Bernard
 

While we are at it here is one, a 32" Bernard C Hammer

Thats awesome Gary. What a great clays gun that would make:bowdown: Choked F/F I presume?

Rich I will check and see it is a 12 gauge, ser# 39432

thats one pretty parker....charlie

Hammer envy!

Dear Santa,
Please fined the enclosed Form thread. I've been very good so far in 2019 so I wanted to put a bug in your ear. If there is any way you can please place any one of these beauties under the Christmas tree this year I don't think I'll ever ask again.

P.S. In my stocking just stuff some RST shells in there and we got a deal!
Matt.

Gentlemen, This is by far my favorite thread!!!

Thank you for sharing.

This is an 1890 catalogue illustration of the building from which was ordered John's lifter hammer gun, serial number 15678, depicted on this thread: the John P. Lovell Arms Co., of Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts.

That year the company was celebrating 50 years in business.

The founding Lovell was originally a gun maker, but with hand-made gun being replaced in the 19th Century by the machine-made product, the firm became a dealer in firearms and equipment for outdoorsmen.

Suggested by my reprint of the 1890 catalogue, the buyer of John’s “C”-grade 12 would have been able to choose from an inventory of shot-guns that included W & C. Scott; W. W. Greener; Bonehill; Colt; L. C. Smith; Ithaca; Harrington and Richardson; Lefever; Remington and from a number of lesser-known and in-house brands, including The Manhattan Three Barreled Gun.

John P. Lovell Arms was then selling to an expanding audience of recreational gunners and shooters, of both sexes, at a time when, according to the Introduction of my 1971 catalogue reprint, “[e]ven the factory worker , however, was afforded some time in the Fall for a small-scale hunting trip”.