Most outdoorsmen and shooting sports enthusiasts over the age of 40 have heard of J.C. Higgins !  My question is, who was he ?  Aside from being a "trade name" used by Montgomery Wards Inc, or was it Sears and Roebuck Co., was he an expert in the some area/s of hunting/shooting/reloading ?               

Creedmoormatch

I have a bolt action 22 mag  J C HIGGINS I  got for christmas one year when I was  kid. Its a good shooting  little rifle.  I  also have seen J C HIGGINS scopes.       J B  BOOKS      

I don't have a current one handy, but for several years Numrich/Gun Parts Corp had a several page cross-reference list in the front of their catalog so the customer could determine which private brand model corresponded to which major manufacturer's brand and model.  This made it possible to get repair parts most of the time, although some of the private brands specified proprietary variations on major model designs (for whatever reason.) 

It has been said that one of the causes of High Standard's decline was that they became too dependent on the sales of their long guns through Sears who kept cutting prices in each year's contract.  They seem to have gotten to the point where they couldn't afford to make the arms for Sears but didn't have the sales to give up the contracts. 

As an aside, my first rifle was (and still is) a JC Higgins made by Marlin on their 80-series design.  Mine was the plain as a stick model with tube feed, but I later bought the stock and sights from a Deluxe Model and "upgraded" it to a much nicer configuration.  It was an all "bolt on" operation.   

Froggie

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Although I thought his middle name was Quail .





Sorry............ ............I couldn't resist. 

Every time I run across a JC Higgins rifle , I think of "Higgy Baby"

For the the FWIW department:  In the process of searching for something else I found that NBC is streaming a bunch of its old shows on-line so if you want to see all the Magnum PIs on your small screen go to

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Numrich still has the crossovr list at their web site, and in their catalog. The Bluebook of Gun Values also has this info.
Sears did use many major maker's guns, but they also bid this stuff out every so many years, so a certain model might change makers, and you needed to know the catalog sub number on your Sears JC Higgins to get the right part. Might start out as a Model 101.1 and later be a 101.3 (just examples, not sure of the real numbers).
Sears also had a few of their own parts designs that they bought the patent for, and then sold the patent to one of the gun makers to build exclusively for them. A good example is the Model 90 Marlin over/under shotgun. This was a Sears patent that Sears brought to Marlin to build for them. Marlin agreed to build it, if Sears would sell them the patent so they could also sell it under their name. The old Marlin #1 & #2 external adj. scopes were also a Sears patent that Marlin bought to sell back to Sears.