Petrov’s main interest was rifles, so he does not get into Adolph’s involvement with pistols or shotguns—“leaving that to others to unearth”—but his general information about Adolph is fascinating. He seems to have been quite a guy, and well connected. While Ludwig Wundhammer in Los Angeles was famously converting the first Springfield 1903 bolt rifle into a sporter for novelist Stewart Edward White, Adolph was making one, somewhat less famously, for Townsend Whelen. That rifle found its way into the NRA museum collection.
There is no doubt Fred Adolph aspired to move in the highest circles of American gunmaking, and quite probably would have had not the British naval blockade ruined everything. Men had sent Adolph deposits, he had sent the money to Germany, now he could not get the products he’d paid for, nor refund the money. It reached a point where magazines like Outdoor Life were warning readers against sending him any money.
Still, he had influential friends and contacts, including people like Whelen and Henry Ford. Whelen helped him get a job with army ordnance and, some years later, he went to work for Ford as a tool and die maker. Nothing is heard of him in the gun business after 1936, and he died in Los Angeles in 1957.
None of this was known to me when I saw the pistol in the Rock Island catalogue, but .22 target pistols intrigue me, and the older the better. This one was, presumably, from just before or just after the Great War. (I’m not sure how the British blockade would have affected Switzerland; probably hardly at all, since exports could still come through France.) But pistols would have been a small part of Adolph’s business. Let’s assume the gun was from the early ‘Twenties and leave it there for now.
Anyway, it came on the block, the bidding was unenthusiastic, and I landed it. Don’t have it yet, but I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, the ever-helpful Abby at Cornell Publications has reproduction catalogues for both Fred Adolph and Casimir Weber, which should wile away some of the long winter afternoons.
Again? Really? Gray’s shooting editor is incorrigible.
