Liddle Marked San Francisco Heavy Barrel Percussion "Bear Rifle"

.56 caliber. 31.375" wedge-retained octagonal barrel with break off breech and muzzle turned for a bullet starter. NSN. Blued finish, iron furniture, brass patchbox, checkered walnut half-stock with pewter nose cap. Unmarked single-screw percussion lock with double set triggers. Barrel marked somewhat weakly LIDDLE SAN FRANCISCO on the top flat. Rifle equipped with a replaced elevation adjustable leaf rear sight, a dovetailed brass Rocky Mountain front sight blade, a finger extension scroll shaped iron triggerguard, a brass commercial patchbox in the obverse butt and an old wooden ramrod secured by two iron thimbles. From the Collection of Charles Worman, co-author of the two volume set Firearms of the American West.

Robert Liddle (1824-1812) was born in England and emigrated to America in 1829 as a child with his parents. He was working in Baltimore as early as 1836 as an apprentice gunsmith 1840s and early 1850s who moved to San Francisco circa 1854, establishing Liddle & Co, which was a gunmaking and gun retailing company. Sometime in the latter part of the 1860s he partnered with Charles V. Kaeding establishing what would become the largest sporting goods retailer in the region and their advertising claimed that they offered "the largest and best assortment of guns, fishing tackle and sporting articles on the Pacific Coast." Liddle and Kaeding operated until 1889, when Liddle returned to working independently until circa 1898.

From the Collection of Charles Worman