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As they aren’t serial numbered components, the breechblocks would have been fitted in no particular order.
The most important piece of documentation that accompanies this historic carbine is a copy of the factory invoice from March 19, 1856, for 100 carbines, ammunition, and accoutrements totaling $2,773.12. It lists this carbine
by serial number in case 693. The invoice is addressed to General Samuel
C. Pomeroy (1816-1891), the New England Emigrant Aid Company’s most important agent in the Kansas Territory from the mid 1850s to 1860. He became the mayor of Atchison and a United States senator for Kansas. Pomeroy was a former Massachusetts legislator who went to Kansas as an agent for the company both in support of the antislavery movement as well as in search of his own financial success and succeeded on both counts.
He was one of the leaders of the party of emigrants supported by the company that arrived in Kansas City on September 6, 1854, and soon formed the famous Free State town of Lawrence, Kansas. He made return trips to
the Northeast to raise funds to support the Free State settlers in Kansas, including in early 1856 to support the creation of a fund to support the free soilers against the pro-slavery settlers and border ruffians. The two forces had already met in armed conflict following the March 30, 1855, election in which
hundreds of armed Missourians illegally voted. In response, on April 2, 1855, Charles L. Robinson (later Kansas’s first governor during statehood) wrote to Eli Thayer back in New England of the need for arms for the Free State settlers who were largely unarmed in the face of armed Border Ruffians who were illegally dominating the state. He wrote, “Cannot your secret society send
us 200 Sharps rifles as a loan till this question is settled? Also a couple of field-pieces? If they will do that, I think they will be well used, and preserved.” George W. Deitzler later recalled that he arrived in Boston and was delivered an order for 100 Sharps rifles and headed to Hartford. He noted that the rifles were packed as books, and that he had the “cones” removed from the rifles and took them with him to prevent them from being used by the enemy if they were captured. This was in 1855. The Sharps offered a real advantage for the Free State citizens compared to their rivals who were mainly armed with muzzleloading rifles, muskets, and shotguns, but 100 rifles weren’t enough, and requests for more Sharps for Kansas came in.
This invoice is discussed in the included article “The Sharps Rifle Episode in Kansas History” by W.H. Isely from “The American Historical Review” Vol. 12, No. 3 in 1907. The article explains that Dr. Samuel Cabot was in charge of a rifle fund in early 1856 to purchase more rifles for Kansas, including the 100 rifles ordered in March of 1856.
John Brown
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