Volcanic Repeating Firearms Company Receipt For 50 Shares of Stock 1855 – SOLD

Included with the receipt are two small original period advertisements. The receipt dated October, 10, 1855,  is made out to Reuben Stannard who purchased 50 shares of Capital Stock in the Volcanic Repeating Arms Co., this being Stannard’s second installment on those shares. Blind stamped for the company, and signed by the treasurer Samuel S. Talcott. The first ad is a well illustrated one that appeared in the Tribune Almanac for 1857, and the ink notations are old, certainly no recent. The notation reads, “J.W. Post was afterwards associated with his brother C.C. Post in the rubber business with my father, S. Harris Warner.”  The other small ad, and most likely soon after the company went into production, was published in a New York City paper C-1856-57, placed by Joseph Merwin, Agent for Volcanic Arms.

Included with these original pieces is a   reproduction broadside,   issued by Joseph Merwin C- 1856-57, and some other copied material that was use in a Volcanic Arms exhibit at a trade show many years ago by a collector of same. Also, a booklet written by Edsall James, entitled Volcanic Firearms -And Their Successors, Pioneer Press, 1974, and the 3×5 cards giving the information on the guns that were part of that exhibit.

The Volcanic Repeating Arms Co. started by Smith & Wesson, has a short lived existence, from 1855 to 57, when Oliver Winchester, a major creditor, forced the company to close due to insolvency, and then took over that business and renamed it the New Haven Arms Co.  Winchester and B. Tyler Henry, who continued to work on the old design and later produced the Henry Rifle, which of course would become the Winchester Repeating Arms Co.

Small by very significant paper in this lot, as very little for documents is found for this important American firearms company, the forerunner of one of the World’s best know firearms in history.