The Freeman Army Revolver, a Civil War contract handgun that was never delivered.
On December 9, 1862, Austin T. Freeman received U.S. Patent #37,091 for an “Improvement in Revolving Fire Arm(s),” most specifically an innovation in the method by which a cylinder arbor pin secured the cylinder to the frame and the method by which the cylinder could be removed from the frame. His design utilized a short arbor pin that had a wing shaped extension on the front and a rounded rear. The pin passed through the cylinder and engaged an arbor in the center rear of the frame while the wing catch at the front of the pin was retained by a spring located on the frame. A small slot in the frame made it possible for the wing to be pulled forward after the catch spring was released, enough so the rear of the pin was free of the frame, thus allowing the cylinder to be removed. Freeman’s patent illustrated a double action percussion revolver, with the cylinder removed from the left side of the frame. While the production version of the Freeman gun was single action and the cylinder was removed from the right side, it was for all practical purposes irrelevant, as the patent only covered the arbor pin and latch system concept, and Freeman used that design in his production model.
Austin T. Freeman had been born in New Hampshire in 1838; his early life is not well-known to researchers. By 1860, Freeman was living in German Flatts, N.Y., in Herkimer County. German Flatts is immediately adjacent to Ilion, where the Remington factory was (and still is) located. It is possible that during this period Freeman was a Remington employee, and as we will see, after the Civil War Freeman did have an association with Remington. By 1861, Freeman had relocated roughly 100 miles to the southwest to the town of Binghamton, N.Y. where he was employed at the Starr Arms factory. Freeman must have developed the concept for his cylinder arbor system at this time, and must have also developed a relationship with the Hoard family during this period, as Pitt Hoard and S. Floyd Hoard were the witnesses to his patent application. It appears that “S. Floyd Hoard” was Samuel F. Hoard, brother of Charles B. Hoard.
The Hoard family operated a steam engine manufactory in Watertown, N.Y. (about 140 miles north of Binghamton) and with the coming of the Civil War, they used their political connections to secure a government contract to produce U.S. Model 1861 Rifle Muskets. Charles B. Hoard established the Hoard Armory in Watertown in 1861, and after a number of petitions to the War Department, and the endorsements of at least two-dozen members of Congress, Hoard received his first rifle musket contract on Dec. 24, 1861. The contract called for Hoard to deliver 50,000 stands of rifle muskets at $20.00 each. The terms of the contract required the first 1,000 arms to be delivered in July 1862, with an additional 1,000 in August and September. Deliveries were to be increased to 2,000 per month in October and November, and 3,000 per month from that point on, until the contract was satisfied.
One of the two signers of the surety bond that protected the The Freeman Army Revolver with the cylinder removed from the frame, showing the cut in the frame to accept the pin and the arbor pin pulled forward to allow its removal. government from Hoard’s potential to default on the contract was Pitt Hoard, who had also been a witness to Austin T. Freeman’s patent application. As with nearly all U.S. rifle musket contracts during the Civil War, Hoard failed to make deliveries per the terms of his contract. May 1863 came and went, and it was not until Oct. 16, 1863, that Hoard delivered his first 500 stands of arms, of which only 468 were accepted as “1st Class” at the full $20, with the remaining 32 rated as “2nd Class” and paid for at the lower rate of $19.90. Hoard delivered another 500 “1st Class” guns the next day and managed to deliver a total of 2,000 (half of what was due in May 1863) by the end of that year. Amazingly, after his complete failure to meet the contractual delivery terms, Hoard received a second contract for 20,000 arms on Dec. 1, 1863; after only delivering 1,500 guns that year, of which only 1,427 were “1st Class!” By the end of the war, Hoard only managed to deliver a total of 12,800 of the 45,000 rifle muskets that he was contracted to produce.
During the same time that Hoard was trying desperately to get his manufactory up and running, he approached General Ripley at the Ordnance Department, offering to produce Freeman’s patent revolvers. His initial letter, dated Feb. 16, 1863, offered to manufacture 5,000 revolvers at $11 each. Ripley replied on April 14, accepting the offer, but Hoard replied that the price quoted was in error, and the actual unit price would be $12 each. Again, Ripley agreed and on May 30, 1863, the contract was signed, requiring the revolvers to be produced and delivered by Sept. As with the original rifle musket contracts, Hoard defaulted and no revolvers were produced or delivered in 1863.
In February 1864, Hoard approached General George Ramsay at the Ordnance Department about a contract extension. Ramsey had replaced Ripley in September 1863, and he flatly denied the request, citing the fact that not even one sample revolver had been delivered. At this point it appears that Hoard’s political connections came into play. At the end of February, Ramsey contacted Hoard, asking when the pistols might be delivered, if the contract was extended. Apparently, Hoard said the right things to Ramsey and on April 8, 1864, the contract was renewed, with delivery of the 5,000 guns to be completed by the end of that year. In late May, Ramsey again contacted Hoard, requesting that two sample revolvers be sent to Colonel William A. Thornton at the Ordnance Department for
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insignia, buttons, GAR, documents, photos, & books. evaluation and noted that the revolvers should be “interchangeable with Remington,” a stipulation that had not been included in the contract previously. Both sample revolvers were rejected by Thornton for “defects in workmanship and materials used”, but more than likely the real issue was the new requirement that the Freeman/Hoard revolvers be interchangeable with Remington New Model Army revolvers. Two more samples were requested, but none were forthcoming from Hoard, and the contract expired in late December 1864 without any deliveries being made.
The Freeman Army Revolver, as produced by Hoard’s Armory, was a .44 caliber, single action, six-shot handgun. It had a 7 ½" round barrel and a solid frame with a topstrap. The revolver had an overall length of 12 ½" and weighed a solid 2 lbs., 12 oz. The revolver’s frame, barrel, and cylinder were blued; the hammer and loading lever were color casehardened. The cylinder was retained by Freeman’s patented cylinder arbor system. The twopiece walnut grips were secured by a screw that passed through a pair of brass escutcheon plates. While the first few revolvers appear to have had frames that exposed the barrel threads in front of the cylinder and had thin recoil shields to the rear, the large majority of guns actually produced had concealed barrel threads and a conventional, rounded recoil shield. The revolver had a passing resemblance to the Remington design and there are significant similarities between the Freeman and Rogers & Spencer designs, although there is no indication that the Utica, N.Y. produced Rogers & Spencer had any direct association with Freeman’s design or Hoard’s Watertown manufactory.
In light of the obvious failure of Hoard to make deliveries, the Ordnance Department had entered into a contract on Nov. 29, 1864, with Rogers & Spencer for 5,000 of their revolvers to replace the 5,000 Freeman’s that Hoard was unable to deliver. It is quite possible that this contract is what has created the myth that the Freeman Army revolver was the direct predecessor to the Rogers & Spencer revolver. While the guns do have a very similar silhouette, the primary feature of the Freeman; his patented cylinder arbor pin system, was not used in the Rogers & Spencer. While at least one reference suggests that Hoard produced the sample Rogers & Spencer revolver, this seems quite unlikely, as the manufactory had been unable to produce the Freeman revolvers in time to comply with the contract terms. Further, the Rogers & Spencer was an evolution of the Pettengill revolver, and Rogers & Spencer had sent their sample guns to the Ordnance Department during the summer of 1864, likely right after the Freeman samples were rejected. While some references suggest that Rogers & Spencer bought out the Freeman contract, there is no indication of this, and it seems simply a coincidence that the Ordnance Department simply reassigned the contract to a firm that made a revolver that resembled the Freeman design.
In the end, it appears that Hoard finally managed to manufacture about 2,000 Freeman Army Revolvers prior to entering receivership at the end of the Civil War. Hoard’s original complaint to the Holt-Owen Commission that the contract price offered to produce the rifle muskets was not one at which a manufacturer could make a profit, combined with his limited and delinquent deliveries, conspired to put him out of business. It could also be argued that the time, effort, and expenditures put forth to get the Freeman Army revolver into production only hindered the potential to manufacture rifle muskets. Had he managed to deliver more rifle muskets, he just might have saved the Hoard Armory. As it was, the approximately 2,000 Freeman Army revolvers that were produced became part of the assets of the defunct company.
It is unclear if any revolvers were ever sold privately or to any states prior to the end of the war, but an interesting anecdote regarding their disposition is related by John D. McAulay in his book Civil War Pistols of the Union. McAulay notes that apparently the unsold Freeman Army revolvers were stored in kegs in the attic of the factory carriage house and the son of one of the receivers of the company was known to offer the guns for sale in the Watertown public square for $0.25 each! The receivers managed to return the former Hoard factory to the successful steam engine business that it had been prior to the war.
Austin Freeman returned to his old stomping grounds in Herkimer County, taking up residence in the town of Herkimer and possibly working for Remington again. In 1872, Freeman received two more U.S. patents for improvements to firearms, which he subsequently assigned to Remington. Freeman then moved on to be a short lived, and rather unsuccessful career as an innkeeper, running the Waverly Hotel in Herkimer, until it was repossessed by its former owners in 1878. He then disappears from the historical record. I am indebted to John D. McAulay’s research and his book listed above for assistance in telling the rather interesting story of Austin T. Freeman and his revolver.
Tim Prince is a full-time dealer in fine & collectible military arms from the Colonial Period through WWII. He operates College Hill Arsenal, a web-based antique arms retail site.