St. Louis Half-Stock Heavy Barreled Plains Rifle by Frederick Hellinghaus

Western Expansion

.54 caliber. 33.75" single key heavy octagonal barrel with break off breech. NSN. Browned finish, brass furniture, pewter forend cap, walnut stock. Single shot percussion muzzleloading heavy barreled rifle with muzzle turned for bullet starter, measuring 1.25" across the flats at the muzzle. Back action percussion lock weakly marked F HELLINGHAUS as is top barrel flat. A very weak ST LOUIS is also present on the barrel. A long double screw tang, typical of St. Louis plains rifles, projects from the rear of the break off breech. Rifle is equipped with a double finger spur brass triggerguard, adjustable double set triggers, elevation adjustable leaf rear sight and dovetailed front sight blade. A brass tipped wooden ramrod is secured in two plain ramrod thimbles.

Frederick Hellinghaus (1811-1862) was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States circa 1830, initially working as an apprentice gunmaker in Philadelphia for about six years and finally opening his own shop in New York City in 1837. Circa 1840 he relocated to St. Louis and in 1842 became a Naturalized Citizen. Hellinghaus worked in St. Louis for about seven years before he enlisted in Company C of Rall's 3rd Missouri Mounted Infantry to fight in the Mexican-American War in 1847. After the war, Hellinghaus moved to California and in 1858 relocated to Dalles in Oregon Territory. He died there in 1862.

Hellinghaus competed directly with the Hawken Brothers, Beauvais and Albright during the heyday of percussion plains rifle production in the 1840s and despite his roughly seven years in business in St. Louis, his guns from that period are not commonly encountered on the market today. He is probably best known for making a percussion double barreled gun attributed to being owned by Kit Carson, which is crudely engraved with the Hellinghaus name and with the "Dalles OT" (Oregon Territory) location on the barrel rib. That gun is in the collection of the Museum of the Fur Trade. This gun was acquired by the consignor from Norm Flayderman & Co and was listed in Catalog #117 as item #1676. A copy of the catalog is included.