Winchester Repeating Arms founder Oliver Winchester was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 30, 1810. While his life is largely indistinguishable from his career as a gun manufacturer, it’s worth noting that, in addition to revolutionizing the American firearms market, he also served as the 32nd Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut as a Republican from May 1866 to May 1867, underneath Joseph Roswell Hawley. He was also one of the great philanthropists of his time, giving a lot of money in particular to Yale University, which is in New Haven.
Winchester was born on the outskirts of Boston, at a time when there was still farming going on in those parts. His family were penniless farmers in a hardscrabble world. He had almost nothing in the way of formal education. What he did have, however, was a solid amount of business sense and no shortage of gumption. He was apprenticed as a church builder, but quickly began earning a tidy sum as the inventor of a new style of shirt collars for men, which constituted his first patent.
