A very interesting pistol with some great history.  The pistol was owned by Railroad Baron  Charles Elliott Perkins . It comes with a notarized affidavit from his great grandson Thomas Perkins stating it's lineage in the Perkins family.  Charles Elliott Perkins
was a fighter by nature. He battled with the unions both in 1877 and then again in 1888.  He won both times and immediately fired all the known members of the Knights of Labor.. One of his toughest battles was with robber baron Jay Gould of the Union Pacific Railroad and his attempts to take over the Chicago, Burlington  and Quincy. In the end Perkins prevailed. In his tenure Charles Elliott Perkins  bought up many rairoad lines including the Hannibal and St Joseph Railroad; Omaha and Republic Railway; Grand Island and Wyoming Central Railroad; Big Horn Southern Railroad; Chicago,Burlington and Northern Railroad; Saint Paul,Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway.  In 1889 he absorbed the  St.Paul ,Minneapolis and Manitoba into the  Chicago, Quincy and Burlington. He then began laying tracks across Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming so that he could link up with the Northern Pacific Railway at Billings ,Montana. On the push westward Charles Elliot Perkins was introduced to Buffalo Bill who wanted him to run a line to Cody, Wy. They became fast friends and this grouping will include some originals pictures of Buffalo Bill with the Perkins family. One picture is titled Buffalo,Nat,and Bronco Bob at Pikes Peak 1884 . The other pictures are mostly western hunting scenes including the shooting of a mountain lion. One however is a picture of the homestead "The Apple Tree' in Burlington, Iowa.  
In researching the family I found some very interesting data on the grandson Charles Elliot Perkins 3rd . He was a researcher in chemistry, biochemistry,physiology and pathology. At the end of World War 2 he was sent  to take charge of the I.G. Farben chemical plants in Nazi Germany. While there he was told of a scheme which involved adding Sodium Flouride to the drinking water in order to reduce an individual's power to resist domination. The chemical worked on the hippocampus of the brain. It turns out that both the Russians and Germans were doing this to their prisoners of war.  He brougt this informaton back to the Truman Adm.   In the early '60's when the U.S govt. was proposing adding Sodium Flouride to our drinking water Perkin's  supposedly committed suicide by shooting himself.
The pistol  is in very good condition with a mint bore. It retains about 30% of it's factory blue finish which is the rarest as less than .02% were mfg. in blue.  The action works very well with great suction.  By the matching serial # 4438 the pistol would have been mfg'd in the late 1870's early 1880's.  The original holster is made for a cross draw and is also in very good shape. A really need and historic piece with much more information than I have room for here. 

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