The Ballard Rifle

Ballard carbine in .44 rimfire.

A variety of rifles achieved virtually iconic status in the history of the nineteenth century American frontier. Such firearms as the Hawken, Sharps, Remington and Winchester became common tools of survival in the West while making household words of their namesake inventors. One popular rifle of the day, the Ballard, claimed admirers among scouts, emigrants and buffalo hunters alike, yet its designer remained sunken in obscurity long after his handiwork had emerged as one of the premier single-shot arms of the day.

Early Ballard action from Single Shot Rifles and Actions by DeHaas.

Charles H. Ballard was a 39-year-old machinist in Sterling, Massachusetts, when he obtained a patent for a new design of breechloading rifle on November 5, 1861. Featuring a unique modular breechblock which contained all of the internal lock workings of the weapon, secure from dirt and fouling, the prototype arm also featured a camming action of the breechblock for swift and secure chambering of the metallic cartridge it fired, and a center-hung hammer which made for a smooth and rapid lock time, promoting accuracy under all conditions in both target and game shooting.

Having patented his innovative weapon, Ballard promptly sold his interest in the arm to the firm of Ball and Williams, thereby ceding any profits from its later manufacture and sale to the corporation, as well as, any control over the evolution of its design. The first of a succession of firms to hold the rights to the design, the company sought to sell large numbers of the weapon to a U.S. Ordnance Department who was hard-

pressed to equip the burgeoning ranks of the Union Army as the Civil War entered its second year. Chambered for the newly perfected .44 caliber rimfire metallic cartridge, the Ballard was offered in a handy 38-inch carbine length and seemed to be an ideal arm for cavalrymen.

The company was sorely disappointed when the Federal government purchased only 1,509 of the weapons, but this was partially offset when the State of Kentucky placed an order for nearly 20,000 of the breechloaders for issue to troops from that commonwealth. Handy to carry, swift-loading and boasting impressive accuracy, the carbine was still faulted for the tendency of fired cartridge cases to jam in the opened breech, defying extraction by the manually operated spring-loaded ejection rod located under the breech. The fault may simply have lain in dirty or defective cartridges, but the gun still shouldered the blame, and the Ballard finished the war with a mixed reputation.

The Improved Ballard patent from Single Shot Rifles and Actions by DeHaas.

Postwar Texas generated a major demand for improved firearms as the threat from Indian raids and banditry remained rife along the frontier. The Sharps, Spencer and Henry were popular arms, but the Ballard also found partisans west of the Sabine. Among them was German emigrant Henry Shane.

When Shane acquired his new Ballard in 1872, he had been living on the frontier west of San Antonio for over 20 years. Having already survived an arrow wound, a brief but brutal Indian captivity and Civil War service as a Confederate cavalry trooper, Shane was no stranger to the use of firearms. Until that time, his preferred weapon had been a single-shot muzzleloading “Mississippi” rifle of Mexican War vintage.

One morning Shane left his home in a wagon, bound to check on some grazing stock at pasturage several miles distant. The muzzleloader and the Ballard were both stowed in the rig, but in his haste to depart he had left behind a full belt of cartridges for the breechloader. Upon arrival at the grazing grounds he encountered a lone Comanche warrior, who immediately opened fire with a revolver. The first three rounds missed Shane, and the brave wheeled his pony in retreat as the Texan grabbed his muzzleloader and sent a slug into the horse’s flank,

spilling both man and mount into the dust. The shaken brave had just regained his feet when eight of his companions charged down on Shane in a howling pack.

The stockman grabbed his Ballard rifle, suddenly realizing that he had left the ammunition belt behind, and that he was carrying only two cartridges for the breechloader in his pocket. His only chance was to bluff it out after making both shots “fetch meat.” As the tribesmen drew closer he calmly shouldered the Ballard and took aim. The braves suddenly became wary and sought cover in a thicket of brush, from where they opened fire on their quarry, splintering the side panels of Shane’s wagon with bullets while arrows thudded into the wood or whistled through the spokes of its wheels.

Shane held his fire until a warrior slipped back into the open, lured by the prize of a mule, which the rancher had left tethered nearly a 100 yards from the wagon. The Ballard cracked and the aspiring thief dropped with a mortal wound. Shane deftly ejected the smoking copper cartridge case and chambered his last round. Intimidated by their opponent’s nerve and marksmanship, the Comanches elected to seek easier prey elsewhere, leaving Shane master of the field with his final round unfired.

Henry Shane weathered three more fights with the Comanches over the next four years, with the Ballard serving him well. On one occasion in 1876, the rancher and two vaqueros were loading a wagon with freshly cut cypress logs at a river crossing on the Sabinal, which was dominated by steep bluffs overlooking both banks of the ford. A raiding party of nearly 40 Comanches appeared without warning and quickly seized the high ground’s advantage. The rancher and his hands sought cover behind the stacked timber and wagon as the hostiles opened fire.

Many of the braves carried Spencer carbines and the repeater’s bullets came sleeting down on the Texans from two directions at once. A Spencer round shattered one of the vaquero’s hips, leaving him crippled and unable to return fire. Shane sheltered behind a large cypress log, as the Indians volleys filled the air around him with dust and wood splinters. He fired only when he found a certain mark, and the Ballard’s accuracy kept the raiders at a respectful distance. The smoke from their own weapons rolled down into the river bottom, making it hard for them to judge the true numbers of the defenders.

Having emptied their Spencer magazines, the warriors sent a single brave to scout the enemy’s position and determine if a direct assault was possible. Shane laid aside the Ballard and drew his revolver as he heard the warrior’s stealthy approach through the weeds and brushy thickets. At 60 yards he leveled the six-gun and shot him through the chest. Reeling in the saddle, the scout dropped his own handgun and quirted his mount back to his comrades.

Chastened by Shane’s skill with rifle and revolver, the warriors gave up their siege and rode off in defeat, leaving bloody, bullet-torn clothing behind to mark where the Ballard had scored against them. It had been a near-run thing, for Shane fingered one bullet hole through his bootleg, a second in his hat, and two more through the folds of his shirt. None of the slugs had drawn blood from him.

A few months later the Comanches caught Shane in open country as he was delivering a wagonload of water barrels to his vaqueros at a grazing camp. Locking the wagon’s wheels so that the team could not bolt, Shane rolled beneath the rig to seek cover. The Ballard began emptying saddles and soon drove away the raiders, but not before their bullets sieved the water casks. Shane recalled that he “suffered no inconvenience from arrow or bullet wound, but that the Indians fire had “let all the water run out, and it almost drowned him as he lay under the wagon.” The center-shooting Ballard remained a constant companion, keeping the cattleman alive and prospering until after the turn of the century.

Another Ballard-shooting Texan was less lucky. In 1870, rancher Dave Adams was running cattle on a spread near Carrizo Springs, Texas, when the Comanches caught him alone as he worked by a stock pen. He took cover behind a mesquite tree and thumbed back the hammer on his rifle as the raiders attacked. His first shot proved to be his last as a defective cartridge case ruptured in the chamber, jamming the weapon. Adams died in a flurry of bullets and barbed shafts. His Ballard rifle was later found near his mutilated corpse.

Such mishaps aside, the Ballard continued to find Texan buyers. In 1875, a prominent resident of Galveston boasted in a letter that “I am passionately fond of rifle shooting, have now a Maynard, Winchester, Spencer, two Ballards & a Wesson.” Confederate veteran A.B. McDowell, an experienced hide hunter, informed an arms dealer that he was “a great man for fine guns. Have bought in the last few years two Spencer rifles, one Winchester, one Ballard – Two of Rimmingtons (sic) & one Maynard . . . I was about to order one of your rifles when my wife put her veto on it, as I had then so many on hand.” In bandit-plagued Refugio County rancher Peter Fagan, kept an armory which included a Winchester, Ballard, Spencer and Maynard, as well as, a Sharps Express Rifle.

Sometimes, even a balky Ballard managed to ensure survival for its owner. In August 1877, Chief Joseph’s Nez Perce warriors captured a group of tourists as the tribes fled through Yellowstone National Park ahead of pursuing troops in a desperate bid to reach sanctuary in Canada to the north. J. Albert Oldham found himself held at gunpoint as the braves looted his supplies. All of the guns in the party were seized except for Oldham’s Ballard. He had but three cartridges for the rifle and it was chambered for an odd caliber, so the Indians surprisingly let him keep it for the time being. Moments later their mood shifted and they turned on him, a warrior sending a bullet through his left cheek. The slug exited through his jaw after shattering several teeth and nearly severed his tongue.

The impact knocked Oldham from his saddle and tumbled him down a ravine, still clutching his Ballard. His assailant dismounted and strode downslope in search of him as the stunned man sheltered in the concealing brush. As Oldham saw the brave approaching, he silently raised his rifle to fire. The hammer fell, but the cartridge’s primer failed to detonate in what proved to be a providential malfunction. The stalking warrior soon tired of the search for what was obviously a dead or mortally wounded man and returned to his impatient comrades, who then departed from the scene, leaving one other captive for dead with several wounds.

Oldham fell senseless for a time and then revived to stumble down the trail in search of help. Several days later the frostbitten survivor downed a grouse with the now reliable Ballard, but his wound kept him from eating the bird. Three days later the pursuing troops found him crazed with pain and famished with hunger. Had the Ballard fired when the brave was framed in its sights, the slain warrior’s kinsmen would surely have slain Oldham in revenge.

The Ballard rifle was popular among other residents of the northern plains. Frontiersman Finn Burnett, who ranged the country around Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming, in the late 1860s, carried a Ballard purchased in Omaha, Nebraska, on his daring passages through the Sioux and Cheyenne territory. Jerry Potts, a scout for the newly organized Northwest Mounted Police, patrolled the frigid Canadian plains with a Ballard and proudly posed for the camera with weapon in hand. Emigrant physician Dr. Waid Howard left an account of how he and his companions hunted antelope on the Nebraska plains with Ballards, while Harper’s Weekly correspondent Theodore Davis thrilled his readers with an account of how he stood off the hostiles along the Kansas frontier stage route with his trusty Ballard rifle. Captain Luther North, who led a battalion of Pawnee Indian scouts in company with his brother Frank, also carried a Ballard for a time while his braves relied upon Spencer carbines and muzzleloading Springfield rifle-muskets in their forays against the Sioux and Cheyenne.

The Ballard’s reputation for long-range accuracy often won it favor over the faster-firing but less powerful repeating arms. Noted contemporary rifleman A.C. Gould testified that his 32-40 and 38-55 Ballard rifles would both put nearly every shot into a six-inch circle at 200 yards. 

Two members of an exploring expedition into the Black Hills in the spring of 1876, were recorded to be carrying Ballards, and Dakota rancher Theodore Roosevelt, gifted his brother with a Ballard rifle during the 1880s. In 1877, one party exploring the Yellowstone River in Montana, listed two of its three members as armed with Ballards. Buffalo hunter Frank Meyer carried three rifles with him onto the Colorado plains in 1878, among them a 40-90 Ballard, which he termed a “sweet-shooting and clean-killing arm”, even if it did have occasional troubles in extracting fired cartridge cases. A contemporary photograph from that state’s gold and silver diggings shows three miners wrapped in blankets on the floor of their crude cabin while their trusty Ballard leans against the door.

The Ballard found admirers among less savory elements of the population as well. An often-published photograph of Jesse James and his outlaw gang shows them posing in front of their Missouri cave hideout. Most of the bandits carry lever action repeaters of the Winchester or Marlin patterns, but one man defiantly sports a single-shot Ballard. The breechloader found favor with hostile Indians as well. Modern archeological excavations of a Cheyenne-Oglala Sioux village site on Pawnee Fork in Ness County, Kansas have revealed quantities of Ballard cartridges found in situ. The village was burned by troops of the 7th Cavalry and 37th Infantry during Major General Winfield S. Hancock’s spring campaign of 1867.

The Ballard enjoyed enduring popularity throughout the West until production of the arm ceased in the early 1890s, as improved bolt-action and more powerful lever-action arms caught the shooting public’s fancy. By the late twentieth century, vintage Ballards remained coveted pieces among antique arms collectors and enthusiasts who enjoyed shooting the classic weapons. 

Today the upsurge in popularity of long-range black powder rifle matches have prompted at least one company to begin manufacture of replica Ballard rifles chambered for the original array of cartridges. Charles Ballard’s breechloading progeny of 1861, still burns powder today, over 145 years after its birth. 

Sources:

1 Louis A. Garavaglia and Charles G. Worman, Firearms of the American West 1803-1865 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984).

2 Louis A. Garavaglia and Charles G. Worman, Firearms of the American West 1866-1894 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985).

3 H. Michael Madaus, The Main Street Pocket Guide to American Longarms (Pittstown, New Jersey: The Main Street Press, 1983).

4 A.J. Sowell, Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas (New York: Argosy-Antiquarian, Ltd., 1964)