Remember the gun you carried when you were very young? When economy in all things took precedence over, well, everything? I remember being a teenager, and at least half of my buddies, when we were afield looking for pheasants and rabbits, carried a break-top single-shot shotgun, in 12, 16 or 20 gauge. I considered myself fortunate to have a Mossberg pump.
Oh, we all dreamed of the days when we’d be able to afford one of the shotguns that was considered the cat’s meow back in those days: A Belgian Browning, or a Winchester Model 12. But it’s also fair to point out that we brought in a lot of pheasants, rabbits, and squirrels with those old single-shot shotguns.
Many companies made those guns, but ranking high among them was Harrington & Richardson, better known as simply H&R.
The History
The origin of this storied company is rather convoluted and involves a lot of familiar names. In fact, one of the first names involved was neither Harrington nor Richardson, but another familiar name – Wesson.
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In 1859, Frank Wesson, the brother of Smith & Wesson co-founder Daniel Wesson, started a gun-making firm. The Wesson company produced a variety of oddballs: Spur-trigger pistols, and “pocket” rifles and shotguns. In 1871, Wesson brought in a partner, Gilbert Harrington, and the name of the company was changed to Wesson & Harrington. Then, in 1874, Nathan Harrington, who knew Daniel Wesson and even shared a patent with him, bought out Wesson, brought in another former Wesson employee, one William Augustus Richardson, and the Harrington & Richardson company started out. In 1888, it was officially incorporated as The Harrington & Richardson Arms Company.
The Company
When H&R started out, they were a small operation. Nathan Harrington was president, William Richardson was treasurer, and a guy named George F. Brooks was secretary. Brooks later took over the company after the deaths of the founders, serving as manager for the heirs, Nathan Harrington’s son Edwin, and William Richardson’s wife Mary.
In 1894, the company moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, and set about wondering why the name of the town was pronounced “Wooster.” The family business was extended several times, but guns from this period are scarce. Then in 1950, the company even opened a Canadian facility – well, Quebec, but that’s sort of Canada. In the 1960s, the company was acquired by an outfit called the Kidde corporation, and that’s where things stood until the original H&R went out of business in 1986.
That’s not where things were left; more on that in a moment. For now, it’s rather amazing what the original H&R made in those years.
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The Guns
The gun I refer to at the beginning of this is one that I have a copy of now: The Topper. You might remember seeing it, if you read my Alaska Man Monday columns – and you should.
There isn’t enough bandwidth here to describe all of the guns the great original H&R produced, but we can discuss a few standouts.
H&R made a bunch of revolvers, from the early spur-trigger ones to later, more modern designs. Like most H&R work, they were plain but reliable. I remember my buddy back in the day had a nine-shot, .22 Long Rifle H&R revolver. He gathered leather scraps and made a chest holder rig for it, and I can remember him shooting squirrels out of the tops of trees with it. It was a single-action piece; if I remember right, it was the Model 777 Ultra Sportsman. H&R made a bunch of 6 and 9-shot .22 revolvers, and a few in .32 caliber, but nothing larger post-1941, when they ceased production of the Safety Hammer Double Action, chambered in .44 caliber. There’s a wealth of H&R revolvers: Single- and double-action, .22 and .32 caliber, pull-pin designs where you removed the pin to extract the cylinder to reload, and even break-top revolvers, as well as the more traditional swing-out cylinder.
Of course, there’s the famous Topper shotgun, like my Ditch Witch, like the many and varied iterations of the venerable break-top single-shot that H&R and many other companies produced over the years. It was available in 12, 16, 20 gauges and .410 bore, and even came in Classic and Trap grades – and it’s a whole lot cheaper than a high-end single-barrel trap gun from someone like Benelli. The Topper, and guns like it, got a heck of a lot of kids started in hunting and shooting, and there are still lots of them around.
Finally, H&R took the Topper platform and built almost a whole industry around it, with the Handi-Rifle. This used pretty much the Topper action, but was available in a huge range of rifle cartridges. These included the 17 HMR, .204 Ruger, .22 LR, .22 WMR, .22-250 Remington, .223 Remington, .22 Hornet, .243 Winchester, .25-06 Remington, .270 Winchester, .280 Remington, 7mm-08 Remington, .308 Winchester, .30-06 Springfield .30-30 Winchester, .300 AAC Blackout, .444 Marlin, .45 LC, .45/70 Government, and .500 S&W.
It's an inexpensive and versatile gun, especially when one considers that you could swap barrels, and so only needed one action.
What About Now?
The name H&R still belongs to a company that makes guns. In 1991, a new company was founded, called H&R 1871. The new company produced inexpensive rifles, shotguns, and revolvers using the original H&R designs. But that company went through many changes of ownership, being sold to the parent company of Marlin in 2000, then went along when Marlin was sold to Remington in 2007. When Big Green underwent a bankruptcy hearing in 2015, the new H&R ceased production. But in the bankruptcy settlement, the company was sold to a company called JJE Capital Holdings, which also owned Lead Star Arms and the Palmetto State Armory. Now, the Palmetto State Armory has been building some Tacticool stuff with the H&R name on it, so the company still exists – sort of.
When I think back on those long-ago days, though, when I think of inexpensive hunting and plinking guns, H&R is one of the names that comes to mind. And if one is looking for just such a gun now, there are many of them available, and they don’t command high prices. They aren’t fancy, they aren’t flashy, but they are tough, reliable, and they get the job done. Old Nathan Harrington and William Richardson, I feel certain, would be pleased with that.
