Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made

by James Dabney McCabe

SAMUEL COLT was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 19th of July, 1814. He was descended from one of the original settlers of that city, and his father, who possessed some means, was a man of great energy, intelligence, and enterprise. The senior Colt began life as a merchant, and afterward became a manufacturer of woolen, cotton, and silk goods. The mother of our hero was the daughter of Major John Caldwell, a prominent banker of Hartford, and is said to have been a woman of superior character and fine mental attainments.

It was within the power of the parents of Samuel Colt to give him a thorough education, and this they were anxious to do; but he was always so full of restless energy that he greatly preferred working in the factory to going to school. He loved to be where he could hear the busy looms at work, and see the play of the intricate machinery in the great building. In order to gratify him, his father placed him in his factory at the age of ten years, and there he remained for about three years, leaving it only at rare intervals and for short periods of time, which he passed in attendance upon school and working on a farm. When he was thirteen his father declared that he would not permit him to grow up without an education, and sent him to a boarding-school at Amherst, Massachusetts. He did not remain there long, for the spirit of adventure came over him with such force that he could not resist it. He ran away from school and shipped as a boy before the mast on a vessel bound for the East Indies. The ship was called the Coroo, and was commanded by Captain Spaulding.

The voyage was long, and the lad was subjected to great hardships, which soon convinced him that running away to sea was not as romantic in real life as in the books he had read, but his experience, though uncomfortable enough, failed to conquer his restless spirit. While at sea in the Coroo he had an abundance of leisure time for reflection, but instead of devoting it to meditating upon the folly of his course, he spent it in inventing a revolving pistol, a rough model of which he cut in wood with his jack-knife. This was the germ of the invention which afterward gave him such fame, and it is not a little singular that the conception of such a weapon should have come to a boy of fourteen.

Returning home, he became an apprentice in his father's factory at Ware, Massachusetts. He was put into the dyeing and bleaching department, and was thoroughly trained in it by Mr. William T. Smith, a scientific man, and one of the best practical chemists in New England. Young Holt manifested a remarkable aptitude for chemistry, and when but a mere boy was known as one of the most successful and dexterous manipulators in New England.

When he had reached his eighteenth year, the old spirit of restlessness came over him again, and he embarked in an unusually bold undertaking for one so young, in which, however, he was much favored by the circumstance that he was very much older in appearance than in reality, commonly passing for a full-grown man. Assuming the name of Dr. Coult, he traveled throughout the Union and British America, visiting nearly every town of two thousand inhabitants and over, lecturing upon chemistry, and illustrating his lectures with a series of skillful and highly popular experiments. His tour was entirely successful, and he realized in the two years over which it extended quite a handsome sum. The use which he made of the money thus acquired was characteristic of the man.

He had never abandoned the design of a revolving pistol which he had conceived on board the Coroo, and he now set to work to perfect it, using the proceeds of his lectures to enable him to take out patents in this country and in Europe. He spent two years in working on his model, making improvements in it at every step, and by 1835 had brought it to such a state of excellence that he was enabled to apply for a patent in the United States. His application was successful. Before it was decided, however, he visited England and France, and patented his invention in those countries. Though now only twenty-one years old, he had given seven years of study and labor to his "revolver," and had brought it to a state of perfection which was far in advance of his early hopes.

"At this time, and, indeed, for several years after, he was not aware that any person before himself had ever conceived the idea of a fire-arm with a rotating chambered breech. On a subsequent visit to Europe, while exploring the collection of fire-arms in the Tower of London and other repositories of weapons of war in England and on the continent, he found several guns having the chambered breech, but all were so constructed as to be of little practical value, being far more liable to explode prematurely and destroy the man who should use them than the objects at which they might be aimed. Unwilling, however, to seem to claim that which had been previously invented, he read before the Institution of Civil Engineers in England (of which he was the only American associate), in 1851, an elaborate paper on the subject, in which he described and illustrated, with appropriate drawings, the various early inventions of revolving fire-arms, and demonstrated the principles on which his were constructed."

Having secured patents in the United States and in the principal countries of Europe, Mr. Colt exerted himself to organize a company for the manufacture of his revolver. He met with considerable opposition, for it was commonly asserted that his pistol would never be of any practical value. The wise ones said it was too complicated for general use, and that its adoption would be attended by the killing or maiming of the majority of those who used it. The inventor disregarded these birds of ill omen, however, and, persevering in his efforts, finally succeeded in securing the aid of some capitalists in New York. A company was formed in 1835, called the "Patent Arms Company," with a capital of $300,000, and an armory was established at Paterson, New Jersey. Mr. Colt then endeavored to induce the Government of the United States to adopt the arm in the military and naval service. Strange as it now seems, however, the officers of the army and navy were not disposed to regard the revolver with favor. They declared that the percussion cap was entirely unreliable, and that no weapon requiring it could be depended on with certainty; that there was great danger that two or more of the charges would explode at the same time; and that the arm was liable to get out of order very easily. They further protested that it was much more difficult to repair than the arms then in use, and that this alone rendered it unfit for adoption by the Government. Notwithstanding these objections were fully met by Mr. Colt, who explained carefully the principles of his weapon, it was two years before the Government consented to give the revolver a trial.