Oliver Winchester

Oliver Fisher Winchester (November 30, 1810 – December 10, 1880) was an American businessman and politician, best known as being the founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Birth and marriage He was the son of Samuel Winchester and Hannah Bates and was born in Boston on November 30, 1810. He married Jane Ellen Hope in Boston on February 20, 1834. Their children were: Ann Rebecca Winchester (1835–1864) who married Charles B. Dye William Wirt Winchester (1837–1881) who married Sarah Lockwood Pardee Hannah Jane Winchester who married Thomas Gray Bennett Career Winchester was known for manufacturing and marketing the Winchester repeating rifle, which was a much re-designed descendant of the Volcanic rifle of some years earlier. Winchester started as a clothing manufacturer in New York City and New Haven, Connecticut. During this period he discovered that a division of Smith & Wesson firearms was failing financially with one of their newly patented arms. Having an eye for opportunity, Winchester assembled venture capital together with other stockholders and acquired the S&W division, better known as the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, in 1855. By 1857, Winchester had positioned himself as the principal stockholder in the company and relocated to New Haven, changing the name to New Haven Arms Company. Initially, the company was plagued by sluggish returns, which was in part attributed to the design and poor performance of the Volcanic cartridge: a hollow conical ball filled with black powder and sealed by a cork primer. Although the Volcanic's repeater design far outpaced the rival technology, the poor performance and reliability of the .25 and .32 caliber cartridges used in the pistol and rifle models respectively, was little match for the competitors' larger calibers.