Killer Colt Page 31

  6. Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, p. 2.

  CHAPTER 2

  1. In addition to his sisters Margaret (b. 1806) and Sarah (b. 1808), Sam Colt grew up with three brothers: John (b. 1810), Christopher, Jr. (b. 1812), and James (b. 1816). Two other children—Mary (b. 1819) and Norman (b. 1821)—did not outlive childhood.

  2. Madison (WI) Express, November 7, 1841, p. 3.

  3. See Life and Letters of John C. Colt, Condemned to Be Hung on the Eighteenth of November, 1842, for the Murder of Samuel Adams (New York: Extra Tattler, October 21, 1842), p. 3; Charles F. Powell, An Authentic Life of John C. Colt (Boston: S. N. Dickinson, 1842), p. 14.

  4. Powell, Authentic Life, pp. viii–ix.

  5. Ibid. Also see Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, p. 16, and Gertrude Hecker Winders, Sam Colt and His Gun (New York: John Day Company, 1959), pp. 13–15.

  6. John D. Lawson, American State Trials, vol. 7 (St. Louis: F. H. Thomas Law Book Co., 1917), p. 464; Henry Barnard, Armsmear (New York: Alvord Printer, 1866), p. 295.

  7. Lydia H. Sigourney, Letters to My Pupils (New York: Robert Carver & Brothers, 1853), pp. 233, 241.

  8. See Jane Benardete’s biographical entry in American Women Writers, ed. Lina Mainero (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982), pp. 78–81.

  9. Lydia H. Sigourney, Letters of Life (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1868), pp. 186–87.

  10. Ibid., pp. 203–18.

  11. They are part of the Colt Family Papers, donated to the University of Rhode Island Library Special Collections in 1989.

  CHAPTER 3

  1. The quote is taken from Daniel Walker Howe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 38. Though Howe is not referring specifically to Christopher Colt, his description of the quintessential American male of the era applies perfectly to the patriarch of the Colt clan (as well as to his most famous son): “This was not a relaxed, hedonistic, refined, or indulgent society … The man who got ahead in often primitive conditions did so by means of innate ability, hard work, luck, and sheer willpower … Impatient of direction, he took pride in his personal accomplishments. An important component of his drive to succeed was a willingness … to innovate and take risks, to try new methods and locations.”

  2. See Hosley, American Legend, p. 228, n. 15; “Cattle Show,” Connecticut Courant, November, 3, 1818, p. 2; “Savings Society in the City of Hartford,” Connecticut Courant, July 6, 1819, p. 3.

  3. Sigourney, Letters of Life, pp. 243–48, 266–80.

  4. Alice Morehouse Walker, Historic Hadley: A Story of the Making of a Famous Massachusetts Town (New York: Grafton Press, 1906), pp. 92–93. Also see History of the Hopkins Fund, Grammar School and Academy, in Hadley, Mass. (Amherst, MA: Amherst Record Press, 1890).

  5. The bylaws of the academy can be found in History of the Hopkins Fund, pp. 80–81.

  6. Powell, Authentic Life, p. 15.

  7. The calculation is based on a yearly tuition fee of $12, plus boarding expenses of $1.50 per week for forty-four weeks. (According to official records, the academic year at Hopkins Academy consisted of four terms commencing on the first Wednesdays of December, March, June, and September, with four vacations of two weeks each. See History of the Hopkins Fund, p. 81.)

  8. See Samuel Rezneck, “The Depression of 1819–1822, A Social History,” American Historical Review, vol. 39, no. 1 (October 1933): pp. 28–47; Murray N. Rothbard, The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962).

  9. Barnard, Armsmear, p. 296.

  10. Powell, Authentic Life, p. 18.

  11. Ibid., p. 19.

  12. See Hosley, American Legend, p. 15; Luther S. Cushing, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1865), p. 232; Siskind, Rum and Axes, pp. 78–89.

  13. The poem is appended to Powell’s book as “Note A.” Another poem on the subject by Mrs. Sigourney is inscribed in Sarah Ann Colt’s school notebook:

  “On the death of an infant son of Mr. Colt’s who was buried on the first anniversary of its birth, Sunday May 5th 1822”

  Sweet bud that on a fading stem

  Did faintly bloom,

  Then shed thy pure and snowy gem

  Upon the tomb.

  That day which mark’d with smile of dread

  Thy feeble birth

  Returns—and lo thy couch is spread

  In mouldering earth.

  One slumbers there who would have sighed

  O’er thy crush’d head

  To think how soon grim Death had spy’d

  Thy cradle bed.

  But she hath escaped the torturing wound,

  The tearful sigh,

  And ere thy brow was pale hath found

  A brighter day.

  Say! Did her angel vision trace

  Thy being given

  And her maternal arms embrace

  Her babe in Heaven?

  CHAPTER 4

  1. For different accounts of young Sam and his first firearm, see Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, p. 16; Winders, Colt and His Gun, p. 18; Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, p. 9; Barnard, Armsmear, p. 298.

  2. As many old-timers saw it, Colonel Colt actually improved on the design of the Creator: “God made men, but Sam Colt made them equal,” as the saying goes.

  3. The entire poem, which appears in Sigourney’s Letters to My Pupils, pp. 234–36, reads as follows:

  There was an open grave, and many an eye

  Looked down upon it. Slow the sable hearse

  Moved on, as if reluctantly it bare

  The young, unwearied form to that cold couch

  Which age and sorrow render sweet to man.

  There seemed a sadness in the humid air, Lifting the young grass from those verdant mounds

  Where slumber multitudes.

  There was a train

  Of young fair females, with their brows of bloom,

  And shining tresses. Arm in arm they came,

  And stood upon the brink of that dark pit

  In pensive beauty, waiting the approach

  Of their companion. She was wont to fly

  And meet them, as the gay bird meets the spring,

  Brushing the dew-drop from the morning flowers,

  And breathing mirth and gladness. Now, she came

  With movements fashioned to the deep-toned bell;

  She came with mourning sire and sorrowing friends,

  And tears of those who at her side were nursed

  By the same mother.

  Ah! and one was there,

  Who, ere the fading of the summer rose,

  Had hoped to greet her as his bride. But death

  Arose between them. The pale lover watched

  So close her journey through the shadowy vale,

  That almost to his heart the ice of death

  Entered from hers. There was a brilliant flush

  Of youth about her, and her kindling eye

  Poured such unearthly light, that hope would hang

  Even on the archer’s arrow, while it dropped

  Deep poison. Many a restless night she toiled

  For that slight breath that held her from the tomb,

  Still wasting like a snow-wreath, which the sun

  Marks for his own, on some cool mountain’s breast,

  Yet spares, and tinges long with rosy light.

  Oft o’er the musings of her silent couch

  Came visions of that matron form which bent

  With nursing tenderness to soothe and bless

  Her cradle dream: and her emaciate hand

  In trembling prayer she raised, that He who saved

  The sainted mother would redeem the child.

  Was the orison lost? Whence then that peace

  So dove-like, settling o’er a soul that loved

  Earth and its pleasures? Whence that angel smile

  With which the allu
rements of a world so dear

  Were counted and resigned? That eloquence

  So fondly urging those whose hearts were full

  Of sublunary happiness, to seek

  A better portion? Whence that voice of joy,

  Which from the marble lip, in life’s last strife

  Burst forth to hail her everlasting home?

  Cold reasoners! be convinced. And when ye stand Where that fair brow, and those unfrosted locks

  Return to dust, where the young sleeper waits

  The resurrection morn, oh! Lift the heart

  In praise to Him who gave the victory.

  4. These contrasting views of the wicked stepmother can be found in Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), pp. 66–73; and Iona Opie and Peter Opie, The Classic Fairy Tales (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 15.

  5. William Upson, b. October 24, 1824, d. September 28, 1848; Mary Lucretia, b. July 29, 1826, d. November 23, 1828; Olivia Paine, b. September 26, 1828, d. April 5, 1838.

  6. Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, p. 8.

  7. Ibid.; Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, p. 17; Ben Keating, The Flamboyant Mr. Colt and His Deadly Six-Shooter (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1978), p. 5.

  8. Powell, Authentic Life, p. 22. Information on the Union Manufacturing Company of Marlborough, Connecticut, can be found online at the website of the Richmond Memorial Library (www.richmondlibrary.info/blog/historic_buildings/mills). For interesting material on the use of double entry bookkeeping by early nineteenth-century Connecticut merchants, see Siskind, Rum and Axes, pp. 50–52.

  9. For example, see Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, p. 17; Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, p. 9; Winders, Colt and His Gun, p. 38.

  CHAPTER 5

  1. It should be said that the meandering course of John’s career was more typical of his era than the unswerving trajectory of Sam’s. As historian Donald M. Scott explains, “Those who sought professional or intellectual careers in mid-nineteenth-century America faced a chaotic, confusing, and frequently unpredictable occupational life. Few whose adulthoods spanned these decades had careers that followed a course that they could have either planned or predicted. They frequently made their way by moving into and through a series of institutions, places, and activities that had not even existed when they started out and that they themselves often had to invent … Indeed, many career seekers shifted around in a manner hard to imagine for either the eighteenth or the twentieth centuries as they tried to get ‘a hold’ on life.” See Donald M. Scott, “The Popular Lecture and the Creation of a Public in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of American History, vol. 66 (March 1980): p. 795.

  2. See Edward K. Spann, The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840–1857 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), pp. 1–7; Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 430–32; Ric Burns and James Sanders, New York: An Illustrated History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), pp. 56–58.

  3. Spann, New Metropolis, p. 1. The material in this chapter regarding John Colt’s life between 1826 and 1829—including all quoted passages of text—comes from Powell, Authentic Life, pp. 22–31.

  4. Hosley, American Legend, p. 15. Also see Cushing, Reports of Cases Argued, vol. 1, p. 232. Christopher Colt remained with the company until 1835; two years later, it went under during the panic of 1837. See Arthur Chase, History of Ware, Massachusetts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1911), p. 220.

  5. Sigourney, Letters to My Pupils, p. 258.

  6. Madison (WI) Express, November 7, 1841, p. 3.

  CHAPTER 6

  1. John Phelan, Readings in Rural Sociology (New York: Macmillan, 1920), pp. 5–6.

  2. Ibid., p. 6.

  3. Barnard, Armsmear, p. 298.

  4. Phelan, Rural Sociology, p. 3.

  5. Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, pp. 10–11; Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, p. 17.

  6. Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, p. 11.

  7. Philip K. Lundeberg, Samuel Colt’s Submarine Battery: The Secret and the Enigma (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1974), p. 8. Also see Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, p. 12, and Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, p. 17.

  8. L. P. Brockett, The Silk Industry in America: A History: Prepared for the Centennial Exposition (New York: George F. Nesbitt & Co., 1876), p. 110.

  9. Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, p. 17.

  10. Ibid., p. 18; Lundeberg, Submarine Battery, p. 8; Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, p. 26.

  11. Frederick Tuckerman, Amherst Academy: A New England School of the Past, 1814–1861 (Amherst, MA: printed for and published by the trustees, 1929), pp. 82–83.

  12. Ibid., p. 67.

  13. Claude Moore Fuess, Amherst: The Story of a New England College (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1935), p. 27.

  14. Rufus Graves, “Account of a Gelatinous Meteor,” American Journal of Science, vol. 2 (1820), pp. 335–37. Also see Hilary Belcher and Erica Swale, “Catch a Falling Star,” Folklore, vol. 95 (1984): pp. 210–20.

  15. My description of these experiments is taken from a standard text of the time, Chemical Instructor: Presenting a Familiar Method of Teaching the Chemical Principles and Operations (Albany, NY: Webster and Skinners, 1822). Designed specifically for the use of chemistry teachers in public schools and academies, this manual was written by Amos Eaton, later a renowned botanist, geologist, and chemist who taught for a short time at Amherst College.

  16. John White Webster, A Manual of Chemistry (Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon, and Webb, 1839), p. 142. For Sam’s familiarity with Webster’s text, see Martin Rywell, Samuel Colt: A Man and an Epoch (Harriman, TN: Pioneer Press, 1952), p. 18. In later years, Webster, a Harvard professor of chemistry and mineralogy, would become the central figure in a sensational murder case that almost uncannily mirrored that of Sam’s own brother, John.

  17. All quotes and information relating to this period of John Colt’s life are taken from Powell, Authentic Life, pp. 29–32. As for his possible real estate ventures, the speculation that he owned property in Baltimore derives from a contract signed several years later by Sam Colt’s employee John Pearson, who agreed to rent workspace from John Colt at the rate of four dollars per month. See Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, p. 32.

  18. The definitive work on this subject is Ronald E. Shaw, Canals for a Nation: The Canal Era in the United States, 1790–1860 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1990). For more specific information about the project in which John Colt was reportedly involved, see Chester Lloyd Jones, “The Anthracite-Tidewater Canals,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 31 (January 1908): pp. 102–16.

  19. All quotes about the Reverend Mr. Fisk and the Wesleyan Academy are taken from George Prentice, Wilbur Fisk (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1890), pp. 78–86.

  20. See Madison (WI) Express, November 17, 1841, p. 3; Powell, Authentic Life, p. 32; Life and Letters, p. 4. James’s remarks about Sarah Ann’s “derangement” appear in a letter to Sam, dated October 6, 1841, that is among the Colt archives at the Connecticut State Library. For Lydia Sigourney’s tribute to Sarah Ann, see Sigourney, Letters to My Pupils, pp. 242–43.

  21. Life and Letters of John C. Colt, p. 4; Powell, Authentic Life, p. 32.

  PART TWO: FORTUNE’S TRAIL

  CHAPTER 7

  1. Barnard, Armsmear, p. 296.

  2. Ibid., p. 276.

  3. The author of the “Battle of the Kegs” (a satirical ballad apparently performed to the tune of “Yankee Doodle”) was Francis Hopkinson, judge, author, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The complete poem consists of twenty-two stanzas. The ones reprinted here are excerpted from the version in Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American Poetry: With Critical and Biographical Notices (Boston: B. G. Goodrich and Co., 1829), pp. 202–5. Also see Rywell, Man and Epoch, pp. 14–15.

  4. See E. Taylor Parks, “Robert Fu
lton and Submarine Warfare,” Military Affairs, vol. 25 (Winter 1961–62): pp. 177–82; Robert Fulton, Torpedo War, and Submarine Explosions (New York: William Elliot, 1810); Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, pp. 160–61; Lundeberg, Submarine Battery, p. 7.

  5. Barnard, Armsmear, p. 275; Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, p. 18; Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, pp. 14–15; Hosley, American Legend, p. 25. Also see Paul Uselding, “Elisha K. Root, Forging, and the ‘American System,’ ” Technology and Culture, vol. 15, no. 4 (October 1974): pp. 543–68.

  6. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 19.

  7. Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, pp. 19–20.

  8. Herbert G. Houze, Samuel Colt: Arms, Art, and Invention (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press and the Wadsworth Museum of Art, 2006), p. 37. Also see Fuess, Amherst College, p. 108; Edward Wilton Carpenter and Charles Frederick Morehouse, The History of the Town of Amherst, Massachusetts (Amherst, MA: Carpenter & Morehouse, 1896), pp. 460–61; Margaret Hope Bacon, But One Race: The Life of Robert Purvis (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2007), p. 22.

  9. The Joneses were transporting “two hundred reams of paper, a quantity of printing ink, and other articles to facilitate the printing of the Burman bible, tracts, &c.” See James D. Knowles, Memoir of Mrs. Ann H. Judson, Late Missionary to Burmah; Including a History of the American Baptist Mission in the Burman Empire (Boston: Lincoln & Edmonds, 1831), p. 389.

  10. Colt’s official biographer itemizes the expenditures thus (see Barnard, Armsmear, p. 300):

  Seaman’s cap $ 3.50

  Quadrant, almanac, and compass 18.50

  Mattress, bedding, &c 9.00

  Slop clothes 38.92

  Boots and shoes 8.00

  Stockings 2.00

  Jackknife &c 1.00

  Custom House .25

  Seaman’s Chest 4.62

  85.79

  Cash 5.00

  Paper &c .45

  Total $ 91.24

  11. Houze, Colt: Arms, Art, Invention, p. 38; Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, pp. 19–20.