May 6, 2024 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Thomas Bennett was a master salesman and businessman who helped, along with John Moses Browning, create the iconic American firearms brand Winchester.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories, and here to
tell another great American story is our own. Ashley Libinski
a frequent contributor here at our American Stories. He is
the former co host of Discovery Channel's Master of Arms,
the former curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum,
and she's the co founder of the University of Wyoming
(00:33):
College of Laws Firearms Research Center. Here's Ashville.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
A lot of people know the name Winchester. They know
the winname Winchester as the quote unquote gun that won
the West. They know the name from any Western movie
that's ever been made since Buffalo Bill filmed some of
his work. So the Winchester name is so prominent sometimes
you forget that there are other people behind the company name.
(01:05):
And one of the people who was attributed with making
Winchester really what it was was a guy named Thomas Bennett.
Now that's a name you probably don't recognize, but he
basically built the company into what it was. He went
to Yale, very smart, he was a college wrestler. So
Thomas Bennett was a very kind of big, stocky individual,
(01:28):
and he was an avid sportsman and loved fishing, hunting,
all of that stuff, so, you know, perfect fit for Winchester, right,
And this is a really interesting part of his backstory
is that he's actually a first lieutenant in an African
American regiment during the Civil War, and so he ends
up starting for Winchester in eighteen seventy and he's an
apprentice engineer, so he starts kind of bottom of the
(01:50):
totem pole. Oliver Winchester came from a clothing background, so
he's not a gun guy. He's the businessman. He really
liked Bennett. He you know, was priming him for our
leadership positions within the company because Bennett also proved to
be a very good businessman. What nobody anticipated, though, was
(02:11):
the fact that Oliver Winchester's sons would pass away. But
Thomas Bennett does marry his daughter Jenny in eighteen seventy two,
and some say that they met at a company picnic.
So Bennett becomes Winchester's foreign affairs guy initially, So he
becomes the guy that is all over the world and
he brings Winchester kind of into the global market. You know.
(02:34):
It's part of the reason why everybody knows Winchester is
because what a lot of people don't realize is early
on in Winchester history, they almost go bankrup like a lot,
and so you see successful successful, you know, but it's
actually a company that really needs some help early on.
And so he helps with that and takes the name Winchester,
and he goes around the world and he promotes the brand.
He promotes the company. The one thing that happens during
(02:55):
this time period is that he misses his family. I mean,
how cute is that, right, And so he writes love
letters to his wife for fifty years. He calls her
my dear girl in the letters. But what's funny is
he recognizes that he's kind of rough on the whole
love letter thing early on. So in his first love letter,
he literally writes, this is the first love letter that
(03:16):
I have ever wrote, So you must not despair because
there is not much love in it. So he improves
upon his abilities over the years. But all of this
travel really you know, takes a toll on him, and
he misses his daughter's first steps, and he also keeps
it a little spicy, you know. You can't you know,
sext during that period. But he found a way to
(03:37):
communicate overseas with his wife and So in one instance
he was in France, I believe, and he bought her
this beautiful dress and he sent it to her, and
he wrote the letter that very lovingly says he got
better writing right, very lovingly says, wouldn't I like to
see you in it? Or indeed out of it? My
dear girl. I feel like when you think about historical figures,
(03:59):
that is not how you see historical figures. But there
were people too, right. So Thomas Bennett is a wonderful
businessman and he makes Winchester what it is. But he
also is credited with finding one of the greatest gun
designers of all time, and that is John Moses Browning,
and he hears about them, and he ultimately is the
person that pays for Browning's first design and quickly another design,
(04:23):
and Browning becomes almost synonymous with Winchester nowadays. Most people
didn't not necessarily know his name back then, but so
many Winchester guns for twenty years almost are initial designs
by Browning that come in house that he basically sells
the patent rights to, and then Winchester has the ability
to decide if they're going to make it or not,
and then they have their gun house designers do that
(04:44):
and then they push, you know, they push the product
out on the commercial market. He's also such a strong
headed individual that he's the reason that Browning and him
and their relationship. So in around I think around, like
it's here of the twentieth centuries, like nineteen oh two,
nineteen oh three. Browning has already developed this really advanced
(05:05):
piece of technology and he brings it to Bennett and
he says, I want a royalty because he knows this
is going to be huge, right, and so Bennett says, no,
thank you, we're good.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
And so that was it.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I mean, the Browning relationship was totally over and it
didn't rekindle until World War One, right before Browning passes away.
But it's this twenty year relationship that ends because of
a change in contract. And Bennett does not mince his
words with how he feels about Browning. After the fact,
he writes a letter to the salespeople that we call
(05:41):
in my field the Sour Grapes Letter, and it basically
says that John Moses Browning is not that big of
a deal, that Winchester had to modify the guns so much,
and how is to make them available for the commercial market.
He calls John Moses's brother Matthew a difficult proposition, that's
a direct quote, and then basically at the end of
(06:02):
the letter says that they're going to be much better
off without Browning, and he can't say the same for
Browning without Winchester. But if you do know that history,
you know that is not how that goes. But I digress.
It's a great anecdote to see that Bennett was this
powerhouse within the company and he's trying to retire by
nineteen ten, and he wants to keep it in the
family like Oliver Winchester did. And so one of the
(06:24):
people that is now starting to take on the reins
is his son, Winchester Bennett, in like the little sneaky
way of involving that family name. But Winchester Bennett is
not as qualified as his father. His father has very
high expectations for him, and Winchester Bennett is politely phrased,
he's sickly and he's also prone to anxiety severe nervous disorders,
(06:49):
and so he kind of goes in and out of
the hospital makes some bad decisions for Winchester and so
as a result, and while Thomas Bennett is trying to
you know, build this house and spend his golden years
with his wife, whom he loves so much. He's kind
of having to step in and out of his role
with Winchester, and so Bennett ends up staying involved. He
(07:10):
actually stays with Winchester on and off and has his
fifty year anniversary at the company and they call it
Bennett Day. So you can see that even though things
aren't always as good, that people still have a very
strong respect for him. But what ends up happening is
after the war World War One, they think they need
to diversify in order to keep the company afloat, and
(07:32):
so one of the decisions that is made is that
they will go into the retail market. So they sell
figure skates, they sell after shave, they sell all kinds
of things to try to keep the money afloat. But
the bankers are already getting involved. Things are going south,
and I think, to me, one of the saddest things
that happens is right before Thomas Bennett's wife dies, she
(07:53):
ends up signing over the rest of her shares to
the bank. You know, the man who built the company
basically has to come back to see the company fall,
and he passes away at eighty six on August thirtieth,
which is six months before the company goes into receivership
in January of nineteen thirty one. And the story behind
Winchester after that is they get bought out by a
(08:16):
guy named Olwen, and Olan still owns the company today.
So when you see the company Winchester Ammunition, that is Owen,
which is the most closely connected to the original Winchester company.
When you see Winchester names associated with anything else, like
the Winchester Repeating Arms company, that is by Browning, which
is also affiliated with a Belgian based company called fn
(08:38):
and they license the name Winchester from Olin. So once
Olin gets ahold of it, they don't let go and
they still have it today. And when you see Winchester Ammunition,
you're looking at the closest company to the original one.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
And a terrific job on the editing, production and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to
Ashley Lebinski for bringing her passion, her enthusiasm for firearms
and my goodness, what story she tells us. And we
learn about the man behind the man or the woman
behind the man is sometimes is the case as well.
The man behind the man that powered Winchester, and that
(09:13):
is Thomas Bennett A. Yaley, a college wrestler, loved fishing
and hunting, and he was the first lieutenant in an
African American regiment in this Civil War. A fascinating guy,
and he hustled and traveled around the country to keep
Winchester in business. We've also done a story about Browning,
another force behind the Winchester brand as well. The story
(09:38):
of a great American brand and the person whose name
you didn't know who powered it. Here on our American
Story
And we continue with our American stories, and here to
tell another great American story is our own. Ashley Libinski
a frequent contributor here at our American Stories. He is
the former co host of Discovery Channel's Master of Arms,
the former curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum,
and she's the co founder of the University of Wyoming
(00:33):
College of Laws Firearms Research Center. Here's Ashville.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
A lot of people know the name Winchester. They know
the winname Winchester as the quote unquote gun that won
the West. They know the name from any Western movie
that's ever been made since Buffalo Bill filmed some of
his work. So the Winchester name is so prominent sometimes
you forget that there are other people behind the company name.
(01:05):
And one of the people who was attributed with making
Winchester really what it was was a guy named Thomas Bennett.
Now that's a name you probably don't recognize, but he
basically built the company into what it was. He went
to Yale, very smart, he was a college wrestler. So
Thomas Bennett was a very kind of big, stocky individual,
(01:28):
and he was an avid sportsman and loved fishing, hunting,
all of that stuff, so, you know, perfect fit for Winchester, right,
And this is a really interesting part of his backstory
is that he's actually a first lieutenant in an African
American regiment during the Civil War, and so he ends
up starting for Winchester in eighteen seventy and he's an
apprentice engineer, so he starts kind of bottom of the
(01:50):
totem pole. Oliver Winchester came from a clothing background, so
he's not a gun guy. He's the businessman. He really
liked Bennett. He you know, was priming him for our
leadership positions within the company because Bennett also proved to
be a very good businessman. What nobody anticipated, though, was
(02:11):
the fact that Oliver Winchester's sons would pass away. But
Thomas Bennett does marry his daughter Jenny in eighteen seventy two,
and some say that they met at a company picnic.
So Bennett becomes Winchester's foreign affairs guy initially, So he
becomes the guy that is all over the world and
he brings Winchester kind of into the global market. You know.
(02:34):
It's part of the reason why everybody knows Winchester is
because what a lot of people don't realize is early
on in Winchester history, they almost go bankrup like a lot,
and so you see successful successful, you know, but it's
actually a company that really needs some help early on.
And so he helps with that and takes the name Winchester,
and he goes around the world and he promotes the brand.
He promotes the company. The one thing that happens during
(02:55):
this time period is that he misses his family. I mean,
how cute is that, right, And so he writes love
letters to his wife for fifty years. He calls her
my dear girl in the letters. But what's funny is
he recognizes that he's kind of rough on the whole
love letter thing early on. So in his first love letter,
he literally writes, this is the first love letter that
(03:16):
I have ever wrote, So you must not despair because
there is not much love in it. So he improves
upon his abilities over the years. But all of this
travel really you know, takes a toll on him, and
he misses his daughter's first steps, and he also keeps
it a little spicy, you know. You can't you know,
sext during that period. But he found a way to
(03:37):
communicate overseas with his wife and So in one instance
he was in France, I believe, and he bought her
this beautiful dress and he sent it to her, and
he wrote the letter that very lovingly says he got
better writing right, very lovingly says, wouldn't I like to
see you in it? Or indeed out of it? My
dear girl. I feel like when you think about historical figures,
(03:59):
that is not how you see historical figures. But there
were people too, right. So Thomas Bennett is a wonderful
businessman and he makes Winchester what it is. But he
also is credited with finding one of the greatest gun
designers of all time, and that is John Moses Browning,
and he hears about them, and he ultimately is the
person that pays for Browning's first design and quickly another design,
(04:23):
and Browning becomes almost synonymous with Winchester nowadays. Most people
didn't not necessarily know his name back then, but so
many Winchester guns for twenty years almost are initial designs
by Browning that come in house that he basically sells
the patent rights to, and then Winchester has the ability
to decide if they're going to make it or not,
and then they have their gun house designers do that
(04:44):
and then they push, you know, they push the product
out on the commercial market. He's also such a strong
headed individual that he's the reason that Browning and him
and their relationship. So in around I think around, like
it's here of the twentieth centuries, like nineteen oh two,
nineteen oh three. Browning has already developed this really advanced
(05:05):
piece of technology and he brings it to Bennett and
he says, I want a royalty because he knows this
is going to be huge, right, and so Bennett says, no,
thank you, we're good.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
And so that was it.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I mean, the Browning relationship was totally over and it
didn't rekindle until World War One, right before Browning passes away.
But it's this twenty year relationship that ends because of
a change in contract. And Bennett does not mince his
words with how he feels about Browning. After the fact,
he writes a letter to the salespeople that we call
(05:41):
in my field the Sour Grapes Letter, and it basically
says that John Moses Browning is not that big of
a deal, that Winchester had to modify the guns so much,
and how is to make them available for the commercial market.
He calls John Moses's brother Matthew a difficult proposition, that's
a direct quote, and then basically at the end of
(06:02):
the letter says that they're going to be much better
off without Browning, and he can't say the same for
Browning without Winchester. But if you do know that history,
you know that is not how that goes. But I digress.
It's a great anecdote to see that Bennett was this
powerhouse within the company and he's trying to retire by
nineteen ten, and he wants to keep it in the
family like Oliver Winchester did. And so one of the
(06:24):
people that is now starting to take on the reins
is his son, Winchester Bennett, in like the little sneaky
way of involving that family name. But Winchester Bennett is
not as qualified as his father. His father has very
high expectations for him, and Winchester Bennett is politely phrased,
he's sickly and he's also prone to anxiety severe nervous disorders,
(06:49):
and so he kind of goes in and out of
the hospital makes some bad decisions for Winchester and so
as a result, and while Thomas Bennett is trying to
you know, build this house and spend his golden years
with his wife, whom he loves so much. He's kind
of having to step in and out of his role
with Winchester, and so Bennett ends up staying involved. He
(07:10):
actually stays with Winchester on and off and has his
fifty year anniversary at the company and they call it
Bennett Day. So you can see that even though things
aren't always as good, that people still have a very
strong respect for him. But what ends up happening is
after the war World War One, they think they need
to diversify in order to keep the company afloat, and
(07:32):
so one of the decisions that is made is that
they will go into the retail market. So they sell
figure skates, they sell after shave, they sell all kinds
of things to try to keep the money afloat. But
the bankers are already getting involved. Things are going south,
and I think, to me, one of the saddest things
that happens is right before Thomas Bennett's wife dies, she
(07:53):
ends up signing over the rest of her shares to
the bank. You know, the man who built the company
basically has to come back to see the company fall,
and he passes away at eighty six on August thirtieth,
which is six months before the company goes into receivership
in January of nineteen thirty one. And the story behind
Winchester after that is they get bought out by a
(08:16):
guy named Olwen, and Olan still owns the company today.
So when you see the company Winchester Ammunition, that is Owen,
which is the most closely connected to the original Winchester company.
When you see Winchester names associated with anything else, like
the Winchester Repeating Arms company, that is by Browning, which
is also affiliated with a Belgian based company called fn
(08:38):
and they license the name Winchester from Olin. So once
Olin gets ahold of it, they don't let go and
they still have it today. And when you see Winchester Ammunition,
you're looking at the closest company to the original one.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
And a terrific job on the editing, production and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to
Ashley Lebinski for bringing her passion, her enthusiasm for firearms
and my goodness, what story she tells us. And we
learn about the man behind the man or the woman
behind the man is sometimes is the case as well.
The man behind the man that powered Winchester, and that
(09:13):
is Thomas Bennett A. Yaley, a college wrestler, loved fishing
and hunting, and he was the first lieutenant in an
African American regiment in this Civil War. A fascinating guy,
and he hustled and traveled around the country to keep
Winchester in business. We've also done a story about Browning,
another force behind the Winchester brand as well. The story
(09:38):
of a great American brand and the person whose name
you didn't know who powered it. Here on our American
Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.