August G. Genez was a French Gunsmith that began working in the gun-making industry at 13 years old in France. He died on June 17, 1897 and over the course of his career he had many successful ventures as well as challenging tragedies.

This article will take a look at A. G. Genez, the gunsmith in New York, New York, and follow his 50-year career in the gun industry. We will also take a look at his successors of his gun shop, Vincent Bissig and John P. Dannefelser.

When August Genez was 21 years old he immigrated to the United States from a port in Le Havre, France on a ship named Charles Thompson and arrived in New York, New York on April 10, 1854. The ship log of his emigration record states he was from Germany but his naturalization record, son’s wedding record, various ads of his, son’s various census records all state his birthplace was France.

The Genez name first shows up in the 1856/1857 issue of Trow’s New York City Directory where Genez August is listed as a gunsmith at 221 William. The same year the Wilson’s business directory of New-York City list him under the Gunsmiths section with his business at 221 William.

The Ironmonger & Metal Trades Advertiser was the first trade newspaper. It was first published as Morgan’s Monthly Circular & Metal Trades Advertiser on May 31, 1859 and soon changed its name to The Ironmonger & Metal Trades Advertiser.

It began as a monthly journal and by 1878 it was switched to being published weekly, every Saturday. They also published the yearly volumes capturing the 52 weekly issues in 2-4 large volumes per year. I recently acquired a set of these yearly volumes that cover the years of 1879 – 1903.

There is a wealth of information in these related to the hardware and metal trade across the United Kingdom. They had weekly stock performance, tabulated results on UK exports to the US, foreign news and intelligence, reviews of agricultural shows and other exhibitions, articles about guns and ammunition, listing of patents and trademarks applied for, information on liquidations and bankruptcies and advertisements; many many advertisements.

We have examined this cartridge previously in our exploration of the relationship of pinfire cartridges and The United States. You can read about it here:

The August, 31 1861 issue of The Scientific American reviewed this new cartridge and gun made by Casper D. Schubarth in detail. I found an original copy and transcribed it here to preserve for the future.

The story of Coirier à Clermont is a interweaved tale of partnerships and encounters that begins in 1848.

In 1848 a Frenchman named Francis Marquis founded a company that made carbines for cavalry. In French this is the term, harquebusier. He was known for making high quality guns and displayed some of his work at the Exposition Universelle of 1855 in Paris, the 1862 Great London Exposition and the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition.

Shortly after the London Exposition, La Chasse Illustrée, an illustrated journal dedicated to all things hunting, featured an article about some of the high grade guns presented at the exposition. They described Marquis’s gun as “remarkable” and “a real masterpiece.”

South American Pinfire Cartridges are pretty uncommon! Pinfire guns had a relatively significant use in South American countries such as Argentina and Uruguay as many were imported for many decades. The large 15mm pinfire guns were especially popular by farmers as a large side arm to protect from wild animals.

This is a high-end 15mm pistol that came out of Uruguay. It was made by the luxury gun manufacturer, P. Boissy somewhere around the late 1850s to 1860s. He manufactured his guns in Saint-Étienne, France and even won an award at the Exposition Universelle of 1855 in Paris for his “pistolets de luxe.”

Journal Des Armes Spéciales was an important French technical journal about arms and armament that was published monthly on the 25th of the month from 1834 – 1870. It was an offshoot of Journal Des Sicences Militaires which started in 1825 and ran through 1914.

In 1834, Journal Des Sicences Militaires ran this article introducing Journal Des Armes Spéciales. The article is amazingly intense, aggressive, rooted in French military pride and filled with the glories of warmongering.

Charles Millichamp of Presteign, Radnorshire, Wales was a watchmaker who owned a fishing tackle shop. Over a few decades he made significant use of advertising to inform people about his new endeavors. One of his earliest ads was for his business, County Sporting Tackle House, where he advertised his custom trout & grayling flies as well as all kinds of fishing tackle that he sold.

In 1888 Millichamp worked with William Maund who was a landowner that lives about 6 miles away in the village of Shobdon, Herefordshire, England to invent a new mechanical scarecrow in the form of a self-acting field clock gun. They patented this new invention on May 3, 1888. You can read more about the patent and see high quality images of my example of this gun in my earlier article.

Maund and Millichamp very quickly began getting press and reviews written about their invention in various publications. You will notice that sometimes the review mentions both inventors and other times it mentions only one or the other.

We talked before about John Hall and his patented automatic clock gun (linked below.) This article will explore another gun that draws heavily on the concept and design, likely because it was probably also made by John Hall. Make sure to watch the video of it in action at the very bottom!

The last article stopped around 1902, when John Hall patented his automatic clock gun and received reviews and media attention for it. However, John Hall did not stop making automatic clock-gun bird scarers then. John Hall & Son made them for at least another 50 years! In 1951 they were still listed under the Bird Scarers category in the Commercial Growers’ Directory & Buyer’s Guide.

The Journal Des Débats was an influential French newspaper that was published between 1789 and 1944. The following advertisements by Maison Lefaucheux were in various issues.

The earliest one I have acquired so far was from the August 18, 1839 issue. It lists the address of House Lefaucheux as 10, rue de la Bourse, This is the address that Casimir Lefaucheux worked out of from 1834 – 1835 and then again from 1845 to 1850.

One of the most famous American ammunition manufacturers was William Tibbals. William Tibbals was the partner in the company, Crittenden & Tibbals, who supplied mostof the rimfire ammunition during the American Civil War.

Part of what made Crittenden & Tibbals so successful was their early relationship with firearms manufacturers such as Smith & Wesson. Crittenden & Tibbals made some of the earliest rimfire cartridges for Smith & Wesson, Bacon, Spencer and others. I am sure that within their relationship with Smith & Wesson they were well aware with the issues of many people trying to circumvent or infringe on the Rollin White patent that Smith & Wesson had an exclusive license to use; especially since some of their main customers were some of the infringing companies.

The Rollin White patent was actually a fairly ridiculous pistol design that would have unlikely ever been made. However, there was one interesting feature about it that Daniel B. Wesson was interested in; the concept of a revolver with a bored-through cylinder which allowed metallic cartridges to be inserted from the back. This concept already existed with pinfire revolvers in Europe but it was the first time the concept was patented in the United States. So from 1855, through the next 17 years, anyone who wanted to make a revolver that loaded from the back had to go through Smith & Wesson.

During this time period there were a few notable designs that effectively evaded this patent such as the cupfire, teatfire and thuer cartridges. The revolvers that used these were designed to be loaded from the front of the cylinder and have a back that was not bored all the way through.

John H. Hall was a US gunsmith that invented a hybrid breechloading and muzzleloading rifle adopted by the US Army in 1819. But that’s not who we will be talking about. The John Hall we will be talking about was an auto mechanic. He lived in the small town of Wigton, Cumberland (present day Cumbria), in northwest England. Wigton had a population of 4000 people and was designated as a market town which gave it the legal right to hold a weekly market. In the late 1800s and early 1900s there were a lot of agricultural activities in the surrounding area including notable berry farms, livestock farms and many other types of farms.

John Hall owned a company called Station Road Works which was located on Station Road and very likely was the building that is the current Station Road Garage.

Hall was officially appointed by the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland and the Motor Union of Great Britain and Ireland as an automobile repairer for the Wigton area and listed in their Automobile Handbook. He referred to himself as an engineer and was likely a machinist that could fabricate parts needed to repair automobiles.

On April 2nd in the year 1902, Hall applied for a British patent for “Improvements in Apparatus for Scaring Purposes, Especially Applicable for Scaring Birds.” This application for his clock gun mentions existing similar devices that used a clock and had hands attached to levers that would release weights. He mentioned that these devices were very expensive and prone to wear over time. He also mention the dangers of how each barrel was loaded at the muzzle and detonated by a cap and that sometimes people would steal or mess with the powder since everything was loaded from the outside.

This self-acting, field clock gun was patented in England by William Maund and Charles Millichamp on May 3, 1888. It is essentially a giant revolver that holds eight 16 gauge pinfire shotshells. The clockwork mechanism inside it can be set to fire the cartridges intermittently at intervals of as often as every 15 minutes up to every 1.5 hours. It can also be set to fire a single shot at a chosen time.

It was sold in two variations. One option had a handle on the top allowing it to be suspended from a tree or a barn. This is the example that I have and is shown in the pictures. There was also a variation that was sold at a 25% premium with a figurine of a person holding a gun as shown in the advertisement above and patent image below.