The History of SATPCO
Thomas G. Samworth and his Small Arms Technical Publishing Co. produced classic gunsmithing titles from 1928 through 1950 and single handedly created the firearms technical literature genre.
Well into the third decade of the 21st century, it seems as if hardly any people consult books for information. The Internet and smart phones have made doing any kind of research far too easy and convenient. The cellular mobile phone has become such an effective source of instant information at our fingertips, regardless of the information’s accuracy or veracity. If you need to know something, an answer (right or wrong) is just a few keystrokes away. It wasn’t always this way.
Before the Interwebz was commonly available, people relied on libraries, books, knowledgeable subject matter experts, etc. When it came to firearms and gunsmithing in particular, books and experienced gunsmiths had the answers. There are dozens of books on gunsmithing subjects in print as of 2022, some of which are reprints of much older texts.
It might surprise some in the gunsmithing trade that the reference books many of us "gunsmiths of a certain age" learned from and routinely turned to came from one source: Thomas G. Samworth, who is single handedly responsible for creation of the firearms technical literature genre. Especially noteworthy for gunsmiths, most of the important hardbound references published on the gunsmithing trade between 1928 and 1950 were done so by "Mr.
Sam." Many gunsmiths age 50 and older probably have some of these titles on their bookshelves. Those significantly older (raising own hand) likely have many of them. A few younger gunsmiths may have one or two as well, and probably recall seeing them on shelves in older gunsmiths’ shops when they were younger and became interested in firearms building, finishing, and repair.
It is truly remarkable that nearly every significant reference work on the subject published and in use by gunsmiths in the 20th century came from one source: Samworth and The Small Arms Technical Publishing Co. History Thomas Garvine Samworth was born on October 28, 1888 on the family’s dairy farm near Wilmington, Delaware. Samworth’s ancestors could be traced back 100 years to post-Revolutionary times.
His father has a contract to supply milk to the Union Army during the Civil War and served eight days in the Union Army in 1863 at a sleepy little farming community in southern Pennsylvania called Gettysburg. Samworth’s childhood was noseto-the-grindstone with endless farm chores, and his limited free time was spent outdoors. At an early age he was introduced to firearms and rapidly developed proficiency with Samworth at the time of his marriage to the former Dora Cloud.
The South Carolina summer climate likely dictated his choice of office attire. a rifle and became keenly interested in any pastime that required the use of one. Later in life, "Mr. Sam" would remark that the only limiting factor in his hunting pursuits was the amount of ammunition in his pockets. His frugality and outdoor sporting interests prioritized how he spent his money; he preferred buying rimfire ammunition to candy or tobacco.
A childhood with the minimum of schooling left Samworth nearly illiterate, but he taught himself to read and eventually landed one of his first full-time formal jobs as a printer’s assistant in Roycrofter, New York. Demonstrating prowess, young Samworth was soon promoted to printer. Approximately 1908, Samworth enlisted in the Delaware National Guard, eventually attaining the rank of First Lieutenant. He married the former Dora A. Cloud of Wilmington on July 31, 1913.
The first of two daughters was born just over a year
He took a number of photos of 6th Cavalry units making preparations in Texas that survive to this day, including the one above. The plantation house is shown, which became offices for state wildlife biologists after Samworth deeded Dirleton to South Carolina as a game preserve. Samworth moved to a mobile home on the property until his passing in 1981. later and named for her mother. A second daughter, Mary, arrived in February 1917. Samworth resigned from the Delaware National Guard in 1916 to enlist in the U. S.
Army. He was assigned to the Sixth Cavalry and sent to Texas, taking part in the Punitive Expedition into Mexico. This posting kept him from being transferred to Europe during the First World War, an experience that Samworth was oft heard to regret missing. A. Mattern’s Handloading Ammunition was the first title published by the Small Arms Technical Publishing Co., and was an instant success for Samworth.
It was a mainstay reference on the subject until Roy Dunlap’s and Walter Howe’s books were published twenty-some years later, both by Samworth. The young officer had ample exposure to contemporary military firearms, to which he took with relish. His boyhood and military experiences led to some ideas for improvements in munitions, and Samworth was assigned as an Army liaison with E. I. Du Pont de Nemours in Wilmington, DE.
Numerous Samworth recommendations were incorporated into the production of smokeless power and ammunition, and Samworth became widely recognized as an expert in the firearms industry as a result. He became employed with the chemical giant following his discharge from the Army. At approximately the time he joined Du Pont, Samworth was elected to be a director of the nation’s largest organization for shooters and the shooting sports, the National Rifle Association.
Samworth’s consuming passion for every task he performed was amplified when it came to shooting. His ability with a rifle caused him to be inducted into the President’s Hundred, one of the shooting competitions held during the annual National Matches recognizing the top 100 riflemen in the country. His favorite rifle was certainly the M1903 Springfield.
If another shooter happened to remark in a positive manner regarding the merits of a Mauser, Mannlicher, or Winchester High Wall in a given chambering, Samworth could and would lecture at length on the respective strong points and shortcomings of those rifles. A Samworth defining characteristic was that he spoke his mind regardless of subject matter or persons present. Samworth was well known to not suffer fools gladly and his command of colorful language was such that he seldom left any expletive deleted.
His strong personality and will and equally strong opinions were at odds with corporate politics, and he eventually resigned from Du Pont and made a brief stay at the family farm at Pike Creek near Wilmington. In 1922 Samworth was contacted by a fellow shooter and friend, Colonel A. J. "Sandy" Macnab, also an official of the NRA. The conversation they had centered on the topic of the Association’s membership, or more correctly, the lack of one.
With only 2,000 members at the time, the NRA faced the real possibility of dissolution. Samworth shared Macnab’s beliefs, and agreed with the urgent need to sign on as many new members as soon as possible. The journal of the NRA at the time was called Arms and the Man and Samworth had ideas for its improvement. Samworth accepted Macnab’s invitation to come to Washington, DC
to take over editorship of the NRA magazine. One of the first steps Samworth took as editor was to change the magazine’s name to The American Rifleman. The new title better fit the spirit of the organization and the publication’s new editor, rather than the title of a George Bernard Shaw comedy play. Samworth actively recruited leading contemporary shooting authorities as contributors. Articles appeared with the bylines from then and future shooting world notables as Townsend Whelen, Julian Hatcher, J.
Randall Mattern, Charles Askins, Sr., Edward C. "Ned" Crossman, and relative newcomers like Elmer Keith. Their knowledge and expertise was made available to NRA members through The American Rifleman, with a dramatic increase in both Association membership and the shooting sports. As editor of The American Rifleman, Samworth believed that reasonably priced hardcover reference books on shooting subjects would be popular and a source of income for the Association.
Macnab was less enthusiastic, but gave Samworth the go-ahead to produce such a book as an experiment. Samworth collected six articles by Townsend Whelen that had previously been published as a series in The American Rifleman Far The colorful dust jacket featured a grizzled hunter whose gunstock had broken at the wrist, discussing repairs with the gunsmith while the predictable group of gunshop "hangers-on" watch from near the stove. The hunter’s dog looks on. titled "Amateur Gunsmithing".
The book was published in 1925 and turned a modest profit of a few hundred dollars after the first printing had sold out. Macnab wasn’t impressed, and forbade Samworth any further hardcover publishing efforts. Characteristically, Samworth reiterated his positive opinion regarding reference book publishing but was again shut down by Macnab. Samworth resigned, and the February 15, 1926 issue of The American Rifleman was the last to list Samworth as editor.
At the time he left the NRA editorial offices, Samworth remained an Far The original book and its reprints were hardbound in a mint green buckram cloth, and the dust jacket had the title wraparound from the spine to the front cover. The author can recall seeing these texts at every local gunsmith’s shop as a young shooter in the 1960s.
enthusiastic but critical NRA supporter, and eventually held two Life memberships. Capitalizing on his relationships with Rifleman contributors, Samworth encouraged some to produce book-length manuscripts. Moving back to the Delaware farm from DC, he immediately began work on editing and publishing the second manuscript he solicited while at the NRA, a then-authoritative text on ammunition handloading by J. Randall Mattern.
Simply titled Handloading Ammunition, it appeared in December 1926 under anew publishing imprint; Small Arms Technical Publishing Co. (SATPCO) of Marshallton, DE was born. The Mattern ammunition handloading book was an overnight success; nothing like it had been published before, and subsequent printings sold quickly. Dozens of reader testimonials were received, and were incorporated into the young company’s advertising campaigns and materials. Who says customer reviews area new thing?
Samworth was buoyed by the immediate commercial success of his fledging publishing business, and a second title, Wilderness Hunting and Wildcraft by Townsend Whelen was produced. Whelen and Samworth were unofficial partners of sorts in the early days of SATPCO.
While Whelen’s book was an excellent treatment on the subject, it had to compete with similar books by more recognized contemporary outdoor authors such as Horace Kephart and George Sears, aka "Nessmuk." As a result, Whelen’s book was a slow seller for years and exists only in one 3,000- Far Its content advised people with practical skills on how to make basic repairs, modifications, and some improvements.
It covered all aspects of wood gunstock finishes, refinishing, repairs, bedding, and alterations. copy printing. Samworth wrote in a 1930 letter that "there aren’t enough 40-year-old boy scouts out there to buy the book." Some sixty years later in the late 1980s, Whelen’s Wilderness Hunting and Wildcraft was so sought after by collectors that a limited edition reprint was made by Wolfe Publishing of Prescott, Arizona.
Major General Julian Hatcher was the next SATPCO author to see his manuscript published, with the 1927 introduction of Pistols and Revolvers and Their Use. Hatcher was a regular contributor to The American Rifleman and had one previous Far The first three were authored and illustrated by famous stockmaker Alvin Linden and the fourth was written by Monty Kennedy. You won’t find Glocks covered, but the wealth of detailed historical and technical information on handguns from the late 19th century to 1935 is enormous.
It includes detailed descriptions of American, Allied, and Axis small arms used in WWII in both theatres, written from the perspective of an ordnanceman and gunsmith. This is a must-have title for anyone interested in military weapons of WWII. book published, Machine Guns in 1918, published by George Banta. Hatcher was destined to produce two more texts for Samworth, Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers and Textbook of Firearms Investigation, Identification, and Evidence, both published by SATPCO in 1935.
The latter is actually two books bound into one massive volume, incorporating the entirety of Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers as a "Part 1" introduction Below center: The American Wild Turkey is perhaps the most sought-after Samworth title. Samworth was so pleased with it that he doubled the author’s payment to $2,000, equivalent to about $23,000 today. to handguns in general and "Part 2" being the actual forensic subject matter in exhaustive detail.
As a grade schooler in the 1960s when I was getting interested in firearms, "old guys" in their 30s and 40s used to refer to Hatcher’s Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers and Hatcher’s Notebook (published in 1947 by the Military Service Publishing Co.) in reverent tones, and copies of both were enthusiastically sought by shooters and collectors alike throughout the '70s and '80s.
Some people consider the 1935 Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers to be an updating of the earlier Pistols and Revolvers and Their Use, but in reality the two books are completely different in many respects and are very complimentary. The decade of the 1930s was to be a watershed time for Samworth. In early 1929 with the Great Depression months away, Samworth used savings to purchase a 700 acre plantation near Jacksonville, NC in Onslow County.
In September 1930 he moved to the plantation to supervise the construction of a house for the family and office for the publishing business. The sale of the Delaware farm closed in February 1931. The new location was storybookperfect for the publisher. He considered the plantation to be primarily a game and shooting preserve that seconded as a location for his home and business. Sales were not spectacular because of the Great Depression, but 1932 saw new and notable SATPCO titles introduced.
New Titles An Idaho cow-puncher turned hunter by the name of Elmer Keith authored
Some of the more famous "small Sams" are shown. Far George was another member of the Chicago Rifle and Pistol Club who authored Shots Fired in Anger, detailing his exploits as an officer with the Americal Division in the South pacific during WWII. It was reprinted in the 1980s by the NRA Press. two of the smaller format SATPCO books titled Big Game Rifles and Cartridges and Sixgun Cartridges and Loads.
These were the first books written by the prolific gun writer, and were in a smaller, thinner format than previous Samworth products. Keith fans may be surprised to learn that he penned a third manuscript for Samworth with the title Varmint and Small Game Rifles which Samworth purchased but never published. In a letter in later years, Samworth remarked that "[Keith] was not a very good writer.
I had to heavily edit his manuscripts to the point that the finished products were more or less inspired by [Keith] and essentially written by me." The manuscript was never found in Samworth’s effects. Samworth enticed his friend Townsend Whelen to write another small format title, Telescopic Rifle Sights, a "who’s who" of shooting glass up to the 1940s.
It was a strong seller due to increasing public interest in rifle scopes at the time, and went into a second printing in 1944, which included two additional chapters on junior and sniping scopes. Ammunition expert Earl Narramore wrote Handloader’s Manual which updated Mattern’s earlier work to 1938. It was a steady seller for Samworth and SATPCO. The late 1930s saw Samworth experience more than his share of tribulations, mainly affecting his beloved plantation.
When Samworth bought the place in 1930, he purchased it from landowners Ollie and Mary Marine, and the area near the plantation was known as "Marines, Onslow Co, North Carolina." In a total coincidence, the now- Samworth property eventually became of interest for a different sort of Marine, the United States Marine Corps that operated a nearby training camp which eventually became the sprawling Camp Lejeune.
To the USMC, the virtually next door 700 acre Samworth property looked like prime land for an expansion, and it commenced legal proceedings to have the land condemned under eminent domain. Samworth fought tooth and nail in court, but his attorney did not prevail and the judge even criticized Samworth for being unpatriotic for contesting the government claim to his property. He was compensated approximately a third of the purchase price he had paid Mr. and Mrs. Marine in 1930.
The undaunted Samworth picked up and headed further south to Plantersville, north of Georgetown, South Carolina. There he purchased Exchange Plantation on the Pee Dee River. The war years were another challenge for Samworth; because of the war, paper stock was a rationed war materiel.
Taking advantage of connections, Samworth convinced the appropriate government authorities that sales of SAT- PCO firearm and ammunition titles to customers in government and the expanding supply chain were contributing to the war effort. The presses continued to run. In the middle of all the correspondence, editing, proofreading, packaging, and shipping, Mr. Sam once again pulled up stakes and relocated, this time to the larger 1,275 acre Dirleton Plantation on the Pee Dee River outside of Georgetown, SC.
At Dirleton, Samworth became fast friends with a neighboring plantation owner and construction contractor, Alex Quattlebaum. Evenings would find Quattlebaum at Dirleton, or Samworth at next-door Arundel Plantation. Quattlebaum introduced Samworth to Henry E. Davis, a Florence, SC attorney and noted outdoorsman who was at the time the leading authority on the wild turkey and the hunting of that bird. Mr. Sam offered Davis $1,000 for a manuscript, and was so pleased with the result that he doubled the payment amount.
The American Wild Turkey was published in 1949 and became widely recognized as the premier text on the subject. Among hunters, it is the best-known SATPCO title and was in such high demand in the 1970s and 1980s that prices for original copies often brought $300 to $500.
Demand led to its republication by Old Masters in 1984, and by Premier Press in 1990; original and reprint copies still bring very high prices. 1948 saw the publication of another high-demand hunting book, African Rifles and Cartridges by John "Pondoro" Taylor. Popularity with safari hunters over the years led to reprints by Stackpole Books and Wolfe.
The dean of American varmint hunters, Charles Singer Landis, wrote three titles for the SATPCO imprint between 1932 and 1950: 22 Caliber Rifle Shooting, Twenty-Two Caliber Varmint Rifles, and Hunting with the Twenty-Two. The three texts are mostly complimentary, and their contents represented the collected contemporary knowledge of .22 caliber varmint cartridges, rifles for those cartridges, and how to use those rifles and cartridges This list is from 1946.
Note the trademark fired cartridge case head with the text, "A Samworth Book". in the field. A few years ago a close friend and varmint hunter borrowed reading copies of those Landis titles from me, and when he returned them he commented on "how much was forgotten" about varmint rifles and cartridges in the past 30-plus years. He showed me a notebook he made, the majority of the pages of which were filled with his observations of information gleaned from and "rediscovered" in the Landis books.
A complete list of all SATPCO title is provided here, but I’ll turn now to the SATPCO gunsmithing titles that were the hottest sellers for Samworth. 1928 saw the introduction of the first Samworth book on that subject, Clyde Baker’s Modern Gunsmithing. An instant success, Samworth reprinted the original Baker text five years later with no additional material and called it Modern Gunsmithing—1933 Edition.
Periodic "editions" were brought out through the mid-1940s. 1936 saw the publication of a gunsmithing text by R H Angier, Firearm Blueing and Browning. It is a veritable cookbook of firearm and metal finishing formulae and techniques that was so popular it was catalogued by Stackpole Publishing Co. into the 1980s.
Later 1930’s gunsmithing titles were Elementary Gunsmithing by Perry Frazer which introduced many DIY readers to the rudiments of that craft, providing them with the basic information needed to perform minor repairs and alterations. At the other end of the skill spectrum, Advanced Gunsmithing by W. F. Vickery proved to be as much a classic as the earlier Baker work, and was another SATPCO title that was later reprinted by Stackpole and Wolfe.
Several new titles were introduced during WWII, including eventual four softcover booklets on stockmaking, the first three by the famous stock maker Alvin Linden, released in 1941: The Inletting of Gunstock Blanks, The Shaping of Gunstocks, and The Finishing of Gunstocks were an instant success. These booklets were part of the SATPCO "Firearms Design and Assembly" series of an intended six booklets, but Linden passed away with the fourth manuscript incomplete.
These were large format, approximately 8-1/2 x 11" and softcover bound. The fourth title was published eventually as Checkering and Carving of Gunstocks by Monty Kennedy is bound with thick babyblue cardboard. Each of the booklets had two fold-out patterns for sporterized M1903 or M1917 gunstocks printed on thick tissue pattern paper that the reader could use as inspiration or a guide for his own stockmaking projects. Samworth also reprinted the 1883 Stelle and Harrison classic, The Gunsmith’s Manual.
It had been regarded as an authoritative reference on the subject until SATPCO published the Baker book in 1928. For post-WWII gunsmiths and those since, 1949 was a notable year in that two foundational "modern" gunsmithing texts were issued by SATPCO: A. D. Newell’s Gunstock Finishing and Care, and Roy Dunlap’s famous Gunsmithing. Most gunsmiths of the past 60-70 years should be familiar with the latter’s mint green cloth hardbound main-
stay text, and even if younger gunsmiths don’t have a copy, they likely knew an older gunsmith who did. Dunlap’s book was repeatedly reprinted by Stackpole. I don’t know many gunsmiths "of a certain age" and slightly younger who are not familiar with this book. Ironically, the last book published by SATPCO was a book on reloading, just as the first title was.
Earl Naramore’s epic 952 page Principles and Practice of Loading Ammunition became the go-to reference for handloaders independent of manuals issued by powder companies and reloading tool manufacturers, and was reprinted by Stackpole Books in 1962 and again in 1971. Samworth had relationships with a number of well-known contemporary artists who produced illustrations for not only the dust jackets, but also some of the content of the SATPCO books. Some of these talented individuals include: E.
Stanley "Ned" Smith, Gayle Hoskins, Ray Snow, Phillip Plaistridge, Oliver B. Hamilton, John B. Moll, Richard Kroth, Edwin Bender, and Alden Turner. Author-illustrators who contributed illustrations to the texts of their own titles included Townsend Whelen, Julian Hatcher, J. N. George, J Randall Mattern, and Roy Dunlap.
In the mid-1950s, Samworth entered into an agreement with Stackpole Publishing Co. of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to take over the warehousing, marketing, sale, and shipping of SATPCO titles in exchange for what amounted to royalties on the sales. No more new titles were issued, but Samworth received payments on various SATPCO titles that were reprinted under the Stackpole Books imprint for the next 25 or so years.
The gunsmithing texts continued to be the biggest sellers, and the most frequently reprinted of the titles. I can recall seeing new copies of Newell’s Gunstock Finishing and Care and Dunlap’s Gunsmithing on the shelf of a Waldenbooks or Borders Books as late as 1998. Throughout his lifetime, Samworth was an avid hunter and observer of all manner of wildlife. He claimed to have taken 141 deer with his favorite rifle, a 1903A3 Springfield.
In 1962 he deeded Direlton Plantation to the South Carolina Wildlife Department as a wildlife preserve, with the understanding that he could reside on the property until his demise. When the plantation house go too big for the elderly Samworth to handle, it became offices for state wildlife biologists and Samworth moved into a single-wide mobile home by the river where he could spend time with a spotting scope watching migratory fowl.
The state provided Samworth with a full-time personal assistant from the Wildlife Department staff to look after his needs. South Carolina paid Samworth tribute on February 17, 1978 when the Pee Dee Wildlife Management Area was renamed the "Thomas G. Samworth Game Management Area" and presented Samworth with the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest award. "Mr. Sam" passed away on December 28, 1981, forty years ago as this is written. He was laid to rest at Dirleton, and Abbie V.
Johnson, a close friend of Samworth’s made this observation the day of the funeral: "As we drove from the funeral home, a large hawk flew low out of the woods and over the hearse for several miles to the point where we turned into Dirleton, whereupon he perched in a tree and watched the rest of the procession pass. It probably coincidence, but it touched me greatly.
It seemed as if nature was paying tribute to this man at the time of his parting…" Most of the Small Arms Technical Publishing Co. titles were recognized as standard reference works in their day, and several continue to hold that distinction, mostly by old-timers like myself who recognize their quality content for what it is.
All of the titles have been sought after by firearm and sporting book collectors, themselves an endangered species given the prevalence of mobile phones and Interwebz how-to videos making the printed reference and book collecting obsolete. Time since Samworth’s passing has seen the rise of the Digital Information Age, but it also has shown Samworth to be the single most important figure behind 20th century firearms technical reference literature. Other publishing companies followed Samworth and SATPCO, but "Mr.
Sam" unquestionably invented the genre. I tell a much more complete history in my book, Samworth Books: A Descriptive Bibliography, the definitive reference on the 47 titles published by Thomas G. Samworth and the Small Arms Technical Publishing Co. Published in 1990, a very limited number of copies are still available. Email me at brgs01@ gmail.com for details. AG
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