Addendum to Parker Pages Autumn 2017 Article
Beginning on page 4 of the Autumn 2017 issue I wrote an article entitled "The Elliot's Twenty-bore Parker Bros. SKEET GUN". I had alluded to a picture or pictures I had seen but were not available at the time the magazine went to press.
One of the pictures has just recently been found and made available to me - the other is still not accounted for.
The young chap in the middle is the father of the gentleman who met me at the post office and brought me to his house to show me that beautiful little Parker 20 gauge DHE. The other picture is of the April 22, 1936 issue of the Evening Tribune which, by the way, is still in business, under the new name of The Lawrence Evening Tribune, in Lawrence, MA.
The Elliot family lived in North Andover, MA - less than 5 miles from the original skeet field in Andover where Charles Davies and William Harnden Foster invented the game of Skeet. But the Elliots were members of the Methuen Rod & Gun Club - about 5 miles in the other direction - and I was never able to connect them to the Skeet field on Dascomb Road in Andover, which was still active into the very early 60's.
You can see in the picture that young Colin Elliot is holding the Parker skeet gun with the splinter forend rather than the beavertail forend which is also shown in my article.
Note also in the newspaper article "Dracut Nine to Play Punchard" Punchard being the school in Andover where WHF attended high school.
I hope someday the other picture that had been shown to me surfaces so I can share that one too.
.
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"I'm a Setter man.
Not because I think they're better than the other breeds,
but because I'm a romantic - stuck on tradition - and to me, a Setter just "belongs" in the grouse picture."
George King, "That's Ruff", 2010 - a timeless classic.
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