history of Merwin, hulbert & Co.

For what was the 4th best-selling brand of American revolvers in the 19th Century (behind Smith & Wesson, Colt, and Remington in that order) and by many experts’ agreement, the most sophisticated revolver, it’s surprisingly forgotten today.

That’s probably because it’s the only 1 of the big 4 brands that disappeared for the whole 20th Century and Merwin Hulberts weren’t seen in thousands of Westerns like the Colt Single Action Army revolver and Winchester 1892 carbine.

It’s also had far less written about it, which is why you’ll find longer than usual background information on our website as we bring these revolvers back into production for the first time since around 1891. Further confusing things is a complex business structure. The guns were made by a 50%-owned subsidiary in Norwich, CT, Hopkins & Allen Mfg. that both predated Merwin and survived until 1916 so the guns list both Merwin Hulbert AND Hopkins & Allen on their barrels. The Hopkins & Allen factory burned down in 1900 destroying the records. Merwin Hulbert was based in New York City and went bankrupt in 1891 so it’s sales records were lost, but Hopkins & Allen marketed some of it’s guns under the Merwin brand for 25 more years as well as using many other brand names.

A Merwin Hulbert traced to Wyatt Earp sold in late 2008 for $55,000 and ones in good condition from the 1870’s typically sell for $2,000-5,000 each already, even without the long marketing heritage of Colt, Merwins sell in similar pricing ranges for the Smith & Wessons and Remingtons of the period.

Merwin’s innovative new revolver debuts in 1876, within a year or two of each of it’s primary competitors’ models (the Colt 1873, the Smith & Wesson 1870-1875 models, and Remington 1875) that would battle for the next 25 years during which the functional advantages and better fit of the Merwin gradually won over hundreds of thousands of customers experienced with the competing revolvers.

The Merwin Hulbert team continually out-innovated the competition with at least 14 patented advances in just the 1870’s alone, continually and quickly improving it’s primary models. Only Smith & Wesson with their Russian and Schofield revolvers tried to keep up while Harrington & Richardson, Forehand & Wadsworth, and Iver Johnson designs are obviously quite influenced by Merwin. The innovations fade in both significance and frequency with the death of Joseph Merwin in 1888 and departure of his nephew as the company’s sales manager in 1896, a not uncommon shift as innovation is expensive, risky, and exhausting so the convenience and complacency of making just the familiar products overwhelms most manufacturers, often to their demise.

Is the Merwin “Army Model” Revolver Ever an Army revolver? Well, not the American Army.

In competitions for military adoption by foreign governments it was typically between Smith & Wesson Russian revolvers and Merwin Hulbert’s Army .44’s, Colt and Remington having far less success with foreign military adoption and the U.S. Army kept testing alternates to the Colt Single Action Army in 1870, 1873, 1876, 1878 and 1889. Merwin’s only U.S. military success was getting the predecessor service to the Coast Guard, the U.S. Revenue Service, to adopt it’s revolvers during the Civil War and some sales of a .42 caliber percussion model to the Army then according to an 1865 ad of Merwin & Bray’s.

It did get excellent reviews in it’s 1878 Ordnance Board review and would have been especially competitive at the 1889 when the Army & Navy adopted double-action Colts. It is surprising that America’s most famous revolver was reconsidered so often, but cavalry troopers found the slow reloading a deadly problem in the middle of a battle with the Sioux or Cheyenne.

But the Czar’s Cossacks DO like them!

The Russians for example bought or made over a half million revolvers in the last quarter of the 19th Century for mounted troops, officers, and non-commissioned officers, about 10x the number of U.S. soldiers overall in the same period! The Russians consistently bought large orders of revolvers, starting with 40-70,000 Smith & Wesson No.3 which became the Russian model and caliber to meet their specifications and then at some point in the late 1870’s or early 1880’s began buying Merwin Hulbert revolvers in addition to or instead of the Smiths. Given the caliber remains .44 Russian for both, it’s likely tens of thousands of Merwins augment these orders which considerably consumed both companys’ production capacity for many years.

Interestingly the Russian’s first revolver, the 1870 French--English designed and Belgian-made Galand-Sommerville, obviously inspires the Merwin Hulbert cartridge extraction method, unique to the Galand and Merwin designs, of the cylinder sliding forward so the shorter, already fired cartridges fall out automatically (since the length of the bullet itself is now gone from the cylinder.)

All of the American-made guns were replaced by inhouse production of the American designs by Russian craftsmen at their equivalent to the Springfield Armory at the Russian military’s Tula Arsenal, based in an ironworking center about a hundred miles from Moscow. It’s unlikely licensing fees or royalties were paid, it’s hard to enforce American patent law in Asia then and now while bringing it inhouse probably cut their cost per pistol by at least two-thirds.

Merwin’s loss of the Russian sales to inhouse production is frequently blamed as the fatal blow to Merwin Hulbert & Co., losing it’s largest customer after expanding to serve them and it owed it’s subsidiary Hopkins & Allen $300,000 when it bankrupted in 1891, often blamed on unpaid Russian orders but we haven’t been able to verify that.

The transition to the Moisin-Nagant 1895 revolver at Tula (Moisin was a designer there, Nagant a Belgian designer) which is used up through the 1950’s may actually have been the fatal blow in sales to the Russians, although they made their own copies of American revolvers up until at least 1900.

Surprisingly the Tula Arsenal got into the business of licensing and duplicating American gun designs with the Colt Berdan rifle in 1871 when inventor Hiram Berdan came to Tula to help them set up for a modern breechloader. That is the same Berdan who headed the famed and influential Berdan’s Sharpshooters regiments during the Civil War that helped make Sharps rifles an international brand.

South of the Border, Down Mexico Way

The Merwins are a favorite of both President Porfiro Diaz AND Chihuahua & Sonora bandit leader and revolutionary Pancho Villa!

The 2,000-4,000 Mexican Rurales, a cross between frontier cavalry and regional militias that drew heavily from former bandits, were known for carrying 3 revolvers at a time. U.S. cavalry soldiers got one revolver, infantry soldiers got none, making U.S. troops a considerably smaller market. The Mexican Federales, the regular army used in Central and Southern Mexico were also often mounted or in policing roles and so had revolvers as well, especially important when one’s rifle is a single-shot model.

The Mexican military and police represented the second largest market for Merwin Hulbert. This was enough so that the .44-30 Merwin round was called their “Mexican round” in the company’s sales literature. Merwin’s standard revolver shipping box had it’s instructions in Spanish as well. Why specify the .44-30 Merwin cartridge, instead of the .44-40 WCF?

Mexican soldiers carried Remington Rolling Block longarms in .43 Spanish and.50-70, as well as a mix of.56 cal. Spencers, .50-70 Sharps, 1863 Springfields rifle muskets, etc. sold them by President Andrew Johnson to help drive out Maximilian’s French invaders. This mix held for 30+ years. They were gradually replaced with smokeless Winchester 1894 .30-30’s and Mauser 1895 7x57mms, the Rurales getting the .Winchesters and the Federales getting the Mausers.

The handy .44-40 Winchester cartridge, so popular above the border for it’s dual use in rifles and pistols, that also made it the best-selling Merwin Army revolver cartridge, fell flat South of the Border. Well it was popular with the thousands of bandits and civilians armed with .44-40 1873 and 1892 Winchester carbines and rifles. Those were the American “assault rifles” crossing the border than the Taft and Wilson administration tried to stop just like today’s efforts, while the considerably deadlier German Mausers, Maxims, & Krupps came into the ports. Of course if politicians learned from history, history would be a lot duller.

The Spanish-made Merwins that puzzle all of us...

There may have been some Merwins made in the new national armory of Mexico, Fabrica Nacional de Armas, established in 1881. It did make Remington rolling blocks and Smith & Wesson Russian copies as did armsmakers in Spain like Orbea y Cia or Hermanons and Garate y Hijo for both domestic and Latin American sales. The Latin American sales of Merwins at a time when much of South America was at war or in rebellion and countries were adopting their first cartridge revolvers, are a mystery as factory records burned up in a 1900 fire that destroyed the Hopkins & Allen Mfg. plant utterly.

Pancho Villa and Merwins...

Pioneering Merwin researcher Art Phelps found many examples of Merwins among the up to 3,000 men that Pancho Villa led in Northern Mexico decades after Merwins ceased production, testifying to both their hardiness and usefulness for men whose most common tactic was a pell-mell horseback charge with revolvers blazing.

Art also identified a Merwin Hulbert revolver with good provenance tying it to Pancho himself who used many weapons over the decades of cattle rustling, bandit gang leader, revolutionary field commander, to controlling much of Northern Mexico. Pancho smuggled his arms through El Paso/Ciudad Juarez mostly, but there’s some evidence that his raid on Columbus, New Mexico was seeking guns the local hardware store owners had taken payment for but refused to deliver. It certainly accounts for the raid’s behavior better than theories of just raiding a small town’s commercial district, wanting to alienate Villa’s primary ally and supplier, or wanting the cavalry outpost’s arms. Friedrich Katz’s “The Life & Times of Pancho Villa” is a particularly outstanding biography with lots of historical context.

The City Policeman’s Only Companion

The Merwin Police model to the left was typically in the 3.5” barrel. The folding hammer is half-cocked back here. The rubber handle and skullcracker grip are standard in the police model as is .38 caliber Merwin & Hulbert (quite similar to .38 S&W or .38 Colt in the 1880’s but considerably less powerful than .38 Special which dominated police pistols for most of the 20th Century.) MH revolver model no. 350 F.H. (folding hammer) is the standard model the police departments adopted either entirely in many cases or as one of the primary approved arms. In many underfunded police departments then as now, officers had to purchase their own revolvers and holsters while the department might provide ammunition and rarely some training. In this era when vast numbers of European immigrants had never owned or fired a gun, even the frontier Army typically allocated 2-13 cartridges per year for practice. As many as a third of Custer’s troopers at the Little Big Horn may never have fired a gun before that battle! Interestingly the Army’s strategy with guns was based on expert long-range marksmanship withou practice or training! Ed McGivern developed the first formal police pistol training for the New York Police Dept. decades later in the 1930’s.

The Merwin Hulbert appears to be the first standard city policemans’ pistol in America, like the Smith & Wesson M&P 10 .38Spl. in the 20th Century and the Glock in these times.

These cities were considerably more dangerous than the Wild West, when one looks at the actual crime statistics, and considerably more dangerous than today. More gangs, killings, assaults, rapes, armed robberies, burglaries, drug addiction, smuggling, organized crime (Chinese Tongs, Sicilian Mafia, Tammany Hall), forced prostitution/white slavery, street riots, pickpockets, etc. bedeviled Easterners, many going West to escape rampant crime!

Police, a relatively new innovation as London had only switched to uniformed, formal police in the 1820’s under Sir Robert Peel, got little training, poor pay, and lacked detectives, SWAT, communications, or health care. The long hours walking and standing in poor quality shoes led to fallen arches, hence the accurate term “flatfoot” for cops then.

Patrols were by a lone officer on foot in a cluster of neighborhoods often packed densely into multi-story apartment buildings so it was up to the cop to handle any situation no matter how violent. Typically with a revolver in their pocket and a leather sack filled with lead shot, a sap or blackjack, or perhaps a wooden billy club modeled on a sailor’s belaying pin. Lots of cops died in the line of duty this way but since most were desperate Irish or Italian immigrants who didn’t understand the risks, there were always new men to hire.

The Personal Defense Market back East...

With few police and vast numbers of criminals and angry, violent people, the personal defense market for revolvers was huge, much greater than the sparsely populated West. Sold in hardware stores for as little as $2 (two day’s wages so actually a cheap pistol was considerably more expensive then than now!) as well as catalogs like Montgomery Wards (1872-), Sears Roebuck (1892-) and the Merwin Hulbert 175 page catalog of guns and sporting goods (like Cabela’s or Gander Mountain now) of the 1880’s.

Small, .22-38 cal. double action, short-barreled revolvers that fit in a coat pocket, a drawer, or under a pillow were the big best-sellers. Colt’s best-selling pistol of the 19th century wasn’t the 1873 Army, but instead the 1849 .31 caliber short-barreled revolver. Merwin began serving this market in the early 1850’s and continued to through Hopkins & Allen into 1916 selling hundreds of thousands of reliable, affordable revolvers under myriad brand names or the hardware store’s own brand name.

How do Merwin Hulbert revolvers differ from the period competitors?

While mostly forgotten, the experts remain aware of Merwins unique advantages and have kept it from being completely forgotten, in fact encouraging growing interest since the early 1990’s release of the first books on these revolvers specificatlly by Art Phelps and Joe Vorisek. Glowing references to them by living experts such as David Chicoine, John Taffin, and Mike Venturino who are intimately familiar with all of the leading revolvers of the day and those that came afterwards have helped as well. The mute testimonials in that Merwins are the final or later choices of Jesse James, Pat Garrett, Wyatt Earp, Pancho Villa, John Wesley Hardin, Frank Hamer, Bass Outlaw, Sam Bass, Ned Christie, Bob Dalton, and others whose lives regularly depended on their revolver’s performance and who all started with Colts suggests there’s clearly more to the Merwins.

The relative importance of features changes when one is shot at often and for long periods rather than for range firing, hunting, or simply intimidating people with a brandished gun, one reason soldiers and law enforcement are much more careful in their handgun selection than criminals. Merwins’ a veteran’s choice.

1. Fast to unload all 6 cylinders automatically. Comparable to Smiths, but far faster than Colts or Remingtons. Unlike movies where endless shots go on, the slower loading Colts meant they were typically good for the 5-6 rounds already loaded but often combat pressures made reloading unlikely, certainly the Cavalry experience where a full issue of revolver rounds before battle was 24 and generally unused even at the Custer fight according to Indian accounts (they found plenty of ammunition to go with their new guns.) The percussion revolvers everyone learned on were often too fouled with black powder residue to continue after 3-4 cylinders’ worth of shooting without a quick cleaning under fire (sounds fun huh?) so a revolver one could fire past the original cylinder’s loads while under fire was a significant advantage.

2. Leaves unfired cartridges in place automatically. Unique and very handy in a chaotic gunfight or battle. Throwing away unfired cartridges in the panic of combat is very easy as is running out of ammunition.

3. Easier loading gate than Colt or Remington for loading single cartridges or the entire cylinder could be reloaded while slid open. Again very handy in a running gun battle or combat. The Merwin’s simply slides down rather than hinges outwards.

4. Better dust protection through both design at the rear of the cylinder and more precise construction so the gaps for dust to get in are smaller than the Colt, Remington, or Smith & Wesson. As this is where dust or mud can block the primer from the firing pin, it’s misfire reduction, again a very good thing when fighting in a desert or on the dusty plains as most of the better known Merwin big revolver users did.

5. More robust and durable double action than Colt, still in good order a hundred years later. Ask a gunsmith or film armorer Thell Reed ‘bout that.

6. Folding hammer, unique and more versatile than a completely shrouded hammer, as it does allow single action firing while avoiding snagging in coat or pants pocket linings. Later models mostly have the folding hammer.

7. Interchangeable barrels, done without tools and in a few seconds, so a single revolver could be both concealed carry and a horseman’s long range pistol. A pair, 3.5” barrel and 7” barrel, were commonly sold on the Merwin with a 5” barrel also available. This has never been done again, only the Dan Wesson revolvers of the 1950’s standardize interchangeable barrels. Technically swapping in a cylinder and barrel in a different caliber will work on these and our engineers are looking into that. This looks like it comes from Brooklyn gun designer Daniel Moore’s 1882 patent for Merwins.

8. A smooth trigger pull in double action and the forward weight on the Merwin allow faster, accurate shots with a short-barreled gun (the 3.5” barrel with a .44 cal. was very popular, predating the Charter Arms .44 Special Bulldog by almost a century.)

9. The Merwin has a different balance and fit than the other revolvers with more weight in the front to control recoil especially in the shorter-barreled pistol, a grip designed for smaller hands than the large hands outdoors work develops. Fingers get thicker as the muscles, tendons extending from the upper arm, develop so a farmer or ranchers fingers are often double the diameter of a townsman’s, something I learned fingerprinting hundreds of each. The Colt and Remington grips are particularly better suited to big men’s hands while the Smith and Merwins offer more grips suited for townsfolk and women’s hands to readily fit and control. Custom grips as we think of them like Hogue grips were generally unavailable and uncommon, custom grips in this era varied by material, checkering for a better grip with a sweaty palm, and 3 general shapes.

10. The force of the recoil follows a different path into the gripping hand and wrist to help it stay on target for follow-up shots. Very useful in combat, not particularly important on the range or hunt.

11. Despite it’s claims as a target pistol, particularly in the long-barreled .32, the Merwin’s design features fit an assumption of rapid fire with instinctual pointing so this is important. It has the same rudimentary sights as the Colt Single Action Army, a blade front sight and a groove on the top strap over the cylinder.

12. The Merwin is quieter in operation due to the considerably more precise fit. While unimportant on the range, that subtler sound could be a matter of life or death in personal defense in a tenement hallway, an alley, or a stakeout. The cylinder advances quite a bit more quietly than the Colt and the hammer cocks more quietly too. As a city dweller was likely to cock the hammer while still in a heavy coat pocket, it could effectively be silent.

13. The later models with the birdshead grip are a better design for use as a club, as you grip the Merwin around the action instead of the barrel and the downward force is focused on the metal skull-cracker grip protrusion (so a big bony head doesn’t damage your deluxe ivory or mother of pearl grips!) 7.5” Colt barrels were often used for smacking a problem in the front temple for a quick concussion to conclude the argument with Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, etc. but this can be hard on the alignment of the barrel and sight, just as many real cowboys’ use of their sixgun butts for fencing hammers diminished accuracy considerably with the distorted alignment. A non-lethal option in hand helps manage drunks safely.

Calibers

The Merwins were chambered most commonly for .44-40 Winchester, .44-30 Merwin Hulbert (comparable to .44 Colt, 44 S&W American, or .44 S&W Russian), .38-14 and .32 in both Merwin Hulbert and Smith & Wesson loads (7 shot in .32.) and at times in .22. Some surviving boxes of period ammo list them as .44-100 and .38-100 which would be too long to actually fit in the cylinder even if it didn’t blow up the gun with a 100 grains of black powder. The 100 grain loads are only seen in the biggest rifles of the period such as the Sharps and rare in those as well. The .38 M&H with 14 grains of powder and a 145 grain bullet would have mild man-stopping power, but be comfortable to shoot and control while .32 cal. revolvers were nearly equal in popularity with law enforcement for many decades despite it’s especially anemic man-stopping performance. The .32 MH Long had an 88 grain bullet backed with 15 grains of blackpowder while the .32 MH Short had an 80 grain bullet with 9 grains of black powder more likely to just irritate even a very thin and mild-mannered man.

Surprisingly they weren’t made in .45 caliber and .38 looks to have been the most popular caliber across their line as big caliber, pocket pistols have always been an uncomfortable combination for many shooters.

Merwin Hulbert & Co. owned one cartridge-maker, marketed as both the American Metallic Cartridge Co. and the Phoenix Metallic Cartridge Co. of S. Coventry, Conn.. They made not only the full range of proprietary Merwin cartridges for their guns, but also created an innovative shot shell cartridge for the Merwin .32 and .38 caliber pistols and their rifles that claimed to not degrade the rifling like shot normally does and even to clean the barrel during it’s passage. A revolver with shot shell cartridges is highly recommended for shooting snakes, rats, and other small quick varmints, but generally erodes away the rifling of a barrel, so whether this is a real design breakthrough or advertising hyperbole awaits modern testing.

Merwin’s proprietary cartridge designs continued to be made into the 1920’s by Winchester, Union Metallic Cartridge, Peters and other major ammunition makers indicating the longevity and popularity of these guns. The .44-40 Winchester remained in production throughout and the .44 S&W Russian, .38 S&W, and .32 S&W cartridges look like they’d fit and have comparable powder stresses in the original black powder loads. Using smokeless powder in the softer steels wrecked many Merwins as many a gunsmith will tell you and probably also explains why many didn’t survive for today’s collectors. Dixie Gun Works’ 2008 catalog still carries guidance on adapting modern brass for the M&H cartridges.

Who the heck are these guys anyway?

Joseph Merwin gets involved with marketing and selling revolvers and long guns made by a variety of companies from a New York operation by 1856 and is apparently one of the foremost gun marketers of the age given the brands he represented (most including Winchesters, Volcanics, L.C. Smith,) and the ones he gradually invested in and that show considerably more innovation during his involvement. Along with forming first Merwin & Bray and by 1874 a partnership with the Hulbert brothers, William and Milan, the company owned substantial stakes in Hopkins & Allen Mfg., Evans Rifle Mfg., American and Phoenix ammunition mfg., and likely others. A common myth is that Merwin was killed by Indians and that ended the company. Joseph Merwin’s son was indeed killed by Indians while running a Butterfield Overland Stage Station in the Southwest just after the Civil War. Merwin’s nephew became the national sales manager until 1896 and doubtless deserves considerable credit in growing the compay.

Partners Milan and William Hulbert, brothers, are 2+ decades younger than Joseph Merwin and college-educated, upper class Brooklynites, they bring links to both bank loans and investment capital. The new partnership (1874-1891) appears a good match and the company grows fast in many directions, including developing a major catalog featuring not only many gunmakers’ products but also fishing, baseball, boxing, camping, gymnasium, fencing, tennis, and other sporting goods from a wide range of manufacturers that influences especially later catalogers such as Sears Roebuck and even Cabelas today.

The Hulberts’ father was a senior bank officer/board member as well as served on the board of directors of New York Life Insurance, other major insurers, other banks, and even the Pullman railcar Co.. In this era personal relationships were the only way to access bank loans and investors since financial records were sparse and chaotic in these days before the IRS, bank examiners, the SEC, etc. and most of the publicly traded stocks were railroads. Dun & Bradstreet credit ratings were mostly collections of local gossip by hometown correspondents (Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln was one in the 1850’s.) This unusually good access to many sources of capital was an enormous business advantage as otherwise one just had to accumulate profits until one could pay cash for a new building, equipment, inventory, etc. as suppliers too free with extending credit to customers generally bankrupted and Merwin Hulbert formed a year after the Great Depression of 1873 began (and that lasted into the 1890’s so across the partnership’s entire business history.)

At least by the constant stream of revolver patents, the design work appears to have been done by Hopkins & Allen Norwich, CT long-time staffers ranging from Charles and Samuel Hopkins, Freeman Hood, Henry Hopkins, Daniel Moore, Otis Cole (the extractor), George Cilley (VP/Mfg.), William Bliss, James Boland, etc..

Constant innovation and refinement are seen across the product line until 1888 when Joseph Merwin died, suggesting he was the driving force for both improving the guns to the most advanced revolvers of the time and the most innovative marketing to the retail public. As the marketer for many lines of guns as well as more aware of new European designs as a New York City-based major dealer/cataloger to whom most arms makers would want to get distribution through, the loss of Merwin’s understanding of the market and ability to draw the best work from the Hopkins & Allen’s craftsmen is probably the real fatal blow. The partnership bankrupts in 1891, several years after Merwin’s death, but reforms as just the Hulbert Brothers for several more years before it disappears and only Hopkins & Allen Mfg. continues (after suffering a $300,000 loss on the Merwin bankruptcy and then a devastating fire in 1900 that destroyed the factory and records.)

Hopkins & Allen continued to make revolvers and long guns, but mostly of the same designs. MH’s national catalog fades away at some point in the 1890’s. Hopkins & Allen built a new factory, producing as many as 40,000 guns a year, but was finally killed by the cost of tooling up to make Mauser rifles for the Belgian army in the early part of World War I (when the Germans invaded France through Belgium and devastated the country) for a contract that fell apart with the course of the war. Marlin-Rockwell purchased the Hopkins & Allen operation in 1917 and used it to make their unique aircraft machine gun and perhaps Browning Automatic Rifles. One of Hopkin & Allen’s last hires is O.F. Mossberg which explains Mossberg’s business model ever since!

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