Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Gunsmith Horace Smith of Smith & Wesson fame deserves recognition for his 1851 improvements to Walter Hunt’s “Volition Repeater” lever action rifle design. Smith streamlined the dual lever mechanism into a single, smooth lever that elegantly handled loading, locking, and firing with a squeeze. He also ingeniously added a rotating pellet primer system to keep the rifle primed and ready to fire. A few hundred of Smith’s enhanced rifles were manufactured from 1851-1852 by Robbins & Lawrence, including this rare “pregnant frame” model with its distinctive bulge to accommodate the upgrades. The rifle still utilized Hunt’s Rocket Ball ammunition, an innovative self-contained cartridge design with the powder charge in the bullet base. Though the Smith-Jennings was not a commercial success, it represented meaningful evolution, combining concepts that became the blueprint for the famous Henry and Winchester rifles to follow.
“This was Horace Smith’s (later Smith & Wesson) improvement on the Jennings “Rocket Ball” rifle manufactured circa 1851-52. He was issued a patent in 1851 for an improved action and the repeating rifle was manufactured by Robbins & Lawrence. This particular rifle is a Second Model with the pronounced bulge on the underside of the frame resulting in the nickname “pregnant frame Jennings”. It is estimated that less than 400 of this model were manufactured. Also the pill primer and cartridge carrier position spring were improved over the First Model.”
Lot 1001: Smith-Jennings Rifle 54 percussion. (n.d.-c). Rock Island Auction Company. photograph. Retrieved February 19, 2024, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/63/1001/smithjennings-rifle-54-percussion.
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