C Bernard

[Matto]

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.

[stumpstalker]

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”.