*** Book Pages Added *** Spencer Serial # Info

[Cannonman1]

I take it this is a job for Two Flints.. Thanks ahead of time for any help with finding out where my Spencer was issued. Here if the information


Desc.. Spencer Infanry Rifle
Serial #  24033

I saw recently you had ID'd a close number to this one with the 148th Pennsylvania Infantry. Hope its number is in the records.l

Thanks
A new member
Bill - Cannonman1

[Two Flints]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for joining SSS.  It would be great to see photos of your Spencer Rifle, serial
#24033.  Closest serial # to yours that I find is serial #24189, a Spencer Rifle issued to Company E, 148th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in October, 1864.

Maybe your Spencer Rifle was issued to the same unit.

Hope this helps.  Have you read my Spencer Serial # Disclaimer?

Two Flints

[Cannonman1]

Yes, I understand that it is difficult to say. I know that a lot of the spencer in the 24000 range went to Mass. and a lot ended up in the 37th Regiment of Infantry. I would put my bet there I think. Its only speculation but neat to know some possibilities.. I would be glad to send you some images and will do so on a subsequent post.
I saw your images of Nam.. Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for serving our country and Thanks for spearheading this site.. Bully!!

[Two Flints]

Cannonman1,

I have a copy of the 37th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, written by James L. Bowen.

Here are three pages from this book dealing with Spencers being issued to the 37th.







Two Flints

[Snakeeater]

Had the war continued another year with the same stalemate conditions prior to the Atlanta campaign, and the war dragged on into 1866, just a few days following the surrender of the Confederate Laboratory at Macon, Georgia, its superintendent James H. Burton received a letter from the British firm who had been supplying the Confederacy with armaments, that they had received and were ready to ship the machinery they had acquired from the Spencer Repeating Arms Company, to manufacture the Spencer, and wished to know from Burton when to proceed.

Evidently, Spencer must have thought that some British company was desirous to manufacture his rifles and carbines for the British government, without realizing the company was in fact buying the machinery to build the Spencer rifle on behalf of the Confederate States of America and it was destined for the C.S. Armory at Macon, Georgia which Sherman later bypassed only to surrender to Union forces in April 1865. Here too was where the Confederacy had erected the machinery captured at Harpers Ferry for the Model 1842 musket together with about two-thirds of the machinery necessary to manufacture the British regulation pattern 1853 Long Enfield. The other third of the Enfield machinery (made by Ames) was still sitting in Bermuda waiting to be ran through the Blockade. More about this purchase of the Spencer machinery can be found in Paul J. Davies (2003) C.S. Armoury - Richmond. Other information is available below:

http://www.csarmory.org/

[Blair]

Snakeeater,

I know the story of the CS development of the Enfield into the CS Arms making industry.

A source of copper for the making of Spencer cartridges was always a major concern for the CS Armories.
Something like 20 to 25 percussion caps could be made from the copper needed or used in one Spencer cartridge case. Considering the large number of percussion firearms in use during the time period, percussion caps were more needed than 56-56 cartridge cases.

I have not read through all of the links listed in your link, but I will before all is done.
Thanks for posting the information.
My best,
Blair

[Blair]

Snakeeater,

Can you point me into the right direction for the listing within your posted listings for Spencer made tooling and/or equipment being made in England and shipped to Russia?
I may have missed it within your earlier postings?

As I said earlier, I know of the British made tooling that was meant to be shipped back to the CS from England.
I have never heard of this Spencer made stuff being made in England before.
Can you help me find out where this info came from?
My best,
Blair

[Snakeeater]

According to Davies, Greenwood & Batley, the same firm that had supplied the Confederacy with so much ordnance, including the machinery for manufacturing the Enfield, was negotiating right at the close of the war with Cheney Brothers for the Spencer Repeating Rifle European Agency, and latterly offered Burton employment to sell Spencer Rifles and the machinery to produce them. In a letter from Greenwood & Batley to Burton, dated 23 June 1865, but referencing earlier correspondence from Burton in May, it is intimated that The Spencer Company (i.e. Messrs. Cheney) had disposed to constitute Greenwood & Batley as their European Agents, for which Greenwood & Batley were then looking around for outlets to sell guns and putting up and altering existing armories to produce the Spencer. In the same letter adds "We have not yet delivered all the machinery to Fraser, Trenholm & Co. There remains short of a fourth to go, all being well forward & like to be completed in 3 or 4 months...".

Although, technically, most combat operations has ceased in the east, except for Kirby Smith (signed the surrender on June 2), it appears that Burton did not take the oath of allegiance until 26 June.  In a subsequent letter from Greenwood & batley to Burton, dated 13 Sept 1865, they acknowledged receipt of a case of Spencer Rifles and Carbines, and were awaiting a shipment of ammo so to get started testing the guns using a mechanical rest. On 304, Davies intimates that Burton would superintend the erection of a modern armory in Tula, Russia for the Greenwood & Batley Company before retiring to his farm in Winchester, VA. It was a European antique dealer's site where I found mention of the Russian Spencer which are identical to the Model 1867 and like the Falisse & Trappman Liege-made Spencer, are equipped with the Spencer cutoff device. But it is not just Davies that mentions Greenwood & Batley, but I will find the other citations and post them here. At the International Exposition in 1876, the Spencer Repeating Rifle was claimed as the century's most technologically advanced development in small arms.

[Snakeeater]

One of the problems that the British faced in the nineteenth century, and which led to the passage of the Merchandise Marks Act which among other things required that all articles subject to sale whether import or domestic intended for export to be stamped with the county of origin for manufacture, was aimed at the illicit gun trade in Belgium where unproved guns were often exported bearing Birmingham (even London) proof marks on guns that were made in Belgium and bore faked British proofmarks. Besides the other guns imported to Britain from America that were required under British law to be re-proofed before they could be sold domestically and were marked accordingly with the reproof mark, even today it is not uncommon to find such specimens with a multitude of foreign marks upon them almost like the various stamps in a passport of all the countries you have visited.

But so too are the odd cases where the original manufacturer's marks have been removed, much like the present craze to defarb replica guns made abroad and are then re-mark with facsimile marks as if they were antique arms. Not that I can now find the alleged Russian-made Spencer that was available for sale about five years ago when I began collecting Spencers, the marks on that carbine could have been added well after the date the carbine was manufactured and may have been so marked to show state ownership. The marks on the specimen Spencer alleged to have been Russian-made could have been legitimate Russian-ownership marks but not necessarily manufacturer's marks, and could in fact have belonged to any of the countries who adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, including the Bulgarians, Kurds and even the Turks.

Russian proofmarks in use since 1891 consist of a Cyrillic "H" in circlet (or isosceles trapezoid) for Tula Arsenal, and a Cyrillic "Y" in circlet (or isosceles trapezoid) for Izhevsk Arsenal in Udmurt Republic. There may well be others? The provisional black powder proof differs from these, and consists of a "П" in circlet, while the final black powder proof is a "У" in circlet. As my memory serves, the marks on the alleged Russian Spencer consisted of a small "a" in an oval stamp impression, and a "И" (backwards "N") like is most commonly identified with the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. Now that I have reexamined the Liege specimen featured by Marcot, I have noted that the left side of the receiver bears a similar mark to the mark noted, and according to Marcot this is the stamp of "J. Ancion et Fils", the same firm who in 1853 was licensed by Samuel Colt to produce his Model 1851 revolver in Liege. I do not recall seeing any of these other proof marks, and certainly not the provisional or final black powder proof marks that almost certainly would have deemed the genuine article.

http://7.62x54r.net/MosinID/MosinMarks01.htm

Like many of the later "salvage" efforts to re-utilize surplus Spencer rifles and carbines by conversions into shotguns, or from rim-fire to center-fire, or the multitude of sporting configurations, many of the surplus Spencer rifles and carbines had all their original manufacturer's marks removed, and often still other marks put in their place. This may be the very case in the instance of this alleged Russian Spencer, and the dealer who was trying to sell the carbine added these other details to fit the story of how British and Belgian arms dealers came about acquiring such arms from the United States at the close of the American Civil War.

Certainly the Liege firm of Falisse & Trappman manufactured some Spencer rifles and carbines following the Franco-Prussian War, and in 1877 converted many to center-fire. Although some have posit that the firm produced the Spencer under license from Spencer, while this may upon the surface seem logical, it was more likely from the Messrs. Cheney Bros, who at this late date still held the manufacturing patent rights in Europe. While it seems clear enough that Forgaty purchased all the property formerly belonging to the Spencer Repeating Rifle Company, including its machinery plant, and Forgaty continued to supply replacement parts for the Spencer to the U.S. Government through the winter of 1868-69, everything in the Spencer factory was sold to Winchester in September 1869. Exactly what Winchester elected to do with the machinery remains unknown?

http://www.littlegun.be/arme%20belge/artisans%20identifies%20e%20f/a%20falisse%20et%20trapmann%20gb.htm

While the Liege (gun) trade was long renown for making (brevete) copies of various model or patented arms, the Falisse & Trappman Spencer appears to be the genuine article, and is not merely just a close copy but in fact that many parts are interchangeable with the American production. No doubt it is such, as according to Marcot, the Falisse & Trappman repeaters were a combination of left-over factory stock and U.S. Government surplus, purchased at auction. But Greenwood & Batley could have supplied this machinery to Falisse & Trappman as they were the European Agents for the late Spencer Repeating Rifle Company, and were in the business of making small arms manufacturing machinery. And as late as 1871 they were still conducting business with the Messrs. Cheney Bros.  

Though France acquired thousands of surplus Spencer rifles and carbines for use in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1), the Falisse & Trappman Spencer was not manufactured for France because they were not produced until 1873, and even the conversion of the breechblock to center-fire involved altering the block rather than manufacturing a replacement block and discarding the original like is often done today. The Falisse & Trappman Spencer was evidently made exclusively for the Brazilan cavalry hence why only about 1,000 carbines were made.

As for James Burton's involvement in the Spencer scheme with Greenwood & Batley, and I will briefly recap part of his biographical timeline. From Thomas K. Tate (2006) Under Iron Eyelids: The Biography of James Henry Burton, Armorer to Three Nations, Colonel Burton left New York for Liverpool on October 19 and arrived on October 28, 1865. He took up residence at Harrogate, Yorkshire, above Leeds. On October 31st he met at the Albion Works with Mr. Batley and Caleb Huse to discuss the Spencer repeating rifle. Several days later the examined it in detail. In the meanwhile son Charles got a job in the drawing room at the Albion Works and daughter Helen enrolled as a day boarder at school. As always once he was employed, Burton had several projects going at the same time. He was in discussion with Batley and Huse about manufacturing machinery for the Italian government.

On November 11th he drove to the rifle range to test the Spencer rifle against the Whitworth. Here the author presumed that Greenwood & Batley were competing against the Whitworth. Burton wrote in his diary that the day was too windy to obtain any satisfactory results. No more is written in his diaries about further tests so maybe Greenwood & Batley abandoned the idea of following up on the Spencer? By December 8th Burton, Huse and Batley were in conference about the Italian proposal as well as discussing the Snider and Remington breechloaders.

Likely, the Whitworth in this instance referred to the "monkey-tail" breech-loading rifle produced in conjunction with Whitworth's surrogate after 1863 the Birmingham Small Arms Company and Westley Richards, which had utilized the Jones metallic cartridge. The Spencer could hardly have been regarded as a competitor with the long range muzzle-loading Whitworth rifle then capable of 1,500 yard accuracy. This was eventually increased to 2,000 yards by 1868 using Davidson's telescopic sight.

Caleb Huse, the former Confederate purchasing agent, was acting as salesman and traveling throughout the Continent. He approached the Italian government and was arranging for possible business with Turkey and Egypt. Again, according to Tate, the only quantity of Spencer arms sold were old surplus arms France purchased during the Franco-Prussian War when Burton was back in the United States. Greenwood & Batley is said to have hardly made a shilling from their association with Messrs. Cheney Brothers to be the European Agent for the Spencer Rifle Company. Their order for machine tools however may have been substantial because of the conversion from muzzleloaders to breechloaders.

Although Tate could find no surviving records from Greenwood & Batley to shed light on their sales activities in the late 1860s, Roderick Floud in his (2006) The British Machine Tool Industry, 1850-1914, provides some insights not only with regard to Greenwood & Batley, but also Burton in England. For indeed, though he was in negotiations with Thomas Greenwood anent a job in Russia, there is no indication in Burton's diary that he went to Russia but instead returned to Virginia due to his own ill health perhaps caused by the death of one of his young daughters at Leeds in May 1873.

According to Thomas K. Tate (2006) Under Iron Eyelids: The Biography of James Henry Burton, Armorer to Three Nations, the small arms factory where Burton was to oversee installation of new machinery by Greenwood & Betley was located outside St. Petersburgh in Sestroretsk, an armory town since 1724, although for part of the time, Burton was to be working at the Imperial Arsenal at Tula, the oldest of three Russian armories founded by Boris Godunov in 1595. Greenwood & Batley's contract with the Russian Government was England's first effort at supplying machinery to Tula. Here, Greenwood & Batley were supplying the machinery to build the second model "Berdan" rifle, not the Spencer, and even though based on improvements made to Colt's Berdan rifle (a variant of the Snider), the rifles produced at Tula were a Russian variant, one of the earliest Tula-marked specimens known was dated 1877. Ultimately, some 3 million Berdan rifles were built at Tula, Ishevsk, and Sestroretsk and remained in service until replaced by the 1891 Mosin-Nagant rifle.

According to Roderick Floud (2006) The British Machine Tool Industry, 1850-1914, the end of the Civil War in America produced depression in the private sector of the armaments industry, and through it in sales of machine tools, although the traditional trade, still largely unmechanised, benefited from the Prussian-Danish War of 1865-6 and the Austro-Prussian War of 1868. Although B.S.A. were occupied between 1866 and 1868 in the conversion of 100,000 muzzle-loading Enfield rifles to breech-loaders, using the Snider action, Floud suggests they do not seem to have bought new machinery for this purpose, and the government factories were presumably also well-equipped.

Purchases of machine tools are thus low in this period. Some recovery in the trade came with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1, and Greenwood & Batley received further large orders in the period from B.S.A., and from the two other factory small-arms manufacturers, the London Small Arms Company and Westley Richards Limited, and the latter's successor, the National Arms and Ammunition Company. After the war "For some years... the two Birmingham firms were busy supplying British and foreign governments with the new types of breech-loader..." (the small-bore rifle), and the large orders placed by the National Arms and Ammunition Company for machine tools in 1872 show the effect of this demand in an expansion of capacity in the private industry.

For B.S.A.'s new armory at Small Heath had "Stocking" machinery from (Ames) Massachusetts and rifling and boring machinery from Greenwood & Batley of Leeds. In 1861 the newly established Birmingham Small Arms Company ordered 100 machine tools worth £6101 from Greenwood & Batley, following this in 1872 with orders for five more machines worth £450. Here at Small Heath, B.S.A. was to begin manufacturing the Pattern 1853 Long Enfield, as well as after 1863, the Whitworth rifle. At least 60 Whitworth rifles were produced by B.S.A. for use in the Queen's Prize match at the NRA's 1866 annual meeting at Wimbledon. The major purchaser in this period was however Fraser Trenholm and Co, of Liverpool, and it seems likely that the 348 machine tools worth £30,319, which they bought in 1863, were in fact shipped to the United States (i.e. the Confederacy), since Fraser Trenholm were not prominent as manufacturers of small arms.

In a photo of B.S.A.'s works on Armoury Road at Small Heath, erected 1861-63, the new armoury has an uncanny resemblance to its contemporary, the C.S. Macon Arsenal, erected 1861-65.

http://www.birminghamgunmuseum.com/BSA_Small_Heath.php   

In 1863 witnessed the establishment of a board of directors of BSA Ltd which was comprised of Joseph Wilson, Samuel Buckley, Isaac Hollis, Charles Playfair, Charles Pryse, Sir John Ratcliffe, Edward Gem, and J.F. Swinburn, under the chairmanship of John D. Goodman. The directors were joined by Sir Joseph Whitworth and the Manchester Ordnance and Rifle Company, as shareholders, backed by an agreement that allowed BSA exclusive rights to manufacture the Whitworth rifle. In 1866 was when BSA won the Gunmaker's Trial and was selected to supply the Whitworth rifles to be used in the Queen's Prize match at the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association at Wimbledon. In 1871 when the British military replaced the Whitworth rifle with the Martini-Henry, it was Westley-Richards who stepped in to make the new arms that were used for the Queen's Prize after 1871.

Also in 1871, the Westley-Richards Arms and Ammunition Company acquired rights to the Martini-Henry rifle as selected by the British government, the patents to the Henry barrel and the Jones cartridge. The next year, the National Arms and Ammunition company formed to establish factories on "'a complete and extensive scale' for the manufacture of rifles, arms and ammunition", and took over the works of the Westley-Richards Arms and Ammunition Company and set up the Small Arms Works at Sparkbrook. The Small Arms Works at Sparkbrook, on Montgomery Street, was a mere stone's throw from the B.S.A. works on Armory Road at Small Heath.  

In 1858 Greenwood & Batley built the Albion Works and made machinery, boilers, forgings, circular and band saws, as well as ordnance equipment. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1) the company also founded the National Arms and Ammunition Company with Birmingham gunmaker Westley Richards. It was with the National Arms and Ammunition Company where Burton was working at the time of the company's acquisition of the Russian contract to build the factory in Sestroretsk. Burton appears to have joined the firm about March 1872, and on September 11, 1873 he wrote a testimonial for his assistant, Mr. H.B. Hagin. "I give his this testimonial..." wrote Burton, "on the occasion of my retiring from the service of the Co. in consequence of ill health." Hagin had been Burton's assistant for some eighteen months with the N.A.&A. Co. The company owed Burton a sum of money when he left and he was still trying to collect it in July 31, 1875. By October 1873, Burton and his family were back in Virginia.

Along with small arms manufacturing at Sparkbook, the N.A.& A.Co. also undertook the manufacture of ammunition at Holford Mills and in Belmont Row. Due to a lack of demand, the National Arms and Ammunition Company was forced to shut its works on Montgomery Street in the 1890s. The Sparkbrook works was afterwards operated by the Royal Small Arms Factory until 1906 when the premises was sold to B.S.A. and who continued to operate it until after World War Two.

[El Supremo]

Thank you very much, Snakeater:

Your latest posting is especially informative.

Am still not sure if anyone knows which rifling machinery was used by Cheney Bros. to produce the progressive DEPTH, constant twist rifling found in original Model 1860 Spencer rifles and carbines.

Your info about the alleged "Russian" marked Spencer caught my eye.

In another life, I saw and handled extremely high value (six to seven-figure) "downright faked" or "enhanced" firearms, including Civil War era firearms.  These were in museums, usually donated by collectors of high reputation FOR TAX DONATION WRITEOFF PURPOSES.

As I was told:
Just about every collector has been bitten by fakes.  I asked were they go and was told that they are either resold to unsuspecting collectors or donated to museums.

In another situation, an owner of a legitimate CW carbine had two near perfect, $10,000 apiece, copies made so he could display them instead of what he had just paid $130,000 for.  All markings were duplicated.  Another "gunsmith" made a dead-ringer copy of another CW era rifle for a well-respected museum so it could round out its collection.  The marking stamps were made by a man in Colorado in 1989.  That man in CO was producing ANY proof stamp requested.  My acquaintenance saw these stamps being used to create a "Krieghoff Navy Luger". 

In an earlier life I stood alongside the former curator of the Chicago Museum of Art, John Howatt, as he inspected what would now be a half- billion dollar collection of paintings.  He went into the large vaults and began slashing what were previously authenticated originals from the Kress (Kresge) collection.  Each had been faked and donated for a tax writeoff to a well known university.  The IRS took note!

Fakes are everywhere and still being created for various reasons.  This is why I no longer collect.  Few can prove provenance.  As a world renowned firearms restorer and engraver told me:  "Anything can be made to either disappear or appear."  He was in the process of loaning me a firearm to inspect for which the owner had traded his private jet!  The engraver had been engaged to correct a flaw in the Manton hammer double that was part of a matching, three gun set.  He said that the owner could get another jet, but would not have ever seen the Manton set again in his lifetime.  The new owner could not resist the temptation to correct pitting on the bottom of the barrels just beyond the forearn tip. 

A friend and I were were in the shop of a rifling wizard in the late 1980's and listened to the director of a European International Muzzle Loading Team ask that original, shot-out long range Rigby rifles his team had, be lined from the breech so that the liner mated with the crown in such a way that it was not visible.  The gunsmith asked him how the gun would pass inspection and the person said that he was one of the inspectors.  It never stops.

Am told the International Muzzle Loading "community" now x-rays to find such creativity.

Thanks, again for helping. 

El Supremo / Kevin Tinny