• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

Civil war revolvers. Grip engravings?

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Apr 7, 2012
Messages
656
Reaction score
751
There's a thread here that says the Union didn't allow soldiers to mar the grips with carvings. But another thread here said he had read somewhere that many soldiers carved their wives or sweetheart's names on the grips.

Thing is I haunted the online auction sites for real civil war revolvers and none that I saw had anything but plain grips.

Anybody know of images online of a civil war revolver with images, etc. on the grips?

-----
By the way here's a page with 100 or more images of Little Bighorn relics with carved grips. Most of them were carved after the battle by natives bragging they had been at 'Greasy Grass' or 'Little Sheeps Creek' (both are names for the LBH battle). Or at Rosebud (the famous battle right before LBH).

(Click on 'more history' for each gun to see the images on the grips)
https://gunsofhistoryauction.com/artifacts/category/1
 
I don't think Cavalrymen issued braces of revolvers would have carved anything in the grips, or any other Enlisted man issued a Govt revolver by the US or CS govt because punishments were harsh for Enlisted men damaging Govt property

Officers would most likely not have carved anything in grips, even on privately purchased revolvers because that would have been seen as unprofessional or "common" .

If an Enlisted soldier bought a revolver like a Manhattan, a Colt .31, or any other revolver he might have done whatever he felt like doing with it , or if he "acquired " one as a battlefield pickup then he absolutely could have carved the grips up. It's impossible to know if any carvings were done during the war or afterwards.
 
Issued firearms were expected to be returned at the end of service, just like now. The enlisted did not own them so why would you personalize them to any extent,
 
There's a thread here that says the Union didn't allow soldiers to mar the grips with carvings. But another thread here said he had read somewhere that many soldiers carved their wives or sweetheart's names on the grips.

Thing is I haunted the online auction sites for real civil war revolvers and none that I saw had anything but plain grips.

Anybody know of images online of a civil war revolver with images, etc. on the grips?

-----
By the way here's a page with 100 or more images of Little Bighorn relics with carved grips. Most of them were carved after the battle by natives bragging they had been at 'Greasy Grass' or 'Little Sheeps Creek' (both are names for the LBH battle). Or at Rosebud (the famous battle right before LBH).

(Click on 'more history' for each gun to see the images on the grips)
https://gunsofhistoryauction.com/artifacts/category/1
Thanks for posting! Some cool stuff in there and what a variety!
 
Back
Top