Curious Relics #144: No Paper Trail – The 1860 Henry Rifle Part III

Welcome, if you are a newcomer to this fun bi-weekly segment of AllOutdoor.com! The last two times around, I covered the history and the variations of the 1860 Henry rifle. Today we are getting into dating, specifications, and the aftermarket situation, which means that serial number argument from Part I is finally coming back around. Range time with the Uberti is next, so hang in there. Let’s dive right into the rabbit hole!

Recent Curious Relics Coverage:

• Curious Relics #143: Iron and Brass – The 1860 Henry Rifle Part II
• Curious Relics #142: Load It On Sunday? – The 1860 Henry Rifle
• Curious Relics #141: Right On Time – The Remington Model 1875 Part IV
• Curious Relics #140: No Records to Speak Of – The Remington Model 1875 Part III

Welcome to our recurring series of “Curious Relics.” Here, we want to share all of our experiences, knowledge, misadventures, and passion for older firearms that one might categorize as a Curio & Relic  – any firearm that is at least 50 years old according to the ATF. Hopefully along the way you can garner a greater appreciation for older firearms like we do, and simultaneously you can teach us things as well through sharing your own expertise and thoughts in the Comments. Understanding the firearms of old, their importance, and their development which lead to many of the arms we now cherish today is incredibly fascinating and we hope you enjoy what we have to share, too!

Dating: The 1860 Henry Rifle

Just gonna cut right to it: dating these is pretty much impossible, at least if you want a hard year. There are no factory records for the Henry. The Cody Firearms Records Office handles Winchester factory letters, and their records cover guns built from 1873 on, which is years after the last Henry left New Haven. So nobody is going to look your rifle up and mail you a letter.

When you see an auction listing say a Henry was “manufactured in 1864” (and you will see that a lot), the date is coming from collector estimates. George Madis and Wiley Sword both worked up serial number estimates and seem to be the best anyone has. Estimates though.

That being said, there are a few solid anchors, and they come out of the government’s own purchase records. Collector and researcher Vincent Rausch matched Ordnance Department deliveries up with known serial numbers, and it shakes out roughly like this:

• Serials around 1,300 to 2,600: delivered to the 1st D.C. Cavalry in June and July of 1863
• Serials 3,000 to 4,000 (the C.G.C. inspected rifles from Part II): all received by March 9, 1864
• Serials around 6,800 to 9,800: delivered to the 3rd U.S. Veteran Volunteers between April 19 and May 23, 1865

If your rifle sits near one of those you have a pretty good idea of when it was built. If not you are bracketing between them. Anything well under 1,300 is 1862 or early 1863, and the numbers keep climbing past 14,000 into 1866 when the Henry gave way to Winchester’s 1866.

Speaking of serial numbers, I promised in Part I that the production fight would come back. Here is where it lands for dating. If Rausch is right that New Haven Arms skipped big blocks of numbers, then a serial number can tell you roughly where a rifle sits in time but not how many came before it. By his count, only about 760 rifles were built between serial 7,000 and 9,999, not the 3,000 you would expect. The one stretch he found fully used was 3,000 to 4,000, which makes sense since that is where the 800 government rifles live. Plenty of collectors still believe every number got a rifle, and I still cannot settle it. Nobody else has either. Just do not assume serial 9,000 means it was the 9,000th Henry out the door…

Matching numbers are worth a look. Henry serial numbers are stamped on the top flat of the barrel between the rear sight and the frame, on the left side of the lower tang under the wood, in the upper tang inlet of the stock, and inside the buttplate. Early rifles have the buttplate and tang screws numbered as well. There is also a small assembly number on the barrel under the loading sleeve and on the back face of the sleeve itself. If those do not agree with each other, something got swapped somewhere along the way.

Since serial numbers can only take you so far, the features on the rifle itself can help narrow things down. I covered these in Part II, but here they are again as a quick dating cheat sheet (all approximate, of course):

• Iron frame: serials roughly 1 to 400, the first few months of production in 1862
• Extra rear sight dovetail on the frame: gone by about serial 3,000
• Small magazine follower: enlarged around serial 1,900
• Small first style barrel legend: switched to the larger all-serif legend around serial 4,000
• Rounded buttplate heel: switched to the pointed heel somewhere between serial 4,000 and 5,300, depending on whose numbers you trust

Cleaning rods changed too. According to Andrew Bresnan, the early rods were hardwood up to about serial 3,000, then steel with brass ends for a short stretch up to around 3,500, and after that the all-steel rod that carried right on into the Winchester 1866. Rods are about the easiest thing in the world to swap, so do not lean on that one too hard. Same goes for the half-cock and lever latch. The factory would add both to older rifles after the fact, which can make an early gun look a little later than it really is.

Specifications: The 1860 Henry Rifle

Loading a Henry is nothing like loading a modern lever gun, and honestly that is half the charm of the thing. There is no loading gate on the side. Instead you grab the little brass follower by its button on the underside of the barrel and slide it forward until it disappears into a sleeve at the muzzle end of the magazine, compressing the spring as it goes.

Then you rotate that sleeve to open the end of the tube, drop your cartridges in base first, rotate the sleeve back, and ease the follower back down onto the column.

Working the lever pulls the bolt back, yanks the empty out and flips it clear, cocks the hammer, and lifts a fresh round up on the carrier. Closing the lever shoves that round into the chamber and locks the toggle links in behind it. Not exactly a speed reload. It works though, quirks and all. The slot along the bottom of the magazine is wide open to dirt, you have to point the muzzle up to reload, and if your support hand is sitting in the path of that follower it will stop it cold and nothing feeds. Keep your support hand clear of that slot.

• Years Produced: 1862 to 1866 (patented October 16, 1860)
• Manufacturer: New Haven Arms Company, New Haven, Connecticut
• MSRP In 1862: Roughly $42 (about $1,400 in 2026)
• Number Manufactured: Somewhere between about 4,500 and 14,000 depending on who you believe
• Operating System: Lever action, toggle-link
• Chambering: .44 Henry rimfire
• Barrel Length: 24 inches, octagon (measured originals run closer to 24 1/4 inches)
• Overall Length: Roughly 43.5 inches (some sources list as long as 44.75 inches)
• Weight: Roughly 9 1/4 pounds empty, over 10 pounds loaded
• Capacity: 15 rounds in the magazine plus 1 in the chamber
• Frame: Iron on the earliest few hundred, brass for everything after
• Safety: Half-cock notch (missing on the very earliest rifles)
• Front Sight: Nickel silver blade
• Rear Sight: Folding leaf ladder, graduated to 1,000 yards early on and 900 yards later
• Stock: Walnut with a crescent brass buttplate and a trap for the cleaning rod

That $42 comes from American Rifleman, and for comparison a Spencer carbine ran about $25 and a Springfield rifle-musket around $20. Weight and overall length are a little fuzzy since I could not find a museum or factory figure to pin them to, so take those as close, not gospel. The 900 to 1,000 yard rear sight is wildly optimistic for a .44 rimfire (to put it nicely). One gap I could not fill at all is the rifling. I could find no helpful information on a trustworthy twist rate for an original Henry, so it is not on the list.

Since the chambering is the one thing on that list nobody can shoot anymore, a few words on the .44 Henry itself. Sources vary but roughly, early cartridges carried a pointed bullet of about 216 grains, and later ones settled into a flat nose bullet somewhere around 200 to 210 grains, all of it sitting on about 25 to 28 grains of black powder. Shooting Times puts the velocity around 1,125 feet per second with a 200 grain bullet. That is big-bore handgun territory today, coming out of a 24 inch barrel. Hardly a powerhouse next to a .58 caliber rifle-musket, but nobody was carrying fifteen of those in one gun. The cases started out copper and later went to brass. And if you ever get to look over a fired .44 Henry case, check the rim. Henry’s patent calls for a firing pin with two prongs, so the hammer hits the rim in two spots at once, which was his answer to the misfires rimfire was known for back then.

The Uberti 1860 Henry on my bench loads exactly the same way. The factory specs on it are:

• Manufacturer: A. Uberti, Italy
• Item Number: 342880
• MSRP (2026): $1,579
• Chambering: .45 Colt (also offered in .44-40)
• Barrel: 24.5 inches, octagon, blued, six grooves with a 1:16 right hand twist
• Overall Length: 43.3 inches
• Weight: 9 pounds
• Capacity: 13 rounds in the magazine plus 1 in the chamber
• Frame: Brass (a steel frame version is also offered)
• Hammer and Lever: Case hardened
• Stock: A-grade walnut with a brass buttplate
• Other: Lever lock at the rear of the receiver, which the originals did not have

Aftermarket Parts & Accessories: The 1860 Henry Rifle

Parts for an original Henry are limited so take care of yours. I did not have much luck finding original parts at the usual stops, so most of what you will find shows up one piece at a time on eBay, at gun shows, and at auctions. I could not find anybody making reproduction parts specifically for original Henrys either (plenty for the Uberti, which do not count here). If something on yours is broken, a gunsmith who works on antiques making the part from scratch is probably your best bet. And if you are lucky enough to own one, leave it be. Resist the urge to polish that brass frame, folks.

Ammunition is the other half of that problem. Commercial .44 Henry rimfire has not been made since the 1930s, and any original cartridges floating around today are collectibles to keep, not something to feed a rifle with.

Speaking of ammunition, original accessories are worth keeping an eye out for if you collect these. Bresnan describes two styles of Henry cartridge box. One looks a lot like the standard Springfield box and holds four wooden blocks drilled for 35 cartridges each. The other was made by New Haven Arms in 1864 and holds 16 cartridges with another 8 in an outside row, and he figures it may be one of the rarest Civil War cartridge boxes out there. I have never seen one in person…but I would love to.

The replica side is a whole different story. Parts for the Uberti are easy to come by through VTI Gun Parts (they have a whole page just for the 1860 Henry), Numrich, and Taylor’s & Co., and eBay is always worth a look. S&S Firearms also makes reproduction parts specifically for the Uberti Henry. Do not count on any of it fitting an original, though. If you went with the New Original Henry instead, Henry Repeating Arms is the place to start for parts on that one. As far as accessories go, a good leather scabbard and a sling are about all these rifles ask for. Ammunition for my .45 Colt Uberti is about as easy to find as it gets, and I will get into what I actually fed it next time.

End of Part III: The 1860 Henry Rifle

That wraps up the paperwork portion of the 1860 Henry, or the lack of paperwork if we are being honest. At the end of the day you can bracket an original pretty well with the government anchors, but nobody is going to hand you a hard year. Next time is the part I have been waiting on since the box showed up. Part IV is range time with the Uberti, and then we will close the series out. See you folks then!

Another big thank you to the folks at Uberti for sending out the 1860 Henry. Being able to actually load it the old fashioned way made the specifications section a whole lot easier to write, and I appreciate it.

In closing, I hope our Curious Relics segment informed as well as entertained. This all was written in hopes of continued firearm appreciation and preservation. We did not just realize how guns were supposed to look and function. It was a long and tedious process that has shaped the world we live in. If you have a question or you are sitting on information that could sharpen up an article like this one, you can find me through my Linktree. Until next time!

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