Many of these gun designers/builders crossed paths several times during their careers.
William H. Baker left Syracuse and L.C. Smith with some of Smith's relatives and George Livermore and went down to Ithaca and started a new gun factory run by water power from Fall Creek, and the first gun Ithaca Gun Co. produced was a Baker designed box frame hammer double with conventional top lever. William H. Baker left Ithaca and returned to Syracuse where his brother Ellis had founded the Syracuse Forging Co. They soon began making a trigger-plate hammer double of A.C. McFarland design, Patent No. 370,966 and the company became the Syracuse Forging & Gun Co. In 1888 the factory burned and they relocated to Batavia, NY, but by this time William H. Baker was ill with TB and Ellis brought in Frank A. Hollenbeck to be plant superintendant. Shortly after the move to Batavia, the company name was changed to Baker Gun & Forging Co.
Back in the 1870s, Frank A. Hollenbeck had worked with William H. Baker on Baker's trigger-break three-barrel and double guns in Lisle, NY, before William H. Baker hooked up with L.C. Smith and moved to Syracuse. After Baker moved to Syracuse with L.C. Smith, Hollenbeck built some hammer doubles of his own in Lisle with a third trigger break in the front of the trigger guard to open the guns.
While L.C. Smith and Ithaca Gun Co. built guns of William H. Baker's design, the Baker Gun & Forging Co. never built a gun of William H. Baker's design.
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