Our museum has been very blessed
with some awesome additions this last few months! We came into contact
with an ancestor of the highly respected gunsmith, Samuel L. Hart. The
Hart’s Gun Shop was on Fremont Street in the 1880's and early 90's.
Samuel Hart served with distinction during the Civil War in the Signal
Corp and was a brilliant machinist who held several patents for various
machines he had manufactured. He and his family moved out to the
boomtown of Tombstone in the early 1880's, and with the help of his3
sons, opened a gun smithing shop. His daughter, Minnie, taught school
here. Along with several pieces of their personal items, we have
acquired photographs of them all. Very little was known about the Harts
and only one grainy photo was available of Samuel Hart. We not only have
a photo taken by C. S. Fly of both Hart and his wife, but also a C. S.
Fly photo of Hart from the Civil war. Evidently, the Harts wanted copies
of his Civil War portrait and Fly put it on his cabinet card and then
added a stamped "Copy work" to the bottom. Very unusual. We have never
seen a Fly photo with that extra stamp on it before. Anyway, the small
display of S. L. Hart’s gun tool and the Winchester has grown and now
includes most of another showcase all by itself!
We just got finished setting up the Hart display and here we find ourselves with a fantastic cabinet card photo of John Ringo. This photo came from the famous Rose Collection. Rose was one of the first people to seriously collect photos of the Western ‘characters’ and was able to get them in the 30's & 40's when the immediate families were still alive.
This Helldorado Celebration in October we will be debuting an extremely rare photo taken by Tombstone’s C. S. Fly of Frank McLaury. We are really excited about that! There are only a few known photos of Frank, and as you know, he was killed at the O.K. Corral gunfight.
So, you all have to come and see the new additions!!
