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Document 158423

ROBERT PARKER PARROTT
The inventor describes his cannon used in the Civil War.
ALS: "R.P. Parrott", 1p, 5x8. Cold Spring, 1868 November 16. To S.J. Cirt, Esq. In full: "I have received your favor of the 27th Ulto and am much obliged to you for the favorable light in which you are pleased to regard me. The gun which bears my name was designed by me in 1860, and was extended to many calibers & in large numbers in 1861 & to the close of the war. I also in 1861 designed a projectile which I consider to be pecularly adapted to the Gun." Parrott wrote this letter about a year after leaving the foundry where he supervised production of the cannon that bore his name. The 1824 graduate of West Point had been assigned to ordnance duty posts before resigning his commission in 1836 to become Superintendent of the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York. Parrott spent more than ten years researching and experimenting with various kinds of weaponry with the goal of producing a more efficient and cheaper rifled cannon. In 1861, he received a patent for strengthening a cast iron cannon with a wrought iron hoop shrunken around the breech at the part surrounding the explosive charge. That year, he also patented an improved expanding projectile for a rifled cannon. Starting with the first Battle of Bull Run, "Parrott Guns" were used by Union forces on land and sea. The weapons, which fired projectiles ranging from about ten to 300 pounds, proved to be the most durable guns of that time. When the war ended, Parrott ceased his gun manufacturing but continued to run the iron furnace that supplied the foundry until his death in 1877. Fine condition. Framed in the Gallery of History style: 30¼x22½.

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