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Westfield Mass.

New England’s Gun Valley, Child of the Springfield Armory

New England’s Gun Valley began with George Washington, who in 1777 scouted the site on an old Puritan muster ground in Springfield, Mass. Washington was looking for a place to store weapons out of reach of the British Royal Navy.

The site met Washington’s approval, as it’s located just north of Enfield Falls on the Connecticut River. That put it out of reach of oceangoing vessels.

The Springfield Armory stored musket and cannon and made cartridges and gun carriages for the American Revolution. Then in 1796, it produced the Model 1795 Musket, the first made in the United States. It wouldn’t be the last.

From 1796 to 1968, the Springfield Armory served as the U.S. Army’s main design and production workshop for small arms. In the process, it became the hub of Springfield’s industrial economy and launched dozens of weapons makers and related businesses in the Connecticut Valley. Companies like Colt, Remington and Smith & Wesson gave the region the nickname Gun Valley.

The Springfield Armory

New England’s Gun Valley

The Springfield Armory, along with the one in Harper’s Ferry, came under orders from the U.S. Ordnance Department. The Ordnance Department adopted a new doctrine that weapons should be identical and repairable on the battlefield. It ordered the arsenals to figure out how to do it. The Springfield Armory then developed the manufacturing process known as ‘armory practice.’

Ultimately, the Springfield Armory drew up designs and specifications then farmed out much of the production work in Gun Valley.

One contractor was Eli Whitney. He received a government contract to produce muskets with interchangeable parts, which he did at his armory in Hamden, Conn.

As weapons production geared up during the War of 1812, hundreds of skilled workers flocked to the Connecticut Valley.

During the Civil War, the Springfield Armory supplied most of the small arms for the Union Army, making an astounding 276,200 rifles in 1864. Other factories in Gun Valley got orders for ammunition, swords, cannons, cotton goods, gun carriages and railroad cars.

In 1891, the Springfield Armory got a new job: develop and test small arms. It made pistols and rifles, including the Enfield rifle, for U.S. troops during World War I.

Then beginning in 1936, the Armory made 4.5 million M1 rifles, semiautomatic weapons invented by John Garand. From 1959 to 1964, it made the M14, followed by the M16 used in the Vietnam War.

By 1968, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara closed the Springfield Armory, but Gun Valley remained. Below are some of the major gun makers in and around Gun Valley.

Colt’s Manufacturing Co.

Samuel Colt applied for his first patent for the Colt revolver in 1836, and by the end of 1837 he had produced more than 1,000 of his revolver that would grow up to become an icon. His only problem: no one bought them. Capt. Samuel Walker of the Texas Rangers finally saved Colt’s dream. Walker had run across the revolvers in Florida and he had seen their repeating firing.

Samuel Colt

On the brink of the Mexican-American War of 1846, Walker hunted down Colt to get him to build some more guns, but with revisions. The new gun, for example, should hold six shots and not five. He also wanted some improvements so it would load faster. Colt gladly complied, and immediately set about filling the first order for 1,000 pistols. A second order soon followed.

In 1848 Colt established his factory in Hartford, Conn., and the legend grew from there. In 1855, he built the Colt Armory with machine tools built by Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney. The company made muskets and pistols during the Civil War.

By World War I, Colt had 10,000 employees making semiautomatic pistols. In World War II, 15,000 workers made pistols and machine guns. Colt also made the M16 for the Vietnam War, selling 5 million of them worldwide.

Smith & Wesson

Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson founded Smith & Wesson in 1855 in Springfield, a good time and place to make guns.

They’d founded another company to make the Volcanic Rifle in Norwich, Conn. Oliver Winchester bought it in 1855. Smith went back home to Springfield and Wesson stayed on as plant manager. Then Winchester declared bankruptcy, reorganized and moved to New Haven as the New Haven Arms Co. Later it took the name the Winchester Repeating Arms Co.

Meanwhile Smith and Wesson regrouped in Springfield, rejoined each other and made a cartridge revolver. During the Civil War, Smith and Wesson received a large Federal contract to manufacture pistols. Soldiers even bought them privately for self-defense.

After the war, Smith & Wesson switched to a revolver more suitable to the western frontier. Then in 1899 the company developed the Smith & Wesson Model 10, the standard gun for police officers during much of the 20^th century. Smith & Wesson created the .44 Magnum in 1955, immortalized by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry films.

The company has changed hands several times, and now calls itself American Outdoor Brands Corp.

Winchester Repeating Arms Co.

The company began as Smith & Wesson began in Gun Valley – Springfield – then moved to New Haven. Winchester made a rifle known as the Model 1873, a lever-action gun known as The Gun That Won the West.

Teddy Roosevelt with a Winchester rifle

Winchester also made the Enfield rifle for Britain and the U.S. in World War I. It struggled, though, during the Great Depression, and the Olin family purchased its assets in 1935. The company later changed its name to Winchester Western, and it made the M1 carbine in World War I. After the war, Winchester made the M14 rifle.

The New Haven plant closed in 2006, and the Olin Corp. licensed a Japanese company to make some Winchester rifles.

Remington Arms

The abandoned Remington Arms plant.

Eliphalet Remington II founded the company in 1816, moving it to Ilion, N.Y., in 1828. Remington still makes firearms at the plant.

Remington’s family sold the company in 1888 to a New York sporting goods company that also owned the Union Metallic Cartridge Co. in Bridgeport and Winchester Repeating Arms Co. It changed Union Metallic name to Remington and continued to make ammunition in Bridgeport.

The New York Times once called the enormous Remington Arms plant ‘the greatest small arms and ammunition plant in the world.’ It may also have ranked as the deadliest.

At its height, Remington Arms employed more than 17,000 workers. Some of them died on the job. On April 4, 1905, three workers were killed in an explosion that blew up an entire building. In 1914, Bridgeport police killed an 18-year-old striking worker, Frank Monte. On March 28, 1942, an explosion killed four women and three men and hurt 80 others.

Today the abandoned Remington Arms plant still sits at 812 Barnum Ave. in Bridgeport.

High Standard

Waves demonstrating the High Standard pistol in 1943.

Carl Gustav Swebilius founded High Standard Firearms in Hamden, Conn., in 1926 to supply firearms companies in the Gun Valley. He bought the Hartford Arms and Equipment Company in 1932 to make .22 caliber pistols. During World War II, High Standard also developed a silent pistol that Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to the CIA) agents could use behind enemy lines. The company’s assets moved to Texas in the 1990s.

Savage Arms

Arthur Savage founded Savage Arms in 1894 in Utica, N.Y., to make rifles, handguns and ammunition. Then during World War I the company merged with Pennsylania-based Driggs-Seabury Ordinance Co. to make machine guns. In 1920, Savage bought Stevens Arms of Chicopee Falls, Mass., where it made Thompson machine guns in World War II.

Eventually Savage Arms moved to Westfield, Mass., and has gone through a bankruptcy and sale.

Sturm Ruger

Sturm Ruger, now the nation’s largest gun maker, was founded in 1949 near, but not in, Gun Valley. It’s in Southport, Conn., with manufacturing facilities in Newport, N.H. making semiautomatic pistols and rifles. Now

SIG Sauer

Another firearms company located near Gun Valley, SIG Sauer Inc. was founded in 1985 in Newington, N.H., to import and sell firearms from its sister company in Germany.

This story last updated in 2022.

With thanks to Suing the Gun Industry: A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts By Timothy D. Lytton .

Images: Remington Arms by Eric Kilby.

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The Railroading of Silas Deane, or How To Destroy a Patriot’s Reputation for 225 Years

Early in the American Revolution, Silas Deane worked without salary and spent much of his own money persuading the French to send guns, ships and other supplies to the patriots. For his efforts he got a reputation as a traitor and a spy. The Continental Congress treated him shabbily. He fell into poverty and, after his death, historians maligned him.

Thomas Schaeper, professor of history of St. Bonaventure University, has unraveled the mystery of Silas Deane and the unfortunate confluence of betrayal, jealousy, bad timing and even worse scholarship that ruined his reputation.

Schaeper’s sleuthing took him to dozens of archives and libraries in Britain, France and the United States, where he pored over dusty, worm-eaten manuscripts that tell the real story of Silas Deane – and how historians have got him so wrong for so long.

In the process, Schaeper wrote a book about a key figure in the life of Silas Deane: his friend Edward Bancroft, a British spy who has also been misrepresented as a traitor and a villain.

Silas Deane in France

Treaty of Alliance

Silas Deane was the first U.S. diplomat, a valuable servant to the cause of independence, Schaeper said in an interview. “He was not a crook,” Schaeper said.

Silas Deane was born Dec. 24, 1737 in Groton, Conn., a blacksmith’s son, and graduated from Yale in 1758. He became a lawyer and a Connecticut delegate to the Continental Congress.

Early in 1776, the Congress sent him, alone, to France to persuade the French government to send soldiers, guns and money in support of the American Revolution. Silas Deane managed to get informal support from France, including ships, arms, surplus military supplies and officers like the Marquis de Lafayette.

A few months later, Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee joined Silas Deane. They negotiated the Treaty of Alliance, which promised France’s military support, and both parties signed it on Feb. 6, 1778.

Nobody Liked Arthur Lee

Arthur Lee

Schaeper called Arthur Lee the villain of the story. “Even his biographers agree, nobody liked him,” he said.

Lee hated French government officials because they were monarchical and Catholic. He hated Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin. He was jealous of his older brothers, Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee, delegates to the Continental Congress, and William Lee, a commercial agent for the Congress.

Lee sent letters to his brothers saying Silas Deane misappropriated funds for his own use. Then came the first thing historians get wrong about Silas Deane, according to Schaeper: Early in 1778, Deane received a letter from the Continental Congress asking him to return to Philadelphia.

“It didn’t say why,” said Schaeper. “Deane just thought they wanted a general report.”

Silas Deane, unaware of the charges against him, arranged transportation and sailed back to Philadelphia, leaving his papers behind.

Trouble for Silas Deane

He walked into a whirlwind. The Continental Congress was bitterly divided over the alliance with France, over independence from Britain and, now, over Silas Deane.

But charges weren’t formally brought against him. The Congress decided nothing, and the controversy dragged on for a year. Silas Deane argued the country owed him money because he got so much help from France for the war.

Then Deane made a mistake. “He’s not a saint, he has a temper,” said Schaeper. He published an emotional defense of himself. It was violent, said Schaeper, and even his friends said he shouldn’t have done it.

In the end, he got no thanks, no money, no salary. He went back to France as a private citizen – a private citizen going broke.

Message In A Bottle

Benjamin Franklin

Unbeknownst to Silas Deane, his friend Edward Bancroft worked as a British spy who kept the British government apprised of negotiations between the French and the three American diplomats. Some historians claim Deane had to know Bancroft was a spy and was therefore one himself. Some even claim Franklin was a spy for the same reason. Bancroft himself has been unfairly reviled as a despicable traitor.

Bancroft was a spy, not a traitor, said Schaeper. He was born in Westfield, Mass., in 1745. During his entire life, he was loyal to Great Britain, if not to his friend Silas Deane. In the late 1760s, Bancroft moved to London, where he wrote novels, practiced medicine, experimented with electricity and studied inks and dyes. He also supported American grievances against Britain.

When the war broke out, the British government asked Bancroft to go to Paris and report on Lee, Franklin and Deane. He did. Once a week he stealthily put a bottle that contained a message into a hollow tree in the Tuileries Garden. An hour later, another British agent retrieved the message. In that way, the British government knew far more about events in Paris than the Continental Congress did.

Franklin

“There is not one shred of evidence that Deane or Franklin knew Bancroft was a British spy,” Schaeper said. “There’s lots of evidence to the contrary.”

For example, Franklin hated the British for burning down towns. His son William, royal governor of New Jersey, remained a Loyalist. Because of that, Ben Franklin didn’t have anything to do with him for the rest of his life.

In 1785, Franklin returned to the United States and wrote friendly letters to Bancroft. Schaeper said it makes no sense to argue that Franklin wouldn’t speak to his own son because of his loyalty to the British, but remained friendly with Edward Bancroft.

Silas Deane Gets Broker and Sicker

Edward Bancroft

Letters that ended up in the wrong hands at the wrong time put another nail in the coffin of Silas Deane’s reputation.

In 1781, the war with Britain went badly and many Americans wanted to give up. Deane lived in Belgium. He was broke, depressed, demoralized and bitter about the way the Continental Congress treated him. He wrote some letters to friends in America, attacking the Congress and arguing the United States ought to surrender. The British intercepted those letters.

In October of 1781 the British surrendered at the Battle of Yorktown. After the battle, they published Deane’s defeatist-sounding letters in New York.

After that, Ben Franklin wouldn’t have anything to do with Deane. Many of his friends turned against him, thinking him a traitor.

Deane turned to Bancroft, of all people. He wrote to him, saying, “I hope you don’t desert me.”

“There’s no doubt at all that Deane didn’t know that Bancroft was a spy,” said Schaeper.

Still Another Nail

A historian in the 1950s really, really got it wrong about Silas Deane, said Schaeper. The historian argued that Bancroft had learned about poison-tipped arrows as a young man living in South America. Bancroft used that knowledge to poison Deane before he returned to America. The reason? He didn’t want Deane to reveal his spying, according to the historian.

Silas Deane house at the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum

Shortly after the ship to America set sail, Silas Deane did suffer convulsions and died on Sept. 23, 1789.

Here’s what really happened, said Schaeper: Silas Deane moved to London in 1783, where he spent the last six years of his life getting poorer and sicker. Finally his health improved enough for him to return to America to try to start a new business. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage aboard the ship, according to physicians who studied his symptoms before he died.

Schaeper noted several problems with the theory of poisoning. One, Silas Deane didn’t know about Bancroft’s spying. Another is that the kind of poison Bancroft knew about requires direct injection into the bloodstream.

“You can drink a substantial amount of it and not die,” said. Schaeper.

The Silas Deane House in Wethersfield, Conn., has been restored to its mid-18th century appearance. You can visit it as part of the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum.

Thoma Schaeper’s book, Edward Bancroft: Scientist, Author, Spy, can be purchased through New England Historical Society. This story was updated in 2022. Image: By Daderot – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7009576.

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Connecticut’s Edward Bancroft Sides with the British in 1776 – Secretly

Connecticut physician Edward Bancroft had friends in high places. He was a former student and classmate of Connecticut’s Silas Deane, as well as a confidante of Benjamin Franklin’s.

Edward Bancroft

But he also had a powerful enemy in Virginian Arthur Lee, who cared nothing for Bancroft. Lee disliked Bancroft’s using his insider knowledge to profit on stocks during the American Revolution. He disliked Bancroft having a mistress. And, most importantly, he believed Bancroft spied for the British.

Edward Bancroft

Edward Bancroft was born in Westfield, Mass., on Jan. 20, 1745. His father died when he was two, and his mother remarried David Bull. Bull was from Connecticut, and the family relocated there. Bancroft studied under Silas Deane, and then apprenticed to a physician in Killingworth. He then moved to London as a man of letters.

When the American Revolution broke out, Franklin and Deane negotiated with the French, hoping to draw them into the war on their side. Bancroft served as their secretary. His unique position gave him access to the inner workings of the American delegation in France and easy access to Britain, where he could travel freely.

In a letter to Benjamin Franklin in a February, 1779 Lee protested Franklin’s continued reliance on Bancroft.

Lee had long believed Bancroft was acting as a spy for the British, having friends in England who told him so. The Virginia doctor did not hesitate to say so. He had reported to the continental Congress’ Committee on Correspondence in April of 1778 that he suspected Bancroft was supplying information to the British and he repeated the charge to Franklin.

“I have farther to inform you as one of your Colleagues, that I have evidence in my possession, which makes me consider Dr. Bancroft as a Criminal with regard to the United States, and that I shall have him charged as such, whenever he goes within their jurisdiction.”

Ben Gets It Wrong

Franklin, who had used Bancroft to gather information in England as a spy for the American cause, refused to believe that Bancroft was a double agent. Franklin was wrong.

Edward Bancroft had been recruited by the British Secret Service in 1776 for a sum of 200 pounds per year, later elevated to 500. And throughout negotiations with the French, Bancroft provided his British handlers with copies of documents containing directions from Congress to Franklin and the negotiators dealing with the French.

Hundreds of documents made their way into British hands over the course of several years. Bancroft also routinely gave face-to-face briefings to British officials on his trips to England. Aware that he was suspected of spying, Bancroft helped to point the finger at others to shake off suspicions and at one point the British arranged to have him arrested and charged with giving aid to the American rebels, as part of a smokescreen to preserve his cover.

Revelation

In the end, all the subterfuge worked and it didn’t work. Bancroft was able to continue in his role as spy. But the alliance with France continued. Franklin, in particular, had little fear of spies among the diplomatic ranks. If a person always represented his intentions consistently, Franklin asserted, a spy would do little good, and indeed the alliance with France was created.

As to why Bancroft became paid spy, he explained it in a letter in 1784. He simply wanted to prevent the colonies from leaving England. When approached for help by representatives of the British government, he wrote he had lived there nearly 10 years.

“[I] expected to reside the rest of my Life, in England; and all my views, interests and inclinations were adverse to the independency of the Colonies,” he wrote. Though he had advocated some of their claims, “from a persuasion, of their being founded in Justice.”

He therefore wished that the English government “might be informed, of the Danger of French interference.”

Though he initially volunteered information freely, he would later turn it into a career. Bancroft’s role as a British agent remained a secret throughout his life. It was only revealed in 1890 when papers related to his pension were released to the public.

This story was updated in 2021.

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