Sisterdale Revolver

[sourdough]

Another ACW "anomaly" from Texas, the Sisterdale Revolver.

THE MYSTERIOUS SISTERDALE REVOLVER​

The rarest and less known of all Confederate revolvers is probably the gun of which only 6 were home made by the Dr. Ernst Kapp in his own farm shop, which was located outside the village of Sisterdale, Texas.​

Although the gun itself is wrapped in some mystery, the story of its makers is quite well documented.​

Ernst Kapp was a German immigrant, born in Minden, Germany. He arrived at Galveston, Texas with his family in december, 1849.​

In the early part of 1850, he bought a farm with dependances near the village of Sisterdale, a small community about 40 miles north of New Braunsfeld on the Guadalupe River, where many German immigrants had already settled.​

The Kapp family settled in that farm, and soon after the Dr opened a sanatorium where hydropathic diseases were cured with water of the Sister Creek well.​

Around 1860, Kapp was elected Judge of the Peace in the small community. When the Civil War started, he was appointed Enroling Officer under command of Brig Gnl Robert Beecham, who commanded the 31st Brigade of the Texas State Guards, and was given instructions to form a company of volunteers at Sisterdale. His oldest son Alfred Kapp became the company's captain.​

Many authors tend to think that before the war, Alfred had been touring on the East Cost and had been working some time in the Colt factory at Hartford. This experience has undoubtedly provided him the skills necessary for the production of a revolver for Confederate use.​

At the beginning of the war, the Confederate army lacked handguns, and the skins and knowledge acquired in the Colt plant have convinced the soldiers of the Sisterdale Company to provide in their own armament.​

The guns were made and assembled by men of the F company, among whom Alfred Kapp, Hermann Kemmerling, Adolf Münzenberger, Rudolf Wipprecht, and the brothers Karl, Rudolf and Johann Coreth.​

Only six revolvers were produced, of which only one is known in the world today. First the property of Miss Otto Coreth, it was long exposed in the Museum of Sophienburg near New Braunsfeld, of which this lady was the caretaker. Today it is in the infamous collection of Charles Schreiner lll of Kerrville, Texas.​

​

THE SISTERDALE REVOLVER​

The revolver resembles both the Colt Navy and the very first Remington Pocket revolvers. It has a top strap, which includes the locking cam, and an exposed pawl which is directly actuated by the hammer axis, to which it is connected by means of a curvy lever attached to the latter. This rather fragile feature is directly copied from the very early Remington Beals Pocket revolver.​

The Sisterdale is a caliber .36 single action five-shot percussion revolver. It is made of iron and steel and has bone grip plates.​

Since only one example is known in the world and no specific archives concerning that weapon have been discovered so far, and due to the lack of any markings on the gun itself, that is about all what can be told.​

Although the production of only six revolvers has had no influence at all on the war, the Sisterdale is unique in that it was made by a group of soldiers with the limited possibilities of a simple farm shop. This gives an idea of how those people were devoted to their cause.
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The second gun is someone's idea of another Sisterdale gun while searching the Net. I highly doubt it, but it would be very interesting to know what it is.

Regards,

Jim

http://www.littlegun.info/arme americaine/revolver confedere/a revolver confedere sisterdale gb.htm

 

[UCVRelics]

The 2nd one looks like a stepchild of the Wesson & Leavitt Belt Revolver with a load lever.

 

[sourdough]

The 2nd one looks like a stepchild of the Wesson & Leavitt Belt Revolver with a load lever.

Thanks so much, sir! I will have to research that.

Jim

 

[sourdough]

Looking at the Sisterdale revolver, I get large chuckle about folks that don't like the Pietta "tail" grip shape on the 1851 Navy Replicas.

Jim

 

[WJC]

Thanks for posting the photos and background on the Sisterdale. That's probably as close as I'll ever get to one!
The second piece has a European look.

 

[tbuckley]

The bottom revolver looks like someone converted a pinfire to percussion. Thanks for posting.

 

[sourdough]

The 2nd one looks like a stepchild of the Wesson & Leavitt Belt Revolver with a load lever.

Well, kinda sorta. The Wesson & Leavitt Dragoon .40 cal. has a load lever, but it is also a sidehammer gun with no frame under the cylinder, and they were made 1850-1851. I think whomever thought my second photo was a Sisterdale was sorely mistaken.

Thanks for the reply, sir!

Jim

 

[Missouri_8th_Infantry]

By the way, the second revolver is still listed for $7,500 on that site on the off chance that it is a "Possible Sisterdale". To their credit, the description does say it could be a European made gun. Caveat emptor!

 

[Lampasas Bill]

Another ACW "anomaly" from Texas, the Sisterdale Revolver.

In the August of 1862, Rudolf, Karl and Johann Coreth and several friends, all members of Wood's Texas Cavalry, were hired to work at Alfred Kapp's home in Sisterdale on the production of a revolver designed by Kapp. Most of them had previously been detailed to repair firearms at the former U.S. Arsenal in San Antonio. Rudolf recorded their experience in letters to his parents in New Braunfels. Most of the letters are undated:

[undated] . . . We are getting along quite well. . . . We still cannot all work at one time, because we don't have the necessary tools, but we don't want to get settled anyway until we know whether our work is found to be satisfactory. The first six shooter probably will be ready this week; then Alfred will take it to San Antonio, and if the people there are satisfied with it, we will make arrangements to do the work considerably faster than it went with the first. . . . We expect to cast a part of the pistol of brass, but it did not work because we wanted to hurry too much and had not let the forms dry sufficiently. After we had tried that for several days in a row, Wilhelm the smith suggested to us that it be me made of iron; and when we saw that in the moist weather we had last week it would always take a few days for the forms to become dry enough, we did that, and have been working with the iron some days now.

The sixth [no month] . . . Johann and I have been working yesterday and today on a new cylinder. I think it will be ready tomorrow. The day before yesterday . . . Carl, Alfred, and Johann had poured the forms. The castings are considerably better than the earlier ones, but they are still not good. We will be able to use the one, but I think it will be better to make the parts out of iron anyway, because they can be thinner. If we can, we want to make three more pistols, two big ones and a navy six.

Sisterdale
14 October 1862
. . . Our work progresses but still slowly. I think this one [six shooter] will be better than the first, which we delivered. . . . Our household is not really in order yet as it was in times past. First of all, we are lacking a cook. One of us has to leave work and prepare something as fast as possible, and then we are practically out of groceries.

Sisterdale
11 November 1862
. . . It is really very important that we make more progress than we have so far, because otherwise there is danger that we may have to return to the regiment again. . . . Alfred has gone to San Antonio, Kammerling has a very bad finger [and] cannot do anything today. So there are only Carl, Munzanberger, A. Schimmelpfenning, and I, and of these August has to stay home as cook. But in his place Wilhelm is working for us. We are now taking on two or three six shooters at once. . . . Carl set up our lathe and altered quite a bit on the frame that improves it. The new drill and bit are also quite good. We bored the parts for one sixshooter and found that to be a big saving in time and strength. . . . Here at least there is constantly talk about Texas being attacked from all sides, and if that should be the case, then none of us wishes to stay here any longer.

[early January 1863]
. . . There is now a hammering and filing all day long that is a joy to hear, and also there is correspondingly more progress. Kammerling can work again now, and Johann and a. Schimmelpfenning are working too with lots of energy. For Johann we have found a job that seems to suit him completely. He makes knives out of our worn-out files. In this way we can put our files to use again without harm and Johann has his amusement too.

[mid-to-late January 1863]
. . . I think we will leave [Sisterdale] during the early days of next week, maybe on Monday. To leave earlier is hardly possible because we still have too much invested in our supplies and nothing has happened down there [with the regiment] which would require our presence at the moment. . . . I have to ask Father to give me the money [for a horse], because our work did not profit us so much that we can cover more than the cost of our trip.

Port Lavaca
10 February 1863
We got here the day before yesterday. . . . The colonel seemed to be very pleased with the pistol. Alfred and I handed it over to him and we believe that he will help us with future undertakings.

[This was evidently one of the Sisterdale revolvers. Who the other handmade revolvers were issued to is unknown. Although the revolver pictured above is a five shooter, the guns in the letters have been translated as "six shooters."]

Letters from:
Lone Star and Double Eagle: Civil War Letters of a German-Texas Family
Minetta Altgelt Goyne
Texas Christian University Press, 1982

 

[nc native]

That Sisterdale is a interesting design! I like the design that combines the top strap and cylinder from the Remington with the loading lever and frame from the 1851 Colt Navy. I have never seen this gun before and would be interested in how it performed.

 

[Jeff in Ohio]

The amount of time and work expended by these men with such a modest result explains why the South's greatest source of arms was picking up discarded or captured arms, cleaning and repairing if necessary and issuing to Southern troops. Three men on foot could pick up hundreds of arms on a battlefield and load them into a mule drawn wagon in the time these workers waited for their molds to "dry" just a little bit!
I bet these men went back to repairing arms after this experiment.

 

[Story]

The amount of time and work expended by these men with such a modest result explains why the South's greatest source of arms was picking up discarded or captured arms, cleaning and repairing if necessary and issuing to Southern troops. Three men on foot could pick up hundreds of arms on a battlefield and load them into a mule drawn wagon in the time these workers waited for their molds to "dry" just a little bit!
I bet these men went back to repairing arms after this experiment.

I yell like Grandpa Simpson at movie characters who fail to snag perfectly cromulent weapons off of the dead.

 

[Jeff in Ohio]

I yell like Grandpa Simpson at movie characters who fail to snag perfectly cromulent weapons off of the dead.

I agree with Grandpa Simpson's warning about getting older:

"I used to be with 'it', but then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn't 'it' anymore and what's 'it' seems weird and scary. It'll happen to you!"

 

[Pollaco]

I guess you can scratch this one off of your wish list since it ain't gonna happen. But you can still drool.

 

[Sowbelly and Hardtack]

 

[bayouace]

Interesting to me is the German heritage of these men making a pistol for the CSA, when only 13 miles away at Comfort a contigent of around 30 anti-slavery German- heritage men left for Mexico to join the Union, and were wiped out by Confederates before they got very far. A monument to them is in Comfort. The Treue der Union monument.

 

[Pollaco]

Interesting to me is the German heritage of these men making a pistol for the CSA, when only 13 miles away at Comfort a contigent of around 30 anti-slavery German- heritage men left for Mexico to join the Union, and were wiped out by Confederates before they got very far. A monument to them is in Comfort. The Treue der Union monument.

That is strange because most Germans were pro Union but as this article proves not all were.

 

[Pollaco]

Is there any documentation or substantiation that any of the 6 revolvers were involved hostilities?

 

[Lampasas Bill]

That is strange because most Germans were pro Union but as this article proves not all were.

It is true that most Texas Germans opposed secession, but once Texas entered the Confederacy many German Texans decided to support their state, or at least not to actively oppose it--especially the Germans in eastern Texas. The strongest Unionist movement seem to have been in the Hill Country. One of my ancestors from Comfort made his way to Mexico and went on to New Orleans to join the 1st Texas Cavalry (Union). Two others escaped from the Nueces massacre but later were ambushed while attempting to cross the Rio Grande and drowned. Both of their names are on the Treu der Union monument in Comfort. Many pro Union Texas Germans joined the state forces to guard the frontier against Comanche raids and thereby avoid Confederate conscription. The alternative was having your property confiscated, imprisonment, or death by gunshot or hanging--either legally or extra legally. Still, many did join their fellow Texan to fight for the South. Nothing about those times was simple.

 

[Pollaco]

One does come across numerous German surnames on the rosters of Southern (Texas) units. I think the 3rd Texas Infantry had nothing but German speaking soldiers in three of its companies.