Winchester Repeating Arms Company

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Advertisement from 1898

The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a well-known manufacturer of repeating weapons and ammunition in the late 19th and early 20th centuries .

history

The company's predecessor was the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company , founded by Daniel Baird Wesson and Horace Smith in 1855 in Norwich, Connecticut . It produced pistols for rocket balls ammunition and the Volcanic carbine for the same ammunition . This company was not economically successful and was bought by Oliver Winchester . The company's founders then left the company and founded Smith & Wesson .

Oliver Winchester reorganized the company in 1856 as New Haven Repeating Arms Company in New Haven , Connecticut . Named after the inventor and foreman Benjamin Tyler Henry , the Henry rifle was a complete success. Apparently in order to make profit from the now well-known name "Tyler Henry", the company was briefly renamed the Henry Repeating Arms Company in 1865 . In 1866 the company was renamed the Winchester Repeating Arms Company , as Oliver Winchester had now taken full control. In order to be able to meet the increased demand, the company moved into a larger building in Bridgeport in 1867 . Oliver Winchester bought a lot in New Haven to build a new building there. In 1871 the company moved again.

Winchester Repeating Arms Company share dated March 4, 1929

After Winchester's death in 1880, the company became the property of his son William Wirt Winchester, who died of tuberculosis in March of the following year. Winchester's brother-in-law, William Converse, and son-in-law, Thomas Gray Bennett, took over management of the company in 1890, which was 50 percent owned by William Winchester's widow, Sarah . Even before 1886, Winchester entered into an alliance with John Moses Browning , who subsequently designed most of the Winchester bolt action rifles up to 1900. When the company took over arms production and unfortunate investments after the First World War , the Bennett clan lost control of the empire. In 1931 first a banking group and then the ammunition company "Western Cartridge", which was run by the Olin family, took over the company.

The firearms division, separated in 1981 under the name US Repeating Arms Company , went bankrupt in 1989 and then became part of the Belgian Herstal Group , which is also the parent company of Browning International SA . The Olin Corporation still holds the ammunition division "Winchester Ammunition" and the rights to the Winchester weapons. The traditional plant in New Haven was closed on March 31, 2006 and sold to Winstanley Enterprises in 2008. US Repeating Arms Company has since been producing in Belgium, Portugal and Japan.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Winchester Repeating Arms Company  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Henshaw: The History of Winchester Firearms, 1866-1992 , Academic Learning Company LLC, 1993, ISBN 978-0-8329-0503-2 , page 8 [1]
  2. ^ Antique Arms, Inc. - Winchester 1866 Saddle Ring Carbine in .44 Henry Rimfire. Retrieved March 7, 2020 .
  3. ↑ William Wirt Winchester b. 22 JUN 1837 Baltimore, Baltimore County. Maryland d. 7 MAR 1881 New Haven, New Haven, CT, USA: Winchester Genealogy. March 26, 2012, accessed March 7, 2020 .
  4. ^ Wagner, Richard Allan: The Truth About Sarah Winchester, the Belle of New Haven . In: The Truth About Sarah Winchester . Retrieved August 10, 2017.
  5. ↑ https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742577,00.html Time of September 9, 1931: Winchester & Western
  6. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from March 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from May 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from February 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive )