Another Henry F. Tenney Parker
 

Received an email out of the blue yesterday from the brother of a close friend who tells me he has another HFT parker. It's a 12 ga VH ser # 231162 circa 1929 vintage. What does the book indicate about this. I've not seen it but he's shipping it to me for evaluation on condition etc. Believe it to be 28 inch barrels. Picture below is all I have at this point. Looks like butt plate is missing.
Any info on this in the good Book?

I'll post more photos when I receive this double next week.

Sorry Allen, no info in the book for this one.

This is the second VH I've inquired about where there's been no info in the book. Is this particular to the lower end Parkers? What would explain no record? records lost in transition from Parker to Remington. Were Parker's record keeping practices not consistent?

there are some members that know a lot more about it than me

but I do not think the missing data has anything to do with grades-

the gaps occur mostly in ranges - blocks of numbers some quite large - and many of the numbers not in the book still have info available for letters -

So I think it was just a matter of what was available to the author when he made his lists

Thanks Rick. I was wondering that since the trojan and vh grades were produced in such large numbers compared to the higher grade doubles, that Parker Borthers might not have been as concerned about their record keeping for these 'production' models than others. Thanks for the quick response. I wish this was a 20 ga or 28 ga he was shipping to me. I need another 12 ga likje a hole in the head.

Its really just luck of the draw. Parker records are not available on some years. It's not a big deal IMO overall, but when you get into the higher grade guns it can be problematic if you can't authenticate. Upgrades on lower grade guns have been known to happen. I have several guns that are not in the record book. Early 1900s and around WWI.

When the Parker records were copied at Remington, from what I understand, some blocks of lower grade guns were not recorder - the thinking by those who omitted them was that only the high grade guns' records were to be copied.

We're just darn lucky we got what we got, despite some of the inherent problems when there is a bit of miscommunication.

Thanks Dean. I figured the transition from PB to Rem. might have something to do with it. BTW, are you going to the Southern? If so, are you driving down or flying. Jean is pushing me out the door to go.

I just got another email from the brother of my good friend and he tells me his other brother (there are 3 brothers in this family that I'm dealing with and apparently all 3 have one of Tenney's Parkers) has one of Henry Tenney's Parkers that his other brother may want to unload. One has the BHE, the other has the VH noted above and I'm inquiring of the 3 rd brother to find out what he has and whether he wants to unload it. This is getting more interesting. It would be cool if this third brother has a nice 20 or 28 ga.

Also there are several books that suffered the ravages of time and were lost, damaged/missing etc. We know that at least a few books are in private hands.

. It would be cool if this third brother has a nice 20 or 28 ga.[/QUOTE]

Maybe a nice little 410 ???:eek:

If he has a 410, I'd eat #%#& for a mile to get it!

them saw briars would be rough to eat....charlie

Even so Charlie, a little Parker 410 find would be pretty nice don't you think. But if I get an answer from his brother, Scott, it will more likely be something far less than a 410. Probably another 'run of the mill' VH 12 or 16 (lol)

NO, NO, NO! Parker scribes were religious about their record keeping, and did not discriminate according to grades or numbers produced. True, there were errors occasionally, but the simple truth is that a number of Stock as well as Order Books are missing - read TPS! Some books were inadvertantly destroyed, some 'borrowed' and never returned, and a very few probably stolen. It is a fact that when the basement machine room in "The Arms" was flooded, some of the Stock Books, being of much larger format than the Order Books, were actually used like flagstones for stepping stones between rooms. The had been stored there in large wooden machine parts crates and were put into service to keep employees' feet dry!

Just to set everyones' fears aside, the Parker Bros. records at Remington (both production books and order books) are now stored on metal shelving, above the floor. They are also covered with heavy plastic. One off my fondest memories was being able to spend days at Remington plowing through these books. Particularly exciting was to find the actual orders or production data on most of my Parkers. When you get to see the actual order placed by a private individual, and then see the production data including the names of the workers, you really appreciate the history of the fine guns. You also realize how many freedoms we have lost since the times these guns were made. I now fear that these records and the whole Remington Manufacturing Plant will be lost to New York as a result of Coumo's recent gun ban law.

"NO, NO, NO! Parker scribes were religious about their record keeping, and did not discriminate according to grades or numbers produced."

I don't know if this is true or not but it doesn't hold water just yet. For years we have heard, on this BB, that when the books were transcribed by the PGCA they only bothered copying the higher grade guns. Now you say that is not true - so which is it?

I have a hard time believing the lower grade gun records' not being available can be attributed solely to missing books. Here's why - in many cases you can go down the list of gun in the Serialization book and see blocks of 15 or 20 high grade guns, non-sequentially numbered. It stands to reason the missing serial numbers belong to lower grade guns that simply were passed over. Or does it make more sense that Parker decided to skip over various serial numbers and produced 12 D+ grade guns in a row?


In any case, I can always tell who has and has not worked in a manufacturing facility before based on their level of disbelief over lost records. Is it really hard to imagine that hand written, paper records from a firm that went out of business in the 1930's could be in less than pristine condition? The real miracle is that so many survive. Or better yet, that they bothered making any records at all in the first place.

Gentlemen,

We as collectors are very lucky that we have access to the records of Parkers that we do!.

I wish to pay a special thanks to those who took their time and worked so hard in copying and transcribing the Parker records. Also, another thanks to Misters Gunther, Mullins, Parker, Price, and Cote' for researching and writing THE PARKER STORY. A final thanks to Misters Price and Fjestad for the same for the PARKER GUN IDENTIFICATION & SERIALIZATION book, i.e. "The Book".

I agree with our Fishtail friend that maintaining records via hand written entries on paper is hard to achieve 100% accuracy and just as hard to preserve those records over the years! Just look at all the missing information for LC Smith and Lefever Arms shotguns.

Mark

I probably should not even bring this up but I know there are some surviving records for Lefever as I once owned them. It was a bound volume made up what appeared to be remnants of records for guns produced and guns returned for repair.I advertised it in the Gun list and took it to a least 3 gun shows where it did not attract much interest.I had it for sale for $400 with no takers.I have taken a lot of flak for trading them off but no one showed any interest and this was before I was using the computer.I would not be surprised if some more Parker records show up.

Those who choose to believe that the missing records on various guns is due to the fact that the Parker employees chose to or inadvertently missed certain lower grade guns are flat out wrong. I have seen the books that exist, both order books and production books. All the books were numbered and it is easy to tell which ones are missing. Check out "The Parker Story" by Price, et al. It and our own "Parker Pages" tells which exist and which do not. In the ones that exist, I have seen serials covering all grades. Any guns today that cannot be documented through the Parker records are the result of missing or damaged or illegible books. PERIOD

Gents, back to the original subject of this thread. I received today an email from the 3rd brother and descendant of Henry F Tenny. Turns out he DOESN'T HAVE ANOTHER PARKER. It's a 12 gauge Fox Sterlingworth. I think he may want to sell it. I've asked him for pictures and more details. If it were a 16 or 20 and assuming condition is god or better, I'd buy it but another 12? Jeez. So Charlie, it's not a 410 and not even a Parker although Fox turned out decent guns for sure.

Gntlemen - Just as a very small example of serial numbers that were omitted when transcribing the data of Parker guns from the original books at Remington I reiterate that some lower grades were definitely passed over in some sequences by some of those doing the transcribing.... look at page 331 of the Parker Gun Identification & Serialization book.

I rest my case.

Dean, I think we are making a mountain out of a molehill. Just because the serials are not in the PGI & S book does not mean that they do not exist. The PGI & S book was created from Charlie Price's data base which was created from the copied book pages by hired computer input people. Charlie can do a better job than I explaining the process. The reading, typing, entering process was fraught with error--but not because the original books were wrong. Check page 260 of the referenced book. Three 8 gauges are listed in the 4th column, starting with serial 74620. There are actually four 8 in this set, starting with 74619. How do I know? I have 74622 and a copy of the original order from E. T. Allen in California. Parker Bros. pretty much did everything right, including keeping factory records.

The Parker Story database and the PGCA database are not the same. Both include all the stock book serials but TPS database does not include serials for G grade and lower. So, a grade two or lower where the stock book is missing will not be in the Serialization book even though we have records for it in an order book. If you have a grade 2 or lower always check the database on this website not the Serialization book. Also note that it is possible for our database to show we have records but the only record is for a repair. We can not do a letter on a repair only as there will be no info on the what the gun actually is. Mark

What Dean does not understand about page 331 is that the stock books for the entire page are missing. We don't have stock book information for any gun from serial number 103084 to 111443, but we have plenty of order book information for letters. The reason that there is information on the high grade, 8 and 28 gauge guns on page 331 is that the authors searched the order books for high grade guns, 28 gauge and 8 gauge guns for the Appendices. Yes, there are low grade guns recorded in those order books, but the authors did not record them. The PGCA records include all those low grade guns in their available data. There are thousands of guns not listed in the Serialization Book that are available for PGCA letters as Mark explains. As Mr. Zachow tried to explain, Parker Brothers recorded all guns, all grades. What PGCA members must remember is that the SB only includes guns from available stock books and a few hundred high grades and 8 and 28 gauge guns. There are thousands of guns available for research by the PGCA researcher that do not appear in the sainted Serialization Book. Another thing to remember is that the order books ended in 1919 and any later gun will not have purchaser information except in rare instances. By the way, just about everything Mr. McCormack said was right and virtually everything Mr. Fishtail said was wrong. No one who knows anything about the Parker records has ever said that low grade guns were not posted in the records. Mr. Fishtail is mistaken about what he thinks he has read on the forum.

Many, many thanks to Bill Zachow, Mark Conrad (former PGCA Research Chairman) and Bill Murphy for setting the record straight on the Parker records as they are presented in both The Parker Story and the Parker Gun Identification & Serialization book.

Every day holds a new learning experience for me and I am sure for a great many visitors to this forum, both PGCA Members and non-members alike. Someday I hope we can get all of this information down in one volume of extraneous Parker Collector Information that doesn't pertain strictly to the guns but also to the history of the PGCA, its formation, how information was obtained, how it was used, how it was recorded - anything and everything we can learn from those who have been involved since the beginning of the PGCA and even before. Time will run out on our ability to do this if we don't start very soon.

One comment made earlier was that Dean understood that the researchers at Ilion in 1998 did not copy the records of the low grade guns. This is absolutely wrong. The Research Committee members copied every page of every Parker order book in the Remington Archives. They copied every Parker IBM card in the Remington Archives. Commander Gunther copied every page of every stock book in the Remington Archives and presented the copies to PGCA. Every page of every order book, stock book, and every IBM card is in the PGCA research files, thanks to that research committee. Three members of the 1998 PGCA Research Committee have posted correct information on this thread. Those posters are Mr. McCormack, Mr. Conrad, and Mr. Murphy. If you want confirmation that all guns, high grade and low, were posted in the Parker records and copied by PGCA, ask one of those three people. By the way, a great article explaining the work of the PGCA Research Committee was written by Ron Kirby and published in the Parker Pages. I hope someone can give us a reference to that article, or maybe Dean can reprint it in a future Parker Pages.

:cheers:

There were two articles written up about the PGCA's Research Team's trip to Illion in the Sept/Oct 1998 Parker Parkers. Kevin McCormack wrote a lengthly article about the entire trip and Ron Kirby did a piece uner the Secretarys Notes. 30,000 pages were copied in 4 1/2 days by the team. The team consisted of Ron Kirby, Bill Murphy, Jim Hall, Allan Swanson, Frank Sweeney, Paul Burns, Dr. Dave Rosier and Mark Conrad. I had only been in the PGCA for two years. We worked very hard but more importantly we had fun. Friendships were developed that have lasted all these years.

Remington treated the team to a very nice dinner and offered us the employee price for any of their products. We spent a little time looking through the museum and items related to Parker Bros. I loved the Trojan Skeet gun prototype with its single trigger(miller) and ejectors (Win Model 21). I think it was a 12 bore. That gun in a 28 or a 410 would be nice.

It was a wonderful week in which all of us knew we had done something very special. I still cherish the week and would do it again in a heart beat.

Mark

I have collected and studied Parkers since 1960, the year before Peter Johnson wrote his book. Mark reminded me that the week in 1998 at Ilion was the absolute highlight of my collecting and researching career. Thanks to Mark and Ron for a wonderfully planned project. Thanks also to Remington executive Dennis Sanita, who was our hands on host for the entire week. Dean, you would be doing us a great service to reprint those two great articles. Thank you.

Very informative thread gents

As time goes by we tend to forget the details. After my post and thinking of the great time we all had in Illion, I failed to mention the contributions of Allan Swanson. Allan rarely makes posts on this forum. I should have added in the post that if it wasn't for Allan and his relationships with the owners of Remington, the PGCA would have never been allowed to copy the records (order books). Allan worked very hard using his contacts to make this possible. Many thanks.

Mark

I looked for you Bill and didn't find anything by Ron on the topic. However, I did find "The Parker Records - Ilion - June 1998" by Frank B. Sweeney in Volume 5, issue 5, of Parker Pages. I hope this is the one you were thinking of?

Remington executive Sam Rensi was also a gracious host at the Arms, but also at our wonderful night on the town in Utica. Commander Gunther also did his presentation of the stock book records, as I recall, in the parking lot during lunch hour. What a fine gentleman he was. He sent me a TPS volume once, just because.

Deleted

John Dunkle - please delete this thread
 

John Dunkle - since I originated this thread and asked the original question in all sincerity (and I appreciate all the info that has been put forth). I think it's time to move on to other subjects so would you please delete this thread?
Thanking you and all the contributers in advance.

I'm sure we all apologize for hijacking your thread, Allen. However, in all honesty, you must admit that you went off subject by asking some questions about the "records" in your second post. Two posts later, you veered off to questions about transportation to the Southern.

Thanks for the reference to the Frank Sweeney article, Robin. Mark found the other two articles in the September-October 1998 Parker Pages.

Hi Bill, quite true I veered off subject several times and I think the discussion on'the book' was very informative. My only reason for asking John to pull down the thread is because it looked to my eyes like we were pretty close to exhausting the 'Book" discussion and some of the opnions that were being expressed might start an open brawl. I didn't want that to happen and I'm not blaming anyone. That was my concern only.

John D. - we can pull this thread down if you please.

Allen, I think with all the opinions expressed and true knowledge imparted here to thwart rumor and speculation, this thread should remain here on the forum as a good educational reference and as an example of the worthy exchanges of information we encourage here... just my HO