You may remember that name from an earlier Gun of the Week. The original Stevens Tip-Up eventually evolved into a model variously called the No. Stevens Arms and Tool Company, which eventually dropped the 'and Tool' from its trade name, entered the market with a tip-up pistol and moved from there into repeating rifles and whatnot. Nowadays, there are still some corporate offices in the region, but manufacturing is almost exclusively done elsewhere.Īt any rate, the J. (about whom more in a later installment) was founded in Southport. Eli Whitney invented the great American entrepreneurial pastime of bilking the Department in New Haven, which was later the home of Henry and then Winchester Repeating Arms. was (and its headquarters remains, for however long the company manages to survive) in nearby Hartford, CT. government's Springfield Armory and, well, Smith & Wesson were located (and S&W's corporate headquarters still resides). Chicopee Falls is not far from Springfield, where both the U.S. It's slightly hard to imagine nowadays, but Massachusetts and Connecticut used to be the heart of the American firearms industry. (His partners in that earlier company were a couple of other mid-century gunsmiths you may have heard of, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson.) It was founded in 1864, so toward the end of the Civil War, by one Joshua Stevens, who had previously been one of the founders of the Massachusetts Arms Company. The Stevens company, under its various names, has an interesting history.

STEVENS ARMS COMPANY CHICOPEE FALLS MASS. Slightly hard to read thanks to the iffy photographic conditions (I really need to get or build a lightbox), but that's the lettering from the top of the barrel, and it says, What we have here is-well, I'll let the rifle tell you itself:

This week, let's take a look at a nice gun that has some problems.

J stevens arms serial number lookup