There is no Substitute for Going to the Archives

I spent the afternoon at the Connecticut State Library checking the sources against Pamela Haag's imaginative recreation of them.  Contrary to her claim that Colt was pushing his distributors to sell pistols that no one wanted, he was responding to a letter complaining that one model wasn't selling well in 1877, when a great depression was just ending.  Just a few years earlier,, his distributors were ordering thousands of revolvers at a time, like this order:

Glad I brought my red-headed research assistant along.  She was very helpful decoding some of the more obscure handwriting.

Tomorrow the Connecticut Historical Society!