New (old) rifle arrived today

[forward observer]

I had been looking for one of these for quite some time and finally, in the third week of June, I snagged what I think is a pretty nice example in a live online auction. It just arrived today via UPS.

It's a US model 1841 "Mississippi" rifle made by Robbins & Lawrence still in the original .54 caliber. The lock date shows made in 1848 but the barrel tang has a later date of 1851. This is not uncommon for contract rifles which were manufactured intermittently as needed. From 1842 until about 1855 somewhere around 25k of these were manufactured by the Harpers Ferry arsenal while another 50k or so were produced during this period by contract manufacturers such as Eli Whitney, Remington, Tryon, and Robbins & Lawrence.

It didn't arrive until around 6 PM so there really wasn't enough light left but I was eager to get some photos anyway.

Here's the rifle with a Mexican Ameican war-style cartridge box. The straw hat is one of those Pennsylvania quaker styles but looks exactly the same as the hats I've seen depicted as part of the unique uniforms worn by the 1st Mississippi regiment of volunteers. See the pictures at the end.


The M1841 was the first designed percussion rifle to be used by the US military--although they were never intended to be issued as a main battle weapon--hence they had no provision to mount a bayonet. They instead were intended for skirmishers, scouts, and what were sometimes referred to as flanking units. During this same period, the main battle musket of the US was the model 1816 flintlock smoothbore musket. Many of the M1816s were modified starting in the late 1830s to percussion and were still in service in the South at the start of the ACW. Once the .58 cal Minie ball was adopted in 1855 by the US military, many of the "Mississippi" rifles were reworked by reboring and re-rifling to .58 cal along with adding improved sights plus adding several systems to mount already existing bayonets.

The M1841 was reportedly first used in combat by the 1st volunteer Mississippi regiment commanded by Jefferson Davis during the Mexican-American war (1846 to 1848). Davis had requested the new M1841s for his Mississippians but Winfield Scott the commanding general of the army refused-indicating that they were untested for battle. Davis went over Scott's head to President Polk and got the rifles anyway.

Davis and his Mississippi regiment were instrumental in turning the tide of the battle of Beuna Vista and became heroes of the war. Thus the rifle earned the "Mississippi" sobriquet.

My example escaped any of the later revisions but appears to still have a usable bore.

Here's a close up of the lock plate showing the Lawrence & Robbins stamp in the middle of the plate while just behind the hammer is the manufacture date of 1848 under Windsor, VT


Amazingly, the inspector's cartouche is still mostly intact on the side opposite of the lockplate. I haven't researched this yet.


I could not find my drop-in bore light, but by using the old method of wrapping the shiny side of some tinfoil around the base of an empty 44-40 casing, dropping that down the barrel, and then using that to reflect light shone down the barrel I could see that the lands appear bright and shiny while the grooves are mostly dark. I'll give it a good scrubbing tomorrow, but I think this one will make a decent occasional shooter. The nipple is also not very eroded but I would probably get a new one if I decide to shoot it.

If you want to read a quick history of the 1st Mississippi regiment in the Mexican American war, check out the following link:
Mississippi and the Mexican-American war

Lastly, here are a couple of depictions of the uniforms of the 1st Mississippians including their bright red overshirts and wide-brimmed straw hats.





Cheers

 

[JT-AR-MG42]

And your photos are excellent as well.
Nice to hear it is going back into service again.

JT

 

[AlexanderA]

This would have been the setup for loading that rifle with loose powder and ball (as an alternative to the cartridge box):

 

[bannockburn]

forward observer

First rate job with your new rifle and for your regaling us with it's history!

Thank you!

 

[Ugly Sauce]

Lucky Dawg. That sure is a good looking rifle, especially with the dark stock and patina on the brass.

 

[forward observer]

This would have been the setup for loading that rifle with loose powder and ball (as an alternative to the cartridge box):

View attachment 1011562

For my picture, I actually just took a repro ACW cartridge box and subbed in a set of white buff straps from my Brown Bess cartridge box. However, in looking for a replacement front barrel band retainer spring at S & S, I see that they carry the very box with the set of double straps that you pictured minus the flask. However, their set also includes a white buff rifle sling. Since they had the sets marked down, I added them
to my order for the barrel band retainer spring.

The front retaining spring on these merely has a small pin on the end the pops up through a corresponding hole in the front barrel band/nose cap. In my example, the peg/pin was broken off. The nose cap was snug enough that it did not need the pin to retain it but my OCD kicked in so I had to make it right.

Cheers

 

[AlexanderA]

However, in looking for a replacement front barrel band retainer spring at S & S, I see that they carry the very box with the set of double straps that you pictured minus the flask. However, their set also includes a white buff rifle sling.

That's exactly where I got mine. I have to say, though, that I'm somewhat disappointed in the quality. The sling is not real buff leather, but is just white-dyed saddle leather with the rough side out. And the keepers are sewn incorrectly.

Regarding the rifle sling, the army stopped using white buff leather for slings some years prior to the adoption of the M1841. So, your natural (russet) leather sling is correct for that model. In fact, natural or russet slings were used through the Civil War (and even up to the present day!) despite the great changeover from white to black accoutrements in 1855, then to russet in 1903, and then back to black in 1956.

White buff leather slings were mainly an affectation of the 1820's and 30's. (Copying the British was a fad at the time.) They got dirty really quickly, and had to be constantly refreshed by applications of pipe clay. The belts, etc., weren't so much of a problem.

 

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

The Robbins & Lawrence Armory, where your rifle was made, still exists in Windsor Vermont. Actually, the building still exists, and today it is home of the American Precision Museum.






The Robbins and Lawrence Armory was a pioneer in developing mass production techniques in firearm manufacturing. Many of the techniques and processes developed at Robbins and Lawrence were later adopted by other manufacturers, including the Springfield Armory in Springfield Massachusetts.

A friend and I visited a few years ago.










Here is the lock plate of a Mississippi rifle produced at Robbins and Lawrence and on display in the museum today.






Many of the machines developed at Robbins and Lawrence were pattern following machines. In the days long before CNC machining, this was how complex shapes were cut. This machine uses a stylus to trace a pattern while a cutter cuts the cavity to receive a lock in a stock. Notice the stylus is following the pattern at different levels to cut different levels in the wood.






Another pattern following machine. The diagram below shows how it worked. The cutter was powered by a pulley from an overhead shaft. The shaft was powered by the stream flowing next to the Armory. A worker turned the handles to keep the stylus in contact with the pattern. The photo of the Armory above shows the remains of a dam that would have backed up a mill pond. Water would have been diverted into a breast wheel below the floor of the Armory. A chute can be seen in the same photo which would have returned the water to the stream. Later, steam power replaced water power.






This diagram shows how the pattern following machine worked.






Another machine for cutting the profile of a lock plate, this time with a cutter shaped to make the cuts.






A stock duplicating machine. Not much different than duplicators that were sold by Sears years ago. The worker used the handles to keep a stylus in contact with the pattern at the rear. Both the pattern and the work piece spun at the same rate so a cutter would follow the pattern to cut a stock.






Another view of the stock duplicating machine. Rifles produced at the Armory on display in the background.






Two views of a rifling machine.









A diagram explaining how the rifling machine worked.






Some of the men who worked at Robbins and Lawrence over the years include Daniel Wesson, Horace Smith, and Benjamin Tyler Henry. It is easy to imagine that the exchange of ideas between these men probably had a great deal to do with developing the American System of firearms manufacturing that raised arms making from craft businesses building one firearm at a time to true mass production manufacturing.

I highly recommend a visit to The American Precision Museum to anyone who is visiting Vermont. Plan your visit during the warm months, last I heard the museum is closed during the cold months. It is not heated during the winter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Precision_Museum

 

[windini]

Great post, Driftwood! Very interesting. If I ever make it back to Vermont...

Thanks.

 

[AlexanderA]

In Civil War diaries, Union soldiers would often refer to M1841 rifles as "Windsor" rifles and not "Mississippi" rifles. They usually had high praise for them.

Robbins & Lawrence supplied the machinery for the British to make the Interchangeable Enfield. (Prior to that, the British Enfield was made under a cottage industry system, where numerous small shops made individual parts, which were then hand-fitted into working guns.) Robbins & Lawrence machinery equipped the London Armoury Company, which was a prime contractor for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

The M1861 Special model rifle-musket, made by Colt, Amoskeag Mfg., and Lamson, has some unmistakable Enfield features, such as the shape of the lockplate and the split clamping bands. It's speculated that this was due to these companies having acquired Robbins & Lawrence tooling designed to make the Enfield.

There was a lot of industrial cross-pollination going on between Britain and the U.S. during that time period.

 

[forward observer]

Here's an interesting rundown of all of the companies besides the Harper's Ferry arsenal that produced the model 1841 followed by a complete list of all the variations encountered from the subsequent rework to adapt the M1841 to accept the .58 cal Minie plus add a provision for a bayonet.
https://www.militarytrader.com/militaria-collectibles/mississippi-rifle

Unfortunately, most of the bayonet adaptations were for the sword styles with solid brass grips which were unpopular due to their excessive length and weight. I've got one for a repro Remington 1863 (Zouave) and it weighs 2 lbs while the scabbard and frog add 13 oz more.

The contracts with the British for the P1853 are what made Robbins & Lawrence finally go bankrupt. The need for additional arms by the British was due to the Crimean war. (1853-1856) . Robbins and Lawrence expected to get total rifle orders for up to 30-60k so they spent a bunch of (borrowed) money for additional tooling. However, the war ended much sooner than expected and the Brits canceled all contracts. That's why they only produced about 16k of the initial 25k order and some of that had to be sold domestically.

This just reinforces the old saying that: a government contract can be both the best thing--and the worst thing that can happen to a company. Just ask Winchester and Colt.

An acquaintance on the Colt forum has one of those R & L P1853s. His was actually issued to British troops so it has all the British proofs but then somehow got returned to the US as surplus.



Cheers

 

[Driftwood Johnson]

There was a lot of industrial cross-pollination going on between Britain and the U.S. during that time period.

Interesting. Not too much earlier, there was no 'cross pollination' and England was jealously guarding it's mass production technology.

The city of Lowell Massachusetts was named after Francis Cabot Lowell. He was an industrialist in the early 19th Century and is credited with bringing the Industrial Revolution to America. Lowell was in the shipping business, with large warehouses on the wharves of Boston. At this time, England had a monopoly on the technology to build and operate large scale textile mills to mass produce cloth. Lowell realized that to beat the high prices of goods from England we needed to have manufacturing facilities in this country. Lowell visited England from 1810 until 1812. He visited the textile mills that had been set up in Manchester and other cities. At the time, England was jealously guarding their manufacturing technology. On his trip home in 1812, when he stopped in the port of Halifax, Canada, all his personal belongings were searched by the authorities looking for contraband. They did not find anything, Lowell had committed the workings of the power looms in the mill to memory, and was able to draw detailed plans from memory when he got home. He built his first mill on the banks of the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1814. Lowell died in 1817. In 1821 the officers of his company built a new, much larger mill on the Merrimack River in the new industrial city that would later be named after him. The Merrimack is a much larger river than the Charles, and could support much larger mills.

 

[AlexanderA]

Interesting. Not too much earlier, there was no 'cross pollination' and England was jealously guarding it's mass production technology.

A watershed event was the London Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851. Colt not only exhibited there, but he set up a factory to produce his new revolvers locally. By the 1850's, it was concluded on both sides of the Atlantic that there were profits to be made through cooperation rather than outright rivalry.

 

[4v50 Gary]

Great thread. I need to visit that museum (if I ever travel again).

 

[Driftwood Johnson]

Great thread. I need to visit that museum (if I ever travel again).

If you do, don't forget to visit the Springfield Armory too, roughly 100 miles south on the Connecticut River.