Samuel Colt - Later Years and Death

Later Years and Death

As the American Civil War approached, Colt supplied both the North and the South with firearms. He was a capitalist and did not see slavery as a moral issue. He felt if left to its own devices it would fade away as an inefficient system. He had been known to sell weapons to warring parties on both sides of other conflicts in Europe and saw no difference with respect to the war in America. In 1859 Colt considered building an armory in the South and as late as 1861 had sold 2,000 revolvers to Confederate agent John Forsyth. Although trade with the South had not been restricted at that time, newspapers such as the New York Daily Tribune, the New York Times and the Hartford Daily Courant labeled him a Southern sympathizer and traitor to the Union. In response to these charges, Colt was commissioned as a Colonel by the state of Connecticut on May 16, 1861 in the 1st Regiment Colts Revolving Rifles of Connecticut armed with the Colt revolving rifle. Colt envisioned this unit as being staffed by men over six feet tall and armed with his weapons. However the unit never took the field and Colt was discharged on June 20, 1861.

Samuel Colt died of gout in Hartford in 1862 and was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery. At the time of his death, Colt's estate, which he left to his wife and three-year-old son Caldwell Hart Colt, was estimated to be valued at around $15 million ($350 million by 2009 standards). His professional responsibilities were turned over to his brother-in-law, Richard Jarvis. The only other person mentioned in Colt's will was Samuel Caldwell Colt, the son of his brother, John.

Colt historian William Edwards wrote that Samuel Colt had married Caroline Henshaw (who later married his brother, John) in Scotland in 1838, and that the son she bore later was Samuel Colt's and not his brother John's. In a 1953 biography about Samuel Colt based largely on family letters, Edwards wrote that John Colt's marriage to Caroline in 1841 was a way to legitimize her unborn son as the real father, Samuel Colt, felt she was not fit to be the wife of an industrialist and divorce was a social stigma at the time. After John's death, Samuel Colt took care of the child, named Samuel Caldwell Colt, financially with a large allowance and paid for his tuition in what were described as "the finest private schools." In correspondence to and about his namesake, Samuel Colt referred to him as his "nephew" in quotes. Historians such as Edwards and Harold Schechter have said this was the elder Colt's way of letting the world know that the boy was his own son without directly saying so. After Colt's death in 1862, he left the boy $2 million by 2010 standards. Colt's widow, Elizabeth Jarvis Colt, and her brother, Richard Jarvis contested this. In probate Caroline's son Sam produced a valid marriage license showing that Caroline and Samuel Colt were married in Scotland in 1838 and that this document made him a rightful heir to part of Colt's estate, if not to the Colt Manufacturing Company.