulfilling its war orders. $8.25 million was borrowed from J.P. Morgan & Company but by early 1916 it was clear they would need more funds. A $16 million loan was taken from Kidder, Peabody & Company and with it an option to purchase a controlling interest in the company if Winchester defaulted on the loan.

The profits expected from their foreign war orders never eventuated as manufacturing costs rose and orders were cancelled. The expansion undertaken in 1914/15 was never justified in the end and after the war they were left with a massive facility with new buildings scattered amongst the old. By 1919 it became apparent that Winchester could not meet its repayments to Kidder, Peabody & Company. The solution was the formation of a new company ‘Winchester Company’ of which Winchester Repeating Arms was a subsidiary. The controlling interest in this new company was held by Kidder, Peabody & Company, the Winchester family had lost control of their company.

In an effort to make use of the excess buildings at the sprawling New Haven site after WW1, Winchester branched out from munitions into cutlery, hardware tools, fishing rods/reels, sporting equipment, and batteries to name but a few. In the early 1920’s Winchester retail stores were opened to deliver these new products direct to the public. New shotguns and rifles were also developed at this time but generally, Winchester spent more effort on its new ventures. Sales of firearms and ammunition dropped significantly from the pre-war era.

The 1920s saw constant re-organization of the company as Winchester tried to become profitable again but the Great Depression hit at a time when they could least afford it. In January 1931 Winchester went into receivership and in December of that year, it was purchased by the Western Cartridge Company. Franklin Olin, the owner of Western, reorganized Winchester to be the firearm producer it had originally been. There were many patents and inventions ready to go and after Western’s purchase, Winchester once again began to concentrate on producing popular quality firearms. Olin merged the two companies to form Winchester-Western in 1935. The name Winchester is still synonymous with quality firearms around the world today.

You can find examples of Winchester shotshell headstamps here.

Bibliography

Witkowski, T, 2018. Visualizing Winchester: a brand history through iconic Western images. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 10/04, 383-419.

Henshaw, T., 1993. The History of Winchester Firearms 1866-1992. 6th ed. California, U.S.A.: Academic Learning Company LLC.

Williamson, H., 1952. Winchester: The Gun That Won The West. 1st ed. Washington, D.C.: Combat Forces Press.