Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Factory move 1898...

This may answer some questions and create more.
Anybody have a Savage 1895 that letters AFTER January 27, 1898? (Utica Morning Herald article)
Assuming production did start in 1895 @ ~1000 rifles per year, how many were produced. ??

I have a large sampling (247) of production dates for the 1895's. Only one is in 1898 and it is in Sept....reworked, parts gun, wrong date entered in the log or letter? It shipped the same day. Very few production dates appear later than mid-1897.

I'm assuming the clipping is from Jan 27, 1898?

Yes.

Who was General Butterfield?

So if 1) the “tools” for the machines left Marlin on or before January 1898, 2) the new Savage manufacturing site had been selected but not yet turned over, 3) the new machinery for Savage to manufacture had been selected, but not yet shipped, and 4) Rick only has one work over rifle in his data for 1898 ... is this implying that all the 1895s were built by Marlin? ... or did Savage still produce some 1895s after 1898?

He must have been this fellow - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Butterfield.

No reference to what Company affiliation or position he was in 1898. He was the son of John Butterfield (who started a stagecoach/ delivery business which later merged with two similar businesses owned by Wells and Fargo to form American Express.) His father was elected mayor of Utica in 1865.

General Butterfield was was born in Utica, and after his time in the army he worked for American Express ... so my guess is, with his father being the former mayor, there was some family real estate connection involved, and perhaps some financing connection to American Express (assuming American Express had evolved to that point by 1898).

All 1895's were made by Marlin, to the best of our knowledge. There's no reason Savage couldn't have made some with the jigs and tooling they got back from Marlin, and maybe that would explain the handful of 9000+ serial numbers JTC saw in the ledgers. But that's pure conjecture, as far as we know Savage production started with serial number 10.000 - wherever that one is.

I agree that all 1895 parts must have been manufactured by marlin
I would think when they got the machining eqipment they got the parts
this would explain my 1895 SRC shipped on 18th April 1899 all 4 digit serial number
Stock number differs from rifle but shipped with a 1899 bolt

Maybe General Butterfield "NY businessman" owned the building on main st. The article said the site had not yet been turned over to the company in the sentence previous to Butterfield being ill and not able to attend to the matter.

As a side, which I tend to do. RAS had posted some time ago that he had an 1895 that lettered as a 30-30. Up until that time I think I'd be safe to say that all of us thought the 1895 was only produced in .303 Savage. This past weekend I had the opportunity to view copies of factory ledgers that state the 1895 was actually produced in BOTH 30-30 and .303. I was handed the book and told to read it CAREFULLY. I could actually feel my eyes pop. It convinced me that there is MUCH we don't really know.

Jed indicated at one point that 10,000 had been profusely engraved but it is not recorded as engraved in the factory records. I had JTC check to see if my engraved 10012 is the earliest but factory records don't show it as being engraved either.

Obviously the ledgers didn't say 30-30 since it wasn't known as that. Did it say 30 WCF? Or some other 30?

Agreed.
If I had a factory letter for 1895 30-30 it would surely be posted here.
If I had a picture of a factory ledger that confirms 1895's were produced in both 30-30 and .303 it would be posted here as well.

All probably true, and we've seen some 1895 style stocks on very early 1899's. But they also kept some rifles for display and sales purposes, so your SRC might just be one they kept for shows.

It's possible that Savage sold some rifles chambered in a competing cartridge that was brand new just like the 303 Savage, from a company that Arthur detested, without any advertising or cataloguing, and without anybody ever seeing one stamped differently than the 303 Savage.

Never say never.

But... got to recognize there's going to be some doubt until more is known. Were those new guns, were those 1895's sent back later to be rechambered for 30-30, were they some kind of trial gun and rebarreled before being sold... ???

Remember the ledgers show 100 muskets being made.

Yea, I get all that. And I appreciate "new" claims as much as anyone.
But an unsubstantiated claim is still a claim.

Most of the new things we learn start out as a claim.

Salesmen samples, 100 muskets sent to NY trials, Shah of Iran... it's not until we know about something that we can start investigating.

1) I knew Savage had catalogued "U.S. 30 cal" in the 1895 catalogue, but to the best of our knowledge never mfr'd any or sold any in 30-40 Krag. The transition musket seems to indicate the receiver would need changes for those.
2) I don't think anything but 303 Savage was catalogued in the 1897 catalog, have to look when I get home.
3) In the 1900 catalog, Savage said "SAVAGE rifles can also be furnished to take the 30-30 smokeless cartridges, if so ordered".
4) Never seen an 1899 catalog, not sure what it might have.
5) Savage 303 ammunitition was 303 caliber and 30 grains of smokeless powder.. so need to be sure that very early entries might not be referring to Savage's own cartridge.

Arthur Savage detested the Winchester company?

Let's just say they had issues at the 1896 New York National Guard trials.. It didn't come to blows, but sounded close.

The only 1895's I have data on that shipped later than 1898 were SRC.

In reference to the 1895 SRC they shipped in 1899 w/20" brl and 1899 bolt... there was more than one and they were produced while Marlin was making 1895's. It's possible that Savage had them on hand and decided to update them to sell. Also, The 1st 1899 carbines show in the catalog as having a brl band and these leftover 1895 SRC could account for that. I have not seen an early 1899 SRC and Savage might have held production till the leftovers were sold.

I think Butterfield was one of the original investors.