US M1870 Remington Rolling Block Pistol-A Collectors Journey

[Jim McDougall]

As someone who has collected and studied arms most of my life, sometimes recalling moments in my youth bring memories of early interests and adventurous thoughts of a young boy(this happens a lot when ya get old . While my interests were mostly toward swords and the Disney Zorro series on TV (c. 1956), I had also been fascinated by the series "Rin Tin Tin", about a young boy and his dog, orphaned and raised by soldiers in a cavalry post in Arizona in the 1870s.

For some reason, the pistols used by the cavalry (which were apparently Remingtons) intrigued me, with the flap over holsters. To me these were 'different' than the ubiquitous Colt six shooters, which were everywhere in westerns of course.
In those days there were sets of things for kids to order from coupons on cereal boxes, and there were a series of guns of the wild west. I managed to get the series, but my favorite was one of these REMINGTON pistols.

Somehow, among odds and ends one of my brothers had, was this VERY pistol I had treasured almost 70 years ago! A tiny pewter gun I had apparently painted with model paints.

Then I found one of these actual pistols, one of the lesser known guns of the west, a Remington NAVY rolling block pistol M1870. These were breech load single shot .50 CAL CENTER FIRE. While of course there were revolvers everywhere, the military favored single shots to limit expenditure of ammunition! However, these had tremendous firepower with this huge round.

Then I found online, one of the only books written on these, "Remington Rolling Block Pistols" by Jerry Lanskron, 1981, and only 500 copies were printed. Apparently these recently found in a large book dealers warehouse.
Interestly, these guns have never drawn great attention, so these books just ended up in storage, and only limited mention of these guns in the usual material.

This example is one of what was a M1867, which had open trigger and longer barrel, but in 1870 these were modified by adding a trigger guard as well as shortening the barrel to 7" . There were 6500 of these ordered by the navy.
Most of these were modified (except several hundred) between 1870 and 1875.
On this example on the barrel I; JMBC; and an anchor
Inspected by J.N.B.Clitz (who inspected 1,717 of these pistols)

On the receiver side is P over FWC (Frank C Warmer) who inspected all of these.
Also: Pat.May3 Nov 15th 1864 Apr 17th 1866
Remingtons Ilion, N.Y.USA

I wanted to share this, and would be very interested in others who have examples, comments, on these seldom ever noted pistols.