Here's a nice pair

H

Hardcase

New member
This is my great, great grandfather's son in law, Robert. If you can keep things straight, my great, great grandfather was the one who served with the 27th Michigan in the Civil War (no problem if you can't, I have trouble keeping 'em all in the right order.)

I'm quite sure that the photo is posed - it was taken probably around 1900, maybe a little earlier. He's wearing an 1897 regulation dress white jumper, but with a Civil War era cap, what looks like an Army belt and completely wrong trousers.

It's the revolvers, though. I'm taking a stab here and saying that the one in his right hand is an 1858 Remington .44 (a real 1858, note no hammer notches) and the other is an 1863 Remington .36. But, of course, I'm open to corrections!

rb_photo.jpg


Here's a link to a ginormous version, if you're so inclined.
 
Yes...

...and the headgear was lovingly referred to as "flat hat."

This is what Jack Nicholson's character was refering to in his line "If he gets (deleted) out of this, I'll eat my (deleted) flat hat." in "The Last Detail."

The Cumberland was the big frigate with the dubious distinction of being the first to be sunk by the CSS Virginia. A subsequent USS Cumberland and likely the ship represented by the hat, was not launched until 1904. So the dates fit.
 
I agree with your examination of the handguns, although I don't think the comment 'real 1858' is completely accurate. I understand you to mean the first model of the gun we now call the '1858 Remington', and that I agree with. However, I believe the only revolvers Remington produced in 1858 were the Remington-Beals Second Model Revolver, a small .31 cal 5 shot gun.

The gun in his right hand is surely a Remington-Beals Army Model Revolver, manufactured in 1861 and 1862. This is the first model of the gun we now call the 1858 Remington New Army after the patent date stamped on the barrel. There are no hammer notches in the cylinder, it lacks the frame cutout at the barrel breech and there is no cylinder pin relief on the loading lever. Scaling the barrel length off the cylinder shows it to be a .44. I understand there were only between 2 and 3 thousand of these made and they were not well received by the Army.

The gun in his left hand is just as certainly the third model in the series, a Remington New Model Navy, manufactured from 1863 to 1878 (after 1875 they were cartridge models) and a much more successful design. It has the frame cutout in front of the cylinder and the hammer notches in the cylinder while lacking the loading lever relief of the second design, the Old Model. The barrel length is that of the .36 cal gun. There were over 120,000 of the .44 Army model made; I don't recall how many .36 Navy models were built.
 
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Thanks, Mykeal, that's what I was trying to get at, but you did a much better job of it!

Noz - Made you look! :D

On a flat-hat related note, I sure do wish that we would have had those when I was in the Navy. Those dog bowls were the bane of my existence. They were dirt magnets and, due to my monstrous noggin, never quite looked right on my head. I traded a couple to a French sailor for his flat hat when we were refueling in Djibouti. Other than the silly little pom-pom on the top, it was a nifty little setup.
 
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