Historical question - budget handguns of the Old West

1630 Views 32 Replies 18 Participants Last post by Tall, 7 d ago

Miko.H

Discussion Starter · 5 mo ago (Edited)

Hi there folks. One of the guys at my shooting club is doing a bit of creative writing in his off time, a story is set in the Southwest circa 1880s, and the guy is looking for ideas of "cheap" handguns that would have been around in that time and place for one of his characters. I told him I'd help out a bit with the research.

I suggested that he consider some of the cartridge conversions of Civil War era guns like the Colt 1860 Army, as my guess would be that by the 1880s those guns would have been on the cheaper end of the market, being older pieces. I also suggested (in the double-action department) some of those "British Bulldog" knockoffs that were around back then.

Am I on the right track here? Do any of you folks have recommendations for gun ideas that I could toss his way? Or perhaps places to access old firearms catalogues of that period to see what some of the cheaper guns were back then?

Thanks in advance

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kudzu

· #2 · 5 mo ago

Look thru some reprints of old Sears and Monkey Wards catalogs. That will give you some idea of the plethora of less expensive pistols. With wages and the paltry amount of disposable cash then, what average man could afford a Colt ? Porbably some still clinging to cap and ball of one make or another.
You're on the right trail. Somewhere I read something about the gun that won the West and it was the Bulldog clones, if I remember correctly.
Dont forget about the various rimfires either.

Lookie here...

www.amazon.com

14 Old Gun Catalogs (1859 to 1902): Satterlee, L. D., Compiled By: Amazon.com: Books

14 Old Gun Catalogs (1859 to 1902) [Satterlee, L. D., Compiled By] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. 14 Old Gun Catalogs (1859 to 1902)

www.amazon.com

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earlwb

· #3 · 5 mo ago

In the 1880s many people were still using muzzleloaders and cap and ball pistols. Fancy cartridge guns like the Colt 1873 were unaffordable by most people. Now then some did get cartridge conversions though. Those were cheaper than guns like the 1873 Colts or S&W top breaks. Lots of civil war surplus guns got bought real cheap back then. Plus Ex-solders could keep their guns when they were discharged too or buy them cheap. But most soldiers didn’t want them after the war. Rifles or shotguns were really the normal guns most people had. Pistols were a luxury.

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Thagomizer

· #4 · 5 mo ago

People that needed a gun for range work would go for the higher end and more powerful guns. The average Easterner out there to live in town or work in the gold fields or shopkeeper had a variety of derringers, pepper boxes, and cheap top break revolvers. As already stated, cap and ball guns didn't disappear overnight.

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Miko.H

Discussion Starter · #5 · 5 mo ago (Edited)

Thanks folks for the replies. Good point about cap-and-ball revolvers and muzzle-loaders. Do you recon there'd be anybody still using flintlocks by this time, or would the remaining muzzle-loaders have pretty much all been cap-and-ball? I know that quite a few flintlock weapons underwent conversion to percussion during the 1840s-50s, so I'd assume that would have lowered the supply of flintlocks a bit by the time of my pals story...

kudzu said:
Lookie here...

14 Old Gun Catalogs (1859 to 1902): Satterlee, L. D., Compiled By: Amazon.com: Books

14 Old Gun Catalogs (1859 to 1902) [Satterlee, L. D., Compiled By] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. 14 Old Gun Catalogs (1859 to 1902)

www.amazon.com

Thanks for that! I was considering old Bannermans catalogues from the period too, I'm sure they'd have some info on what sort of surplus (cheap or otherwise) was around in the 1880s. I'll have to keep digging for those...

earlwb said:
Rifles or shotguns were really the normal guns most people had. Pistols were a luxury.

Fair point, I'm not sure exactly what character my pal is working on who needs this "cheap handgun", but I might point out to him that, if the character is spending most of his time in the sticks, a 12 gauge might be more useful than a pistol...

Thagomizer said:
The average Easterner out there to live in town or work in the gold fields or shopkeeper had a variety of derringers, pepper boxes, and cheap top break revolvers.

By "cheap top break revolvers", what models are you thinking of?
Good point on pepperboxes. I know the Belgians and French were churning out loads of dinky pinfire pepperboxes during this period, and I'm sure at least some could have found their way to America.

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Castaway1

· #6 · 5 mo ago

Thagomizer, interesting comment about range work and use of the higher end and more powerful handgun. Do you have a reference for that?

earlwb

· #7 · 5 mo ago

Miko.H said:
Thanks folks for the replies. Good point about cap-and-ball revolvers and muzzle-loaders. Do you recon there'd be anybody still using flintlocks by this time, or would the remaining muzzle-loaders have pretty much all been cap-and-ball? I know that quite a few flintlock weapons underwent conversion to percussion during the 1840s-50s, so I'd assume that would have lowered the supply of flintlocks a bit by the time of my pals story...

Thanks for that! I was considering old Bannermans catalogues from the period too, I'm sure they'd have some info on what sort of surplus (cheap or otherwise) was around in the 1880s. I'll have to keep digging for those...

Fair point, I'm not sure exactly what character my pal is working on who needs this "cheap handgun", but I might point out to him that, if the character is spending most of his time in the sticks, a 12 gauge might be more useful than a pistol...

By "cheap top break revolvers", what models are you thinking of?
Good point on pepperboxes. I know the Belgians and French were churning out loads of dinky pinfire pepperboxes during this period, and I'm sure at least some could have found their way to America.

Actually in many rural areas they were still using percussion and flintlocks after WWII. Especially with the poor dirt farmers and sharecroppers. Cartridges for the modern guns of that period were next to impossible to get during WWII.

Smoothbore guns could shoot ball or shot thus making them very versatile. Thus they could hunt deer etc with a slug or ball load and switch to shot for rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, and birds.

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Thagomizer

· #8 · 5 mo ago

Castaway1 said:
Thagomizer, interesting comment about range work and use of the higher end and more powerful handgun. Do you have a reference for that?

By "range" I meant open range as in working cattle etc. Elmer Keith, although a later figure, Talked about using colt SAA for downing dangerous cattle or freeing oneself from dangerous horse situations.

john.k

· #9 · 5 mo ago

Id say that a poorly paid cowboy would buy a magazine rifle like a Whitney ,Colt,Marlin or Winchester ,before a pistol.

Miko.H

Discussion Starter · #10 · 5 mo ago (Edited)

john.k said:
Id say that a poorly paid cowboy would buy a magazine rifle like a Whitney ,Colt,Marlin or Winchester ,before a pistol.

Would something like a Whincester or Marlin lever gun even have been considered "cheap" in the 1880s? Most of those guns would have been fairly recent products at the time ... I'd have thought a "cheap" long-gun in the 1880s would be more likely to be something like a surplus Sharps rifle from the Civil War, or some old caplock muzzle-loader...
Probably some affordable shotguns around too by that point.

JB White

· #11 · 5 mo ago

I would be thinking of all the long obscure hardware store labels. Cheap guns that would chamber and launch but didn’t hold up to much use.
East coast gunmakers using a plethora of different names. Belgian imports and foreign copies.
Things one might find in a St Louis five n dime bin alongside tools.
Cheap. Second rate steels and hit or miss springs etc.
For a story sake, oddball pieces like the Apache or Defender….

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Doggoneit

· #12 · 5 mo ago

I wonder how many real cowboys, ranch hands and sod busters carried a firearm at all. I know that everyone on Rawhide and Gunsmoke had a nice pistol, and they were all fast draw experts, but I am not sure that is the way it really worked.

Most families would have owned a shotgun, but it would have resided in the cabin, not on the hip. I suspect that more people carried a fixed blade knife as a multi-tool/defensive weapon. Lawmen and outlaws would have been armed with a handgun, but I doubt the majority of people were. That said, I have not studied the period of time, so it is all speculation. My ancestors from that time-frame were farmers, merchants and tradesmen, I very much doubt that the routinely carried firearms on their persons. My grandparents lived through the period, I know my maternal grandfather never owned a handgun, although he did have a 12 ga. double barrel. I don't know a lot about my paternal grandfather, he was born during the Civil War and died in '28. ...Yep, grand, not great grand.

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Miko.H

Discussion Starter · #13 · 5 mo ago

Doggoneit said:
I wonder how many real cowboys, ranch hands and sod busters carried a firearm at all.

I think it depended where you lived. Rougher parts of the frontier would probably have had more people carrying firearms, either for self-defence or to do harm to others, depending what kind of person you were. Since my pal's story is set in the 1880s southwest, I'll give you the example of Tombstone, Arizona: The Earps, after becoming lawmen there, established a prohibition on people carrying guns in to town. Logic would dictate that they would hardly have had to enact this law if people weren't carrying guns around in the first place...

Edward Tinker

· #14 · 5 mo ago

I have a couple of old revolvers, they look like a late 1800's Colt, but were made in Belgium - they say Frontier on the strap that goes over the chambers.
Folks had a cheap pocket pistol that would be single shot, or an Iver Johnson that was well made and cheaper than their competitors

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Doggoneit

· #15 · 5 mo ago

Miko.H said:
I think it depended where you lived. Rougher parts of the frontier would probably have had more people carrying firearms, either for self-defence or to do harm to others, depending what kind of person you were. Since my pal's story is set in the 1880s southwest, I'll give you the example of Tombstone, Arizona: The Earps, after becoming lawmen there, established a prohibition on people carrying guns in to town. Logic would dictate that they would hardly have had to enact this law if people weren't carrying guns around in the first place...

That is certainly true to a point, however it may have been a very small numbers of out of town rowdies who were causing the problems that led the towns to prohibit the open carry of firearms. Nothing says danger like a randy drunk with a gun. But, as I said, I am certainly no expert, but I do not believe that Hollywood depicted the old West very accurately. Neither do I know much about 1880s firearms; but I bet that someone here does. It is not difficult to identify what the famous outlaws and sheriffs were using. I would think that would be fine for a novel.

I do recall in one of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns where the bad guy is selecting a firearm at a gun smith's shop. In the scene he picks up an 1889 Bodeo and rejects it as "junk."

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john.k

· #16 · 5 mo ago

In old stories ,its quite apparent Texas had very strict hand gun laws pre 1900.........its also apparent cowboys were regarded as low class poor .......and the strict gunlaws applied mainly to poor people.....Rifles were OK though ,and dont seem to be subject to any laws.

NY50/70

· #17 · 5 mo ago

There were quite a few other options. A form of 'gun control' right after the civil war was to specify people could only own/carry military quality handguns like Colts and Remingtons. Freed slaves and poor white share croppers usually couldn't afford them. The original Saturday Night Special legislation. Helped keep the night riders safe.
Gary

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Clyde

· #18 · 5 mo ago

john.k said:
In old stories ,its quite apparent Texas had very strict hand gun laws pre 1900.........its also apparent cowboys were regarded as low class poor .......and the strict gunlaws applied mainly to poor people.....Rifles were OK though ,and dont seem to be subject to any laws.

If you look into the history of weapons control in Tejas, there seem to have been few restrictions until the tyrannical blue-bellies seized control and disenfranchised the majority of the inhabitants. When Grant refused to support Edmund Davis, the majority regained the franchise and ousted the Carpetbag Reptiles and the Black Republicans and continued some of the Yankee Reconstructionist's laws - but while they APPEARED to apply to everybody, it turns out they were mostly applied against Black folk. "Good people" carried if they wanted to, and were not generally charged with anything. It is to be noted that until around the turn of this century (sorry, would have to dig up a copy of current penal code and look at dates to be closer than that) one of the controlled weapons was - the Bowie Knife.

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scandiknivars

· #19 · 5 mo ago

john.k said:
In old stories ,its quite apparent Texas had very strict hand gun laws pre 1900.........its also apparent cowboys were regarded as low class poor .......and the strict gunlaws applied mainly to poor people.....Rifles were OK though ,and dont seem to be subject to any laws.

Can you quote a source for those statements?
Dan in Texas

Pardt

· #20 · 5 mo ago

Visiting the dug up firearms museum in Cody, alot of cheap European guns. Not the collection is not just what was dug up in the west but alot of them are. With money being hard to come by in the old days I think alot of cheaper firearms were bought and used.

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