Item HT 31796 Revolver - Adams Dragoon Percussion, Richmond Henty, Cased, 1851

Summary

Alternative Name(s): Pistol

1851 Adams Dragoon Percussion Revolver, presented to Richmond Henty on his 18th birthday, 3 August 1855.

Richmond Henty was the eldest son of Stephen Henty (1811-72), brother of Edward. Stephen Henty arrived at Portland with his 19 year old wife Jane in 1836, whom he'd married in Fremantle, WA, earlier that year. Richmond, born on the 3rd August 1837, the first white male born in Western Victoria, and the first of ten children born there to Jane and Stephen. He was also one of the first white children born in Victoria, as the first recorded birth, a boy named John Gilbert, had only occurred in Melbourne on 30th April, 1837.

Richmond was schooled in Portland, Belfast (later known as Port Fairy), and Franklin Village near Launceston, before being sent aged 16 to complete his education in London. He left for England in March 1856, returning to Melbourne in January 1859. He travelled through Palestine, Egypt and the Continent on various trips. On his return, because of delicate health, a cattle station was purchased for him at Walla Walla in the Riverina district. He returned to England in 1861 to marry, then returned to his Riverina properties. He later managed his father's Warrayure and Tarrinton properties in the Western District, where he entertained the visiting Prince Albert in 1867, taking him on a kangaroo hunt.

Richmond eventually moved to London, dying there in 1904. In 1886 he reminisced on his long and fruitful life in the book 'Australiana, or My Early Life'.

Richmond's 18th birthday occurred while he was in London, so the pistol was presumably purchased, engraved and presented to him in London, while his father and sisters were visiting.

Physical Description

38 bore; 5 shot cylinder; 194mm (75/8") oct barrel; borderline & foliate engraved frame & barrel lug; extended spur to t/guard; vg profiles; crisp & clear markings except the inscription which has a sml amount of pitting over part of it; 70% blue finish to barrel & frame; silver grey to cylinder; fitted with exc pr of chequered walnut grips with hinged butt cap with sunburst engraving; all complete; gwo & vg cond. Presented in orig mahogany, screw top case with Dean Adams & Dean trade label; pewter oil bottle, cleaning rod, correct brass bullet mould, James Dixon bag flask & empty Eley cap tin.

Significance

The pistol can be interpreted in a number of interrelated ways.
. It is a rite of passage gift, made to the son of a wealthy settler upon his attaining the age of 18, and adulthood. This was presumably a not uncommon practice, similar to being given a car today. There are no other examples in the collection.
. The pistol hints at the frontier that still existed in the Western District between settlers and the Aboriginal peoples. It is estimated that some 350 Aborigines were killed in skirmishes and raids from the time of settlement in the Western District until the mid 1840s. While this had probably ceased by the mid 1850s, the pistol is a powerful symbolic presence of the force that lay behind European occupation of Aboriginal land.
. The pistol was thus at once a symbol of coming of age as a man, a marker of a wealthy farmer, and a statement of social and political power.
. The museum also has in its collection Richmond Henty's cot; together the two items mark each end of his childhood, and are thus an unusual juxtaposition that evokes European settlement in Victoria.