William Read and Sons, 107 Washington Street, Boston. They were established in 1826. They listed guns from W.&C. Scott, Joseph Lang, James Purdey, W.W. Greener, A.H. Fox, and guns marked with their own name.
Excellent. Great information. He's one I wasn't familiar with. Do you happen to know if he bought his guns direct from England or if he was an importer, or is it more likely he bought from an importer in the U.S.? I'm having a mental block, the name of a major importer located in NYC currently escapes me..
Folsom comes up quite a bit. I wonder if they were the major importer, and if these other retailers sourced their Langs, Scotts, etc. from them? I suspect that they were the major importer. I base this on the sheer numbers of Crescents produced post 1890, starting when Folsom bought the company in 1893. If Folsom used Crescent production to replace previously imported guns prior to the tariff, totaling over 2,500,000 guns produced, they must have been importing a huge amount of guns before.
I can tell already that this "Flow Chart" is going to be huge.
