Not quite correct, as I have a 1919 catalog.

They were still selling pre-WWI manufacture rifles to 1919.
I was advised that they were not making the Stevens 44 Model during WWI.   

History[edit]
Stevens Arms was founded by Joshua Stevens with help from backers W.B. Fay and James Taylor in Chicopee Falls, MA,[3] in 1864 as J. Stevens & Co. Their earliest product was a tip-up action single shot pistol.[4]
Business was slow into 1870, when Stevens occupied a converted grist mill and had just sixty employees. The 1873 Panic had a further negative impact on sales. By 1876 the company had recovered to the extent that it was then manufacturing twice the number of shotguns as it had been prior to that year.[5] In 1883 they purchased the Massachusetts Arms Company which Joshua Stevens had helped found in 1850.[1] In 1886, the company was reorganized and incorporated as J. Stevens Arms & Tool Co. The business was able to grow steadily with tool manufacturing and sales now accounting for the bulk of the business output.[4]
Stevens and Taylor were bought out in 1896 by I.H. Page, who was one of the new partners and the bookkeeper. Page led the company to significant growth, such that by 1902 Stevens had 900 employees and was considered one of the top sporting firearms manufacturers in the world. In 1901, Stevens entered into a partnership with J. Frank Duryea to produce the Stevens-Duryea automobile manufactured at a separate facility also in Chicopee Falls, MA. In 1915, Stevens led the U.S. arms business in target and small game guns.[4]
On May 28, 1915 Stevens was purchased by New England Westinghouse, a division of Westinghouse Electric. New England Westinghouse was created specifically to fulfill a contract to produce 1.8 million Mosin-Nagant rifles for Czar Nicholas II of Russia for use in World War I. They needed a firearms manufacturing facility in order to accomplish this and chose Stevens. After the purchase they sold off the tool making division, halted production of Stevens-Duryea automobiles, and, on July 1, 1916, renamed the firearms division the J. Stevens Arms Company. When the Czar was deposed by the communists in 1917, New England Westinghouse was never paid and they fell into financial distress.[1][6] They managed to sell most of the rifles to the U.S. Government and keep the Stevens firearms facility operational and did return to limited production of civilian firearms between 1917-1920 while looking for a buyer for Stev

Guys, 

Keep in mind that the same 5-digit serial number is heavily stamped on the barrel, lower receiver tang, on the stock under the buttplate and on the brass buttplate.  Therefore, as uscra112 suggested, if "it has a pre-WW1 frame that was rebarreled at a later date, and fitted with that lovely wood" it was done by the factory.

Wayne

texasmac wrote on Mar 19^th, 2018 at 3:32pm:


No doubt about that--any time a re-barreling job was done, the original ser. no. was almost certainly stamped on the new brl.

Have you identified the blocks as Stevens...or something else? 

Hi Texasmac,
Does your Stevens have the snap ejector or an extractor?
I have a Stevens 44 serial # 77,8xx that appears to have the same barrel as yours with the same markings. It also has the mottled style of case hardening which I have always assumed to indicate later production.
I have only seen one other 44 with a higher number than mine.
Does your rifle have a Stevens trademark stamp on the left side of the frame? I can't tell from the photo.


Steve   

texasmac wrote on Mar 19^th, 2018 at 3:51pm:


Hope you find original blocks. Although Stevens blocks were equal in length, the hole spacings were not equal--because they copied the spacings of Stevens screw-on, non-detachable, mounts.

Hole spacing of front block should be about 22/32s, as well as I can judge using a steel rule, but that's quite noticeably wider than the "standard" Win., Lyman, Unertl, front block.

Redsetter wrote on Mar 19^th, 2018 at 4:22pm:


I assume you mean 22/32" or 0.687", which is wider than the hole spacing of my front block.  Without pulling off the block and using a center-to-center hole caliper, my front block center-to-center hole spacing is approximately 0.555".  The rear block c-to-c spacing is approx. 0.866".  BTW, if I remember correctly, Gail at CPA indicated these were standard hole spacings for Stevens blocks.

Wayne

That's about a Stevens 1 1/2 barrel size, isn't it?

sureshot wrote on Mar 19^th, 2018 at 4:02pm:


Steve,

It has an extractor & there's no trademark stamp on the left side or anyplace on the receiver/frame.

Wayne