LINCOLN No figures are available on the number of men killed by that deceptively cute little gun known as the derringer. But among the large number who were killed by these weapons were two of our country's presidents, Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley. Both men were targets for derringer-wielding assassins... The derringer - spelled with a double r is a small, easily concealed weapon. generally of one or two large caliber barrels. It can almost be hidden in a man's hand, easily hidden up a sleeve. With one you'd miss an elephant across the street, but it's death close up. The gun gets its name from Henry Deringer and note his name is spelled with a single ra Philadelphia gunsmith of the early 19th century. Deringer was a noted gunsmith of his time, and turned out a wide variety of both civil and military arms. But, with the "invention" of his small size pistol, his fame really began to spread. The little gun caught on immediately, and Deringer was never able to always more customers than Deringer pistols. MCKINLEY With the advent of metallic cartridges a great many firms began making cartridge firing derringers. Now, derringers began to look different from one another; they all retained their small size, however. The derringer which killed Lincoln was one of the original Henry Deringer pieces; the derringer that killed McKinley was the Remington .41 caliber derringer. Both these guns represent classic types, the Deringer piece because it started it all, and the Remington derringer because it became the most popular of all the cartridge types. Heyday of the cartridge derringer was the 35 year period ending around the turn of the century, but a revival of interest in the little gun began within the past several years. Henry Deringer had spent over fifty years as a gunsmith before he developed his astonishingly successful arm--a weapon that was unscrupulously counterfeited by other manufacturers of the era. 54 AM MONG the most interesting collector's items are the derringers. Their originator was Henry Deringer, Jr. These are the small hand guns that are as typically American in design as the Pennsylvania rifles. They were as much a part of a Forty-Niner's equipment as his shorthandled spade and washing pan. But they were also the hand arm of the gambler, the prostitute and the bartender. The derringer was the gun the southern belle hid in the bodice of her dress for protection when she went riding on an isolated route. And, too, it was the firearm of the murderer and the assassin. Some collectors refer to genuine and imitation derringers, classifying in the latter group all of the hand arms of this small type not made by Henry Deringer. This has attached an unfortunate stigma to the type of weapon and has tended to devaluate all but the firearms bearing the distinctive Deringer markings. In actuality, only a limited few of the small hand arms are literal imitations and as such, in some instances, these blatant imitations are of superior quality and workmanship to the originator's weapon. Henry Deringer, Jr., with his small-arm design created not only a popular hand arm but a generic term, "derringer," for that type of arm. Henry Deringer, Jr., was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1786. He served an apprenticeship with a gunsmith in Richmond, Virginia, and moved to Philadelphia in 1806 where he opened his own shop. Through a close friendship and relationship with General Andrew Jackson, Deringer was almost immediately successful in building a prosperous business, and started to manufacture firearms for the United States Government in 1814. Prior to this he made muskets. rifles and some hand guns, largely for Delaware River boatsmen In 1814 and 1815 he manufactured more than 3,800 U. S. muskets, many of which were used to help defeat the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of New Orleans. He continued manufacturing shoulder arms through 1846 during which time nearly 14,000 of his muskets and rifles were bought by the government. During the early '40's, he also made about 1,000 Model 1843 54-caliber percussion pistols, similar in design to those made in larger quantities by N. P. Ames. Some of these were marked "U.S.N." and a lesser number, "U.S.R." the former for the Navy and the latter for the United States Mounted Rifles, as the cavalry was then termed |