I still find it interesting where these threads go, even if it is way off topic   Thanks guys - I like learning at least one new thing every day.  I grew up with party lines, but the phones without dials precede me a year or three.
Greg

I had some old phone numbers that cost me more than a Zischang.

Vall, Tom McEwen died today. Bummer, he was a nice man.

calledflyer wrote on Jun 12^th, 2018 at 8:02pm:


One of the superstars of drag racing! Bummer indeed!

Just about the sum of Stevens factory archive, all on one sheet of paper. Cool. 

I wonder if by 1920, there was anyone in Stevens' business office who remembered former Stevens employee Harry Pope; not that he'd have been likely to undertake such a mundane job, but then neither would Zischang, probably.  Kelver said that in 1919, August turned over operation of the shop to son William.

Thanks for sharing.

Since Harry Pope lived for another 30 years after that 1920 date, and continued to be highly thought of, I'd be shocked if someone in Stevens offices didn't know of Pope.
I'd doubt Pope would take on the average rebore work. It's been covered in a couple books on Pope that he wouldn't do barrel work in his later years for anyone he considered less than a serious shooter.

You may have heard this one before; but J. Stevens himself was against war, and only made guns for hunting and target shooting, although he did make a few military training rifles. During WWI the government stepped in and took over J. Stevens A&T, and the factory was run by Westinghouse. I was told that during that time....all the old tooling and most of the past records were "recycled."   

Stevens records didn't get "purged" until Savage bought them. Then when Savage was told of impending plans for the US Government to look at Savage-Stevens records for their investigation into war profiteering, the records for the company went up in flames.
At the same time Savage sent the officers of both Savage and Stevens out West and they were "unavailable" to answer questions government investigators had about the war profiteering. Those executives stayed "missing" for about two years, until the government wrapped up the investigation. 
The two companies were not charged.