Texas Jack's Smith & Wesson Model 3 American: By Matthew Kerns

 

Photo Courtesy of Matthew Kerns

Texas Jack's (Omohundro) Smith & Wesson Model 3 American. This gun, inscribed to Jack in 1869 while he was living at Cottonwood Springs and working out of Fort McPherson, Nebraska, was once owned by Jack's biographer, the talented woodcut artist Herschel Logan. It is now part of the collection of Mike Harvey, president of Cimarron Firearms.

Even though the Colt Peacemaker has a reputation as the revolver that won the west, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson's Model 3 was carried by many of the most well known men of the period. Popular with both lawmen and outlaws in the American West, Model 3s were reportedly used by Jesse James and Bob Ford (who used one to kill James), John Wesley Hardin, Billy the Kid and his killer Pat Garrett, Theodore Roosevelt, Virgil Earp, and many others. The Smith & Wesson No. 3 revolver was famously used by Wyatt Earp during the OK Corral Gunfight with the Clanton Gang. The "Buntline Special," an extremely long-barreled Colt that featured in Stuart Lake's largely fictionalized Wyatt Earp biography, was probably a myth, as Buntline never met or knew Wyatt and never wrote about any of the peace officers in Dodge City. Jack's Model 3 is stamped U. S. and the serial number is 2008. No one is sure if the four lines on the grip are part of the normal wear of the weapon or tally marks denoting something more significant.

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Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star by Matthew Kerns, is available at:

Amazon - https://amzn.to/48fQdix