Guns
Rare Samuel Colt Carte de Visite Photograph from Life
c. 1861 Civil War Era, Carte de Visite Photograph of Samuel Colt taken in Life, by Webster & Popkins 297 Main Street over State Bank. Hartford, Conn., Choice Very Fine.
This original Carte de Visite from Life of Samuel Colt measures about 2.5" x 4". Photographs of Samuel Colt (1814-1862), the historic founder of Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company, are truly difficult to procure. This lovely CDV features the bearded Samuel Colt in his forties, near the end of his life. This image shows Colt in a chest-up pose. Backstamped by the local photographer, it reads, "Webster & Popkins 297 Main Street over State Bank. Hartford, Conn." A rarely encountered, highly important and desirable CDV Photograph image taken in Colt's hometown of Hartford, Connecticut a year prior to his death.
In November 1846, Samuel Colt wrote Samuel Walker, a newly appointed captain in the U.S. Mounted Rifles who had recently arrived in the northeast to recruit for his new company. Colt had fallen on hard financial times and hoped Walker, who had used Colt's Paterson model revolver as a Texas Ranger, might have ideas for an improved model. They soon began working together. Their efforts produced a much larger and more powerful .44-caliber six-shot revolver named after the Texan-the Colt Walker revolver.



Walker then had to convince the Secretary of War to authorize the purchase of the new revolvers from Colt. Walker was successful and a U.S. government contract was signed in early January 1847 for the purchase of 1,000 "Colt Walkers," specifically for the Mounted Rifles. Since Colt did not have an armory at the time, he hired Eli Whitney's armory to manufacture the guns.



Walker soon returned to Mexico, but the pistols did not arrive for Walker's men before his death at the Battle of Huamantla in October 1847. (Colt blamed the U.S. Ordnance Department for delays.) Before his death, however, Walker had received two pistols as gifts and likely had them with him at his death. Colt's business grew quickly after this, so that at his death in 1862, he was one of America's richest men.