Roy Marcot - History of Remington Firearms: The History Of One Of The Worlds Most Famous Gun Makers

The earliest known likeness of the founderEliphalet Remington II.

Eliphalet Remington, Sr. (Father of the founder of Remington Arms) settled in the Mohawk River Valley in 1799 to establish his business as one of the finest forging operations in the frontier. Remington fashioned quality iron implements sought by settlersagricultural tools, hardware, sleigh runners and other rudimentary products. As it turned out, Eliphalets choice of locating his business paid handsome dividends, because just a few years later, in 1824, the Erie Canal was constructed only a few miles to the north. The waterway provided a direct link to Albany and New York City (to the East) and to Buffalo and the frontier (to the West).

The legend states that in 1816, young Eliphalet asked his father for money for a rifle and was refused. Thereuponso goes the tale the young man went out to the smithy and forged and welded a rifle barrel of his own. Then putting it on his shoulder, he walked to Utica to have a gunsmith ream and rifle the barrel. The gunsmith is reported to have praised Eliphalets work, and the lad hiked home, finished the rifleand he was in the gun business! This story has been retold countless times since, but is not reality.

It is unlikely that a country boy would have possessed the skills to make up an entire flintlock rifle in 1816. There is little doubt that young Eliphalet forged his first rifle barrel in that year, after all, he was the son of a commercial iron forger with the facilities of an ironworks at his disposal. The reality is that to make his barrel, young Eliphalet would have started with a flat iron bar (possibly three quarters of an inch thick, about five inches wide, and as long as the finished barrel was to be36 or 39 inches). Heating a short stretch of the bar, young Remington would have forged it lengthwise around a mandrela rod used to form and maintain the hollow bore. Bringing the iron to a welding heat he would have hammered the joint under a triphammer until it was securely welded together. He would have proceeded, inch by inch, until the whole barrel was done. Then he would have ground the exterior to an octagon form, and the barrel would have been ready for reaming and rifling. This would have been the customary way to make an iron rifle barrel in the early 19th century.

One of the original Remington forge buildings, dating from the early 19th Century.

Whether Eliphalet finished up the rifle after the Utica gunsmith had reamed and rifled the rough barrel is much more questionable. To make a full length stock for a muzzleloading rifle was a job for an experienced gunsmith who has specialized tools. Eliphalets skill was not advanced enough to undertake such a task successfully. Proper functioning of the rifle depended on precisely inletting these components into the wood of the stock, and a single small error would have yielded a nonfunctioning firearm. It seems very likely that young Eliphalet would have left completion of the rifle to the Utica gunsmith who finished the bore.

The original Remington Homestead, built circa 1809 by Eliphalet Remington I.

One of the first factory buildings to be constructed after the move from the gorge in 1828.

Another of the original armory buildings built in what would become Ilion, New York, circa 1854.

It has also been said that Eliphalets finished rifle was so successful that neighbors wanted one for themselves, and he found himself in the gunsmith business. But this is also not true. No evidence has turned up to indicate that Eliphalet made complete flintlock or percussion sporting or hunting rifles for others until much later. The 1820 Census of Manufactures report shows no gun materials at all among the products of the Remington forge. J. Leander Bishop published his History of Manufactures in the United States which stated: for many years the business was restricted to the manufacture of rifle barrels. By the middle 1820s, Remingtons forge was making rifle barrels, as well as numerous agricultural tools.

Long before industrial processes as we know them today were in use, and even before the concept of a factory was fully developed, Eliphalet Remington utilized a system to organize groups of journeymen into what became known as the inside contracting system. While these teams of workers had the financial and mechanized support of Remington, they were inspired to innovate and succeed on their own. Eliphalet Remingtons organizational principles anticipated by more than 100 years the quality team concepts so familiar to us today.

Aerial view of E. Remington & Sons Armorycirca 1875.

Word of the success of Remingtons Armory spread and the town of Ilion (incorporated in 1852) became a magnet for skilled craftsmen, inventors, and industrial entrepreneurs. As the years followed, individuals with a new process or product who joined Remington knew they could use manufacturing facilities to turn their dreams into reality As the markets in the frontier West (at that time, Northern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the Great Lakes) began to open, the demand for firearms grew rapidly.