occupy an important place in the great museum in the Tower of London, and a third, which was the boyhood companion of President Chester A. Arthur, is preserved in the museum of the Vermont Historical Society. One of the first large orders for Kendall Rifles came from the struggling Republic of Texas in 1836. In payment for these arms some 2000 acres of Texas Land were deeded over to the Windsor Company. In 1839 Asahel Hubbard sold his interests to N. Kendall and moved "way out west" to Davenport, Iowa, where he settled on a "quarter section" and continued to satisfy his taste for engineering by becoming a surveyor of government land. He laid out many parts of the city and in line with his duties he met his death from fever on September 18, 1845 in a surveyors' camp in the wilds of Mahaska county, more than a hundred and fifty miles from any human habitation. His body was carried to Davenport by his Indian guides, and was eventually laid to rest at Windsor within sound of the industries whose wheels he set turning. His son Colman Hubbard, who learned his trade under his father at Windsor, went to New Haven in 1840 and became a skilled gunsmith at the armory of Eli Whitney. During the Civil War he was secretary of the Whitney Arms Company under Mr. Eli Whitney, Jr. As to the Revolving Hydraulic Engine, we all know it today as the Rotary Gear Pump which is in almost universal use in motor cars for circulating both the cooling water and lubricating oil. RICHARD SMITH LAWRENCE-DEVELOPMENT IN FIREARMS In the year 1838 there came to Windsor a young man who was destined to leave his impress upon the industries not only of the town but also upon the country as a whole. This was. Richard Smith Lawrence, born in Chester, Vt., on November 22, 1817, who, upon the death of his father, left school at the age of nine, and learned his trade in the "school of hard knocks" in the neighborhood of Watertown, New York. It happened that his aunt was a sister-in-law of Asa Story, and this brought him to visit the West Parish gunsmith. The skill of young Lawrence in repairing an old squirrel rifle for Doctor Dyer Story of Brownsville, West Windsor, led the boy to be given an opening in the shop of N. Kendall at Windsor, and beginning in 1838 at $100 per year and board, his rise was rapid. In 1843 he became a partner with N. Kendall and they removed from the prison to the shop on Mill Brook once occupied by the American Hydraulic Company, where the Ascutney Mill Dam Association had lately built permanent dams in the hope of accelerating the industrial development of the village. ROBBINS & LAWRENCE CO., MANUFACTURE RIFLES In the winter of 1844 Kendall & Lawrence were visited by a wealthy Boston lumber dealer, Mr. Samuel E. Robbins, with the proposition that they take a contract for U. S. Government Rifles, war with Mexico then being imminent, and the government sorely in need of guns. They agreed to this and so Mr. Robbins went to Washington, where in the name of Robbins, Kendall & Lawrence he took a contract for 10,000 Harpers Ferry Model Rifles at $10.90 each, a price which made the other contractors whistle with derision. These men however, did not reckon with the skill and energy of Richard Lawrence. This young mechanic immediately designed and superintended the building of commodious factories on both sides of Mill Brook, including the handsome three story brick armory which is now used as a power station by the Windsor Electric Light Company; he designed and constructed novel machinery which largely eliminated hand work; and he gathered together more than three hundred skilled workmen from all parts of the country. Among these men were Mr. Henry D. Stone and Mr. Frederick W. |