Tag Archives: remington derringer

To Doc from Kate

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A .41 caliber double barrel 1866 Remington derringer counted as one of John Henry “Doc” Holliday’s last earthly possessions is coming home.

The gun, a gift from his common-law wife, Katherine “Big Nose Kate” Horony-Cummings, is engraved on the grip’s spine “To Doc from Kate” and was among the pauper gunfighter’s belongings when he died in Glenwood Springs, Colorado in 1887, aged 36, of tuberculosis.

The local Glenwood Springs Historical Society and Frontier Museum recently made a move to pick up the gun at auction. The gun, upon the gambler/dentist/gunslinger’s death, had passed to a local bartender as partial payment for the funeral and remained a family heirloom until it was sold in 1968.

Now it has come home.

Do not Rule out the Derringer

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The humble derringer-style pocket gun has served western civilization for a large part of the past three centuries. The original Derringer was the Philadelphia Deringer (note, just 1 R) invented by one Mr. Henry Deringer, around 1825. His pistol, usually a large caliber single shot fired by the then-novel percussion cap, made him much more money or fame than the Model 1814 or 1817 rifles he designed for the Army or the dueling pistols he lavished attention on. His guns were so popular that they were imitated (here’s where you see the imitators used two R’s).

Read more in my column at Firearms Talk.com