An Old Timey Podcast - 85: Samuel Adams is Dead (Part 1)

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

On a sunny fall day in 1841, New York City officials boarded a ship in search of a crate. Crew members found it buried deep in the cargo hold. The odor coming from within it was unbearable.Inside, they discovered the decomposing body of half-naked man, covered in salt. Authorities identified the body as Samuel Adams (No, not that Samuel Adams.) Who could have done such a thing? There was no need to ponder that question. Authorities had already arrested their prime suspect, John Caldwell Colt. John was an author and expert on bookkeeping. He was also the older brother of Samuel Colt, the inventor of the Colt Revolver. In this episode, Normie C hits us with all the context we’ll need to understand this gruesome murder and the bizarre trial that followed. Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Norm pulled from: Dunphy, Thomas. Remarkable Trials of All Countries. Diossy & Company, 1870.Edwards, William. The Story of Colt’s Revolver. Stackpole Co, 1953.Phelps, M. Devil’’s Right Hand: The Tragic Story of the Colt Family Curse. Lyons Press, 2013.Schechter, Harold. Killer Colt: Murder, Disgrace, and the Making of an American Legend. 1st ed. Open Road Integrated Media, Inc, 2010.Are you enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Then please leave us a 5-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts!Are you *really* enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Well, calm down, history ho! You can get more of us on Patreon at patreon.com/oldtimeypodcast. At the $5 level, you’ll get a monthly bonus episode (with video!), access to our 90’s style chat room, plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes from Kristin’s previous podcast, Let’s Go To Court.

Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Norman Caruso. And I'm Kristen Caruso. And on this series, I'll be talking about an old-timey murder. Or was it? Dun-d-d-dun-dun! Dun! I'm ready to be intrigued. I'm ready to be titillated. You know, in 2026, we're all getting titillated. Tittalated? Is that the word of the year, 26? That's right. And you know, the other word of the... the year because apparently there can be multiple.

What? Patreon. And if I could add some more, sign up for our Patreon. No, no, no. Yes, yes. That's not inspiring to people. Well, listen to this and tell me if you get inspired. You know, supporting a small, independent, sexy podcast is good and good for you somehow. And supporters on Patreon get ad-free video episodes. They get cards and stickers. They get trivia. And for just $5 a month, You can binge our entire back catalog of bonus episodes. We just dropped another episode on Spite Houses.

It was so spiteful. We have a nail-biting and oddly funny episode about the dude who tried and failed to be D.B. Cooper. And we even have, this is not a joke, it's going to sound like a joke. We have a three-hour-long episode about testicles. It's true. Did you know that men used to add testicles to their bodies to feel? more manly. Subscribe to our Patreon to learn more.

Patreon.com slash old-timey podcast. Very good, Chris. That was a good plug. Oh, thank you. These past two weeks, we've been off. Seems you've taken some time to work on your craft. I wrote up that little Patreon plug as I was doing my nails. So my nails look good.

The Patreon plug. Sorry, I said Patreon Pug. Now that's a dog. Seems like you're failing in all other aspects of your life. I've shat all over everything. Just go to the story. Kristen, it's January, 26. Starting it off with a brand news series.

We're going back to your roots, baby. This is true crime. Okay. This is a series on true crime. For those who don't know, sorry, just for background. I used to be a murderer. Whoa, hang on. I got to save you with this one.

That's a joke, people. She wasn't actually a murderer. I still am a murderer. Okay. Are you ready to hear this story? Yeah, I am ready. Okay. You're done with your little bit about you killing people.

I am. Very funny. A little insensitive. What? Have you been murdered? No. So get over it. Picture it.

New York City, New York. New York, New York. Sunday, September 26, 1841. Ooh, this is old timing. We are at the Maiden Lane Wharf, where big buff, sexy men are hauling big old crates full of things like rum, tea, coffee, leather, spices, and more. These crates are loaded onto massive merchant ships floating in the waters of the East River, heading for destinations around the world. I'm doing a little showmanship here. If you have the video version, I'm kind of, you know, dancing and prancing.

He's actually not dancing or prancing. He's just, folks, if you don't have the video version, what you're missing out on is a man sitting in a chair gesturing wildly to a small room. And if that's not a great plug for our Patreon, I don't know what is. An audience of my wife and a giant stuffed animal behind her. So yeah, we're at the Maiden Lane Wharf in New York City. And that Sunday, it was a really nice day to be working. at the wharf. It was unusually warm for late September. The sun was out. Seagulls chirped in the blue skies.

Ah! Ah! That was pretty good. You like that? The previous week's weather had been downright terrible, Kristen. It delayed many ships from leaving New York City. But now with the weather getting better, several ships were getting ready to take off. But one ship had to stay. A 789-toned vessel known as the Kalamazoo. The Kalamazoo. The Kalamazoo was a sea, seasoned veteran of the high seas. The ship had made plenty of trips to England, the Caribbean, New Orleans, and Florida. But it wasn't allowed to leave. In fact, the Kalamazoo had been ordered not to leave, and that order had come directly from the mayor of New York City, Robert H. Morris. Crew members no doubt wondered what was going on. Many of them were in a hurry to get going, not just because of the recent weather delay, but because there was a, quote, putrid odor coming from the cargo area of the Kalamazoo. Well, they had to know what was happening.

Somebody was either shipping something absolutely disgusting, like a giant tub of sour cream, or maybe it was the smell of dead rats and poison. Either way, the high winds of the ocean would certainly help mask the stench. Mystery would soon be solved. At around 9 a.m., the mayor himself, Robert Morris, along with police officers and other city officials arrived at the maiden lane wharf and boarded the Kalamazoo ship. Their reason?

They were looking for a box. A very particular box. One that had been loaded onto the ship just last Saturday. It had blue writing on the side of it. Crew members frantically searched through bills and invoices to identify the number that was assigned to that box. Meanwhile, other crew members started unloading cargo. And as they worked, that putrid odor got worse and worse. What do you think?

You think it's sour cream? I think there's a dead body in that box, Norm. And I'm thinking that because I'm a genius. I heard what you said at the top of the show about a murder. And, you know, if you'd started out with a sour cream mystery, then maybe I would have fallen down that rabbit hole. It's funny when you were like, you mentioned at the top of the show. I was like, I don't recall calling you a genius.

You should. See, yeah, that odor was getting worse and worse. Finally, three layers down. There it was. A boarded up box measuring three feet long, two feet wide, and two feet high. And it was the source of that foul stench. On the side of the box was blue lettering. The crate was heading to a man named R.P. Gross of St. Louis, Missouri.

It's a little on the nose. Right? I even wrote that down. Oh. A fitting name given the horrible smell coming from the box. Well done, Norman. Thank you. Who's the genius now?

Crew members hoisted the box up and onto the deck. Mayor Morris ordered it opened. Crew members pried off the lid, which was secured down tightly with nails. No one was prepared for what they saw. Inside the crate was a body. A half-naked man covered in what looked like window-aunting canvas. He was scrunched up in a fetal position, held in place by a rope tied from around his neck to below his knees. His flesh was turning green, the beginnings of decomposition.

Maggot swarmed from every orifice. But maybe the most disturbing detail of all, someone had sprinkled salt all over his body, most likely to help control the smell. But the salt didn't really help. Men scattered away from the box holding handkerchiefs, up to their nose. It was an absolutely shocking discovery, but it was also exactly what mayor Robert Morris and city officials were looking for. Soon, a crowd gathered as the box was lifted off the ship, placed onto a cart and hauled away to the morgue, known at that time as the dead house. Onlookers wondered what they had found, but eventually they would learn. It was the body of Samuel Adams.

No, not that Samuel Adams. You looked at me. You looked at me. I was like, you know what? I'm just now realizing I don't know a lot about the fellow. No, different guy, same name, not the beer guy, not the founding father. All right. Samuel Adams was a printer who had been missing for the past week. But for city officials, there was no mystery about who committed this horrible crime. In fact, they had already arrested him.

His name was John Caldwell Colt. The killing of Samuel Adams was one of several murders that had taken place in New York City that year, but this case was different. The ensuing trial would be under the national spotlight for many reasons. It was a gruesome killing, the stuff of fiction. The suspect, John Colt, was a somewhat well-known author and expert on accounting and bookkeeping. Oh. Not only that, but John's brother was Samuel Colt. The famous inventor who had created a new weapon that would change warfare forever, the cult revolver.

Oh. A pistol that could fire multiple bullets without reloading. Did he use his brother's invention to murder this guy? Spoilers! Well, I'm sorry, I'm just putting two and two together because I'm also an expert in accounting and bookkeeping. And firearms. Yeah. Kristen loves guns.

No, I do not. I got her a pink gun for Christmas. It's really cute. Oh, shut up. puts it in her purse. She almost whipped it out in Sephora today. Someone got too close to her in the perfume aisle. No, that is not true.

Although, man, it's a good thing I didn't have a weapon on me with that lady in the booth next to us at lunch today. Oh, God, the lady in the booth next is we're going to save this for the end of the episode. Okay, okay. I got to finish my introduction. I got a lot to say about this woman. Okay, well, you're the one who made up a story about a pink gun. Okay. The gruesome murder, unprecedented trial, unprecedented?

No. Unprecedented? Unprecedented. The gruesome murder, unprecedented trial, and bizarre. I feel like I'm saying that word weird. Well, you do when you add the word president to it. Okay. The gruesome murder.

Hey, that's, you know what? Now you're the one who's being in the asshole because you're giggling about a gruesome murder. Wow. Think on that, won't you? And do better. The gruesome murder, unprecedented trial. And bizarre aftermath would later inspire famous authors such as Edgar Allan Poe. It would force Americans to re-examine what it meant to have a fair trial.

And it would uncover shocking secrets of the Colt family. So in this series, let's learn about the murder of Samuel Adams at the hands of John Colt. But was it really murder? Was John Colt really capable of doing such a thing? In part one of this series, we'll learn about about. about the early days of John Colt, how his life differed from his gun-loven brother, and how he ended up meeting Mr. Samuel Adams. And no, not that Samuel Adams.

Let's begin. Norm, I got to say, I do have my true crime roots. I don't know anything about this story. Really? Yeah, this is, okay, you've covered a couple true crime stories on this podcast that I have been unfamiliar with. I am very excited to hear about this. What was another true crime story I did?

The Bath School disaster. I did not know much about that at all. So you don't know anything about this story? No. Excellent. And I hope our listeners don't know anything either. Okay. It's a wild story, folks.

Let's begin. Kristen, our story begins where all famous people from the 1800s are from. New York. Nope. What? What state? I said New York. I said no.

Give me another guest. Maryland. No, but I love that song. Well, Massachusetts? No. You're so disappointed in me. What have I done wrong? I guess it suits me to a tea.

Connecticut is the place for me. Oh, okay. Connecticut. I'm sorry. You should have said fancy people. If you'd said fancy, I would have known right away. we were talking about Connecticut. That's true.

Fancy people do come from Connecticut. It's the home state of people such as abolitionist John Brown, showman P.T. Barnum, who Kristen loves and admires, entertainer General Tom Thumb, writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, and many, many more. If there's one thing I've learned from working on this podcast, Kristen, it said if you are from Connecticut or even just live in Connecticut, you are destined for greatness. So if there are any Connecticut history hose listening, just know that we are expecting a lot from you. Wouldn't you agree, Kristen? Hell yeah. Also hailing from Connecticut was the Colt family.

They were led by Daddy Christopher Colt and Mommy Sarah Colt. And the Colts were rich. They lived in the luxurious neighborhood known as Lord's Hill in Hartford, Connecticut. You familiar with Lord's Hill? You gave me a... Oh. No, I just thought that's a really dushy name for a subdivision, but, you know, okay. Well, it's called Lords Hill. Lords live there. Yeah, I get it.

So they got money. They got power. Sounds like someone's struggling for power. This neighborhood would later be known as Asylum Hill, and it's the same neighborhood that American author Mark Twain would eventually call home. And yeah, it's named after the asylum that was built there. Okay. I was like, geez. By the way, if you're ever in that area, Mark Twain. House, awesome tour. Yeah.

Loved it. Harriet Beecher Stowe House. Oh, that wasn't very fun. Cool house, though. That was a boring-ass tour. We'll just say it like it is. Mark Twain tour, fascinating. We were bored shitless by the Harriet Beacher Stowe tour.

I left the Harriet Beach or Stow Tour feeling bad about myself. Why? I don't know. I felt like I was being shamed the whole time. Yeah. It's been decades since we went, so we should just say that. Okay, maybe they've improved things. Yeah, maybe.

So, Christopher and Sarah Colt, not only were they rich, Kristen, they were hot. Neighbors called them the handsomest couple in the area. Christopher was a gentleman of fine form and countenance and amiable manners, while Sarah was a model of dignified beauty. Oh, holy shit, that's a compliment. I'm going to put a model of dignified beauty on your head. Stone. Oh, Jesus. Are you planning to kill me? No. But we're all going to die eventually. Yeah, but couldn't you just, I think you were going to say, oh, I'm going to say that about you right now, but no, you're taking it to the

saddest point. Okay. Great. You are currently. Something to look forward to. You will always be a model of dignified even when you're rotting in the ground. Okay. Thanks. Pour some salt on me. So the Colts were rich. They were hot. They seemed to have it all. Christopher made his fortune in the merchant trades, importing and exporting goods around the world, things like sugar and coffee and tea. Were enslaved people involved? Somewhere down the line? Definitely! But that's not all. Christopher was a model citizen of Hartford. He ran a savings bank. He became the treasure of the local agricultural society. And he even opened a successful distillery where patrons could wet their whistle. By the way, I looked up what wet their whistle even means.

Yeah. I guess whistle is an old-timey term for your throat. Yeah. So when you wet your whistle. I didn't know that. I thought it was like a referee whistle. Like, wet the whistle. And I was like, what does that mean?

Christopher's success translated to the bedroom too, Kristen. I'm about to bust. Colts were pretty damn horny. They had eight children total. Well, that was back before the Lerd intervened with the pill and all that stuff. They just had Lysol and a prayer back then. This is pre-lysal, too. Oh.

They probably just splash some water on themselves. Only six survived to adulthood, though, which was also very common back then. Let's go through the list. First came a daughter, Margaret, in 1806, and then another daughter, Sarah Ann, in 1808. And then on March 1st, 1810, the Colts had their first son, and they named him John Caldwell Colt, after his grandfather. Three more sons would follow. Christopher Jr., Samuel and James. And for this series, I'm going to focus primarily on John Colt, obviously,

and a little bit on his little brother, Samuel Colt. Growing up, they were very close, but as they got older, their lives took very different paths. In the end, they would become very, very intertwined. More on that later. Hint, hint, wink, wink. After his famous trial, writers described John Colt's childhood using the power of hindsight. They claimed he was cunning, revengeful, prone to violent outbursts that he couldn't control.

He shunned authority from his parents, his teachers, and God himself. But those who were close to John Colt thought differently. They said John was definitely rambunctious as a child, but he was overall a, quote, good-hearted boy, exclamation point, by the way, direct quote. He enjoyed playing sports, hanging out with his friends. And yeah, sure, sometimes he got into things he really wasn't supposed to, but what kid doesn't. John would later write that as a child, he was, quote, rash and foolishly venturesome. For example, one time John was playing too close to a cider press, and he fell into a giant vat of juice, and he almost drowned.

I guess that juice wasn't worth the squeeze. That was very good. Thank you. Another time, John thought it would be cool to jump up and down on an icy pond and see what happened. The ice broke and he fell into the icy waters. John traveled 60 feet underneath the ice before reaching open water and grabbing a limb from a down tree to get out. What a chilling experience that must have been. That is honestly one of my biggest fears.

Okay. I thought so too when I read about that. Being under the ice. Yeah. Ooh. That's creepy. No, that scares the shit out of me. Okay.

Well, we'll keep you away from icy ponds, lakes, puddles in the neighborhood just to be safe. I'm amazed by the number of people who are like, let's try ice skating on this pond. I'm like, let's not. Absolutely not. Let's go to the man-made rink where if the ice breaks, I won't fall into water. Where I'm surrounded by way too many people and maybe my fingers will get chopped off when I inevitably fall and, you know, someone skates over him. Anyway, I'm painting a beautiful picture. You are. You have a way with words, Kristen.

Thank you. One time John was messing around with a horse and he got thrown from the saddle and kicked. That'll teach him to horse around. What do you mean by messing around with a horse? I think he was riding the horse and maybe slapping it or being like, you know, messing with it. Okay. Slapping its ass. I don't know.

Okay. They didn't go into that many details. All right. Gotcha. Gotcha. He was not doing anything sexual or the horse, Chris. If that's what you're wondering. I didn't ask.

I didn't ask. I know bestiality is one of your hobbies. Ew. Stop! What the fuck. We're going to get the dogs taken away from us. Geez. I don't know if there's some kind of weird podcast or hotline.

There probably should be. People can just call in. The podcast or hotline? Yeah. It was like 9-1-1 for podcasts. Yeah, for podcasts. Just like, yeah, I got another weird one. I think that people running the hotline would be,

find it kind of refreshing that finally a woman gets called on. You know, that's got to be a little unusual, but still. A white lady. I've always been a trailblazer. Okay, I'm done with my stupid. puns and jokes there. Oh, thank you. This is a murder series.

I'm going to take the easy jokes where I can, Kristen. Okay. Mr. and Mrs. Colt were worried about young John's behavior, and they thought he would probably benefit from going off to a private school. And so John Colt found himself studying at the prestigious Hopkins Academy in Hadley, Massachusetts. Fun fact, Hopkins Academy is still operating today as a public school. It's the fourth oldest high school in the United States. Oh, wow.

Yeah. John's parents were ensured that the boy would be under strict discipline and get the finest education. But John Colt didn't do very well in that school. He was known as the ringleader of mischief, and he struggled in his studies. John just didn't see the point in studying dead languages like Latin. Et to John Colt? But he did find one subject that he really, really liked, and he did really well at, math, the arch nemesis of the historian. It's true. John's love of math would serve him later in life,

and he didn't get to enjoy it for very long at Hopkins Academy because after only a year, his dad pulled him out of school. Why? He couldn't afford it anymore. The panic of 1819, America's first major financial crisis was here. USA! USA! It was at first.

You know, we got to celebrate firsts, you know. Sure. How did the panic of 1819? happened, Kristen. The end of the Napoleonic wars in Europe caused a sharp reduction in exports. The Federal Bank of the United States was now requiring hard currency

like gold and silver. And this destroyed credit-fueled land speculation, and banks around the country started failing. Future topic? Oh, God! Thank you. Okay, I always scare me when you bring up this boring shit and I was like, I didn't even need to know

why we had this panic in the first place. You don't want to know? All you needed to tell me was things were bad economically, and I would be like, yes. You don't even want a little taste of why it happened? Just a little context. Oh, yeah, the Napoleonic War or so, boy. A little context mini? No.

Like a little bite-sized? No. Move on. Move on. Halloween-sized context. Okay. All right. I'll remember that for future scripts.

Thank you. My wife doesn't care. Also, any wars, what else? Um, hmm. Buildings that have been moved. You're not interested in that. Not really, no. Yeah.

There's another, in the last bonus episode, I had a future topic idea and you were just like absolutely not. Can't remember what it was. I just have to play whack-a-mole with some of these boring ideas. What? I remember what it was. What? When Washington, D.C.

gave the city of Alexandria back to Virginia. I was like, oh, future topic. And you're like, please, no. It just sounds boring. It sounds like bureaucratic. I'm interested. Okay. You know?

Okay. All right. All right. We're not going to talk about the panic of 1819. I did find something interesting about it, though, Kristen. Did you know? I doubt that very much. Okay.

Listen to this. Let me tell you. You ready for this? Yes. Apparently, a lot of poor people during that time, they would purposefully commit crimes so they could go to jail and have food shelter. What do you think of that? That's really sad. That is sad.

And actually, I feel like that happens today, too. No, I, that sounds like something that's made up, honestly. Really? Yeah, it sounds made up. Interesting. Well, it's kind of like people, people will sometimes say, oh, yeah, go to prison and you can get your medical stuff taken care of. I don't think people actually do that. I feel like I read a news article one time where a guy

robbed a convenience store because he... I'm sure you read something sometime. I'm sure there may be it happened once, but like sometimes something sticks in our minds and we want to make it a phenomenon when it's really not a phenomenon. It was on a website Q&On Tonight.com. It's a news site.

Oh, wonderful. Yeah. Now, I read that years ago. Anyway. Okay, Kristen. I'm done talking about the panic of 1819. Thank you. End the scene.

I was starting to panic. Hey, there we go. Christopher Cole worked hard to rebuild his fortune and take care of his young children. At that time, John was nine years old, while his little brother Samuel was five. Christopher couldn't afford to send them to school anymore. You know what they say? idle hands are the devil's playground. John Colt got into more mischief.

He and some friends were caught stealing apples from a neighbor's orchard. And the neighbor caught one of the boys and he whipped him. And as revenge for that whipping, John and his buddies threw burrs at the guy's horse. And they got all tangled up and caught in the horse's hair. And the neighbor had to shave his horse. That poor horse. I know. Have you ever seen a hairless horse?

No. What the hell are you waiting for? Look it up. Really? Yeah, it's just, I don't know, it's just unsettling, I guess is the right word. Oh, God. I mean, you know, I knew it wasn't going to be good. Weirdly, and I can't, I can't explain this, but it kind of reminds me of a camel.

I think it's because I'm, the first thing I'm seeing on, on Google is just like a real close-up. Here's why, here's why it looks like a camel, because the main is gone. and the tail is gone. Yeah. Camels don't have tails. Okay, yeah. So it all makes sense. I got you.

Yeah. If you really want to go wild tonight, we'll look up hairless bears. Those. May I look at it up right now? Do we have to? We're starting a new podcast. Oh, no. Hairless animal appreciation.

Oh, this is so much scarier than a regular bear. Yeah. Yeah. They are weird looking. This is sent to a straight, hell somehow, oh my God. It looks like dogs. No, don't you dare.

Or demon dogs. No, it looks like a demon in some kind of suit. And pretty soon it's going to rip that suit off and rip into you, buddy. That's what that looks like. Honest to God, if I met this thing in the woods, I don't think I'd even try any of the tactics. Like, oh, get big, throw things or play dead. No, I'd just be like, take me now, Satan. I would scream and run away.

Okay. And I think the bear would catch me. This thing definitely would. It would laser beam your butthole or something. I'm not sure what. You know, maybe the new question is, if you're alone in the woods, would you rather run into a man or a hairless bear? You get two options.

A very hairy man or a completely hairless bear. There we go. That is the real question. Okay. Back to our story, Kristen. John Colt really didn't have much to do, so he was getting into shenanigans. But Samuel, on the other hand, he was obsessed with a gift that his grandfather had given him. It was an old flintlock pistol from the Revolutionary War.

His grandfather had used it during the war. How old is Samuel? He's probably like six or seven years old. Oh, God. Seems like a dangerous thing to give a kid. It seems that way because it is that way, Norm. Let's think about it. Uh-huh.

That's like if we gave our little nephew a pistol. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah. Now it didn't work. No, still, you don't need to be doing that to a six or seven-year-old. That's crazy. Well, I don't think it's very fair that you get to carry a pink pistol around in your purse. I don't do that.

And our poor little nephew can't even have a non-working pistol. In any case, Samuel loved that flintlock pistol. He loved tinkering around with it. He was trying to figure out how you could get it to work again. But yeah, obviously, pretty dangerous. But the point is, he was staying out of trouble, but John was always getting into trouble. And then tragedy struck. In 1821, after giving birth to her eighth child, mom Sarah Colt passed away at the age of 40.

The cause? Tuberculosis, which is not a hard word to say at all. The baby, a boy named Norman, passed soon after. I didn't write this down. But when she gave birth, she was very sick. Yeah. And the baby was also very sick. Do you think that, okay, so that would have been 1820s or something?

1821. Do you think that Norman was like a hot, cool, sexy, trendy name at that point? You know, I bet it was. Yeah. And it still is. Well, 200 years later, we're still naming our kids, Norman. No, I am probably the last of the Normans. I don't think you're the last.

I'm just saying it's not like a cool, sexy, trendy name. I think we have some listeners that might disagree with that. Okay. Let us know. Let us know. So Christopher Colt is now a single father of six children, most of them young. And John was a handful. John took his mom's death pretty hard, and he kept getting into trouble.

So Daddy Colt did what he thought was best. He sent John to go work on his uncle's farm in Burlington, Vermont. And you know, that seemed to do the trick. Manual labor really calmed John down. He planted crops, he fixed fences, he took care of livestock. John was hoeing it up on that farm, as they say. In a letter to John's father, John's uncle wrote, I'll tell you what, John is made of good stuff. And you need not to give yourself any uneasiness about him. He's as kind-hearted a fella as ever was. And I never saw a better boy in all my life. That's really sweet. Yeah. At the end, he added, also, there is no way he would ever kill a man. I guarantee it.

Wow, how weird. John's uncle, you jinxed it. He jinxed the whole thing. Yep, this is his fault for sure. He didn't actually say that last part. It's evidenced by the rim shot. Yeah. Around two years later, Christopher Colt had firmly reestablished some income

by opening up a silk mill in Ware, Massachusetts. Where? Hey. Where? Over there. Where? It's like an Abin-Costello bit.

Oh, God, it's so stupid. He also found new love, a woman named Olivia Sargent. With a new mom in their lives, the family was back together and John returned home. But the reunion didn't last long. Sadly, in 1825,

John's oldest sister, Margaret, passed away at the age of 19. She was months away from getting married. And the cause of death was, once again, tuberculosis. Now both John's mom and sister had succumbed to the disease, and John developed a lifelong fear of contracting tuberculosis himself. The loss of his older sister, Margaret, greatly upset John, but he didn't seem to find much comfort in his new stepmom. She wasn't exactly the warm, cuddly type. Her maiden name, Sergeant, was fitting.

She ran the household like a drill sergeant. So she gathered all the children and she was like, okay, you little maggots! Your father is a shell of a man. He makes way less money. So everyone is going to have to work, even if you have to leave home. John had other ideas. He was 14 years old now, and he decided that he wanted to pursue a military career.

You know, he loved pretending to be a soldier with his buddies, his grandfather fought in the American Revolution, and his dream was to enroll at the prestigious United States Military Academy at West Point. Back in those days, kids as young as 10 could enroll in that school. Wow. Yeah. But stepmom Olivia was like, West Point, in this economy? We cannot afford that.

You've got to go get a job. So John Colt found himself working at the Union, manufacturing company, which is the most generic sounding name I have ever heard for a business. I was curious what they did. Yeah. Turns out it was a textile mill, and they made a lot of blue and white striped fabric, which was a common uniform for enslaved people in the South. Oh. Yeah.

Wow. Ugh. Well, you think about that having little kids up north making uniforms for enslaved kids and adults. Once again, manual labor did John some good. He excelled at the mill. And thanks to his work ethic and knowledge of math, he was promoted to assistant bookkeeper. In that position, John learned an extremely valuable skill that not a lot of people could do. it was a method of accounting called double entry bookkeeping.

History hose, I really did my best to try and understand what double entry bookkeeping means. You would. I would have skimmed on past this. You would have said double entry bookkeeping and moved on, right? I would have said he was really good at accounting. Okay. I struggled to understand it, but I think I have the basics. It's just a much more detailed way of keeping track of transactions.

So you record every transaction as both a debit and a credit. It's very boring. No one is interested. Kristen is falling asleep. If you have the video version, you notice she fell asleep right there. Kristen, you're going to love this. For the purposes of this story, I'm not going to explain double-entry bookkeeping. You've already said too much.

All we need to know is that it was very complex and John was very good at it, okay? It's all we need to know. That's off. Meanwhile, John's little brother, Samuel, was also sent off to work. At the age of 11, he was indentured out to a farmer in nearby Glastonbury, Connecticut. And it was on that farm that young Samuel further honed his love and knowledge of guns. While he wasn't working, Samuel became engrossed in scientific encyclopedias. He learned about inventors and their wacky inventions.

They had solved problems once deemed impossible to solve. It really got Samuel's imagination going, and he looked at that old flintlock pistol, a gun that could only fire one bullet at a time and took forever to reload. And he had the thought that literally every inventor has. There's got to be a better way. That's right. There's got to be a better way. Samuel did try a few ideas, including just tying a bunch of pistols together to make a giant gun. Oh my God.

Shockingly, that didn't work, Kristen, and it was super dangerous. Dangerous. But Samuel didn't let it deter him. He kept on experimenting. Is it deter or Dieter? Deter. Okay. Kristen's my grammar check.

It would be fascinating to know the number of words that have been cut from this podcast where I've just had to be like, nope, that's not it. Try again. A lot. A lot. You're like a guy who grew up on a deserted island. a deserted island with a library in it. So you've read all the words, but you've never actually tested them out on other humans.

I never heard them out loud or said them. Yeah. It's funny. Before I present, I usually read through my script. And if there's any words, I'm like, hmm,

is that really how you say it? Yeah, I'll like figure out how to say it. But as I say it, when we record, my confidence gets shot. And I'm like, is that really how you say that?

No, I get that. Yeah. I will say the weirdest word for you. Yeah. And this is one that you have said since the beginning of time. The way you say Futon is the weirdest. The absolute weirdest.

I believe you mean Fetone. Okay. Listeners, I cannot be the only one who thinks that's the weirdest way to say that word. Futon. Fetone. Uh-huh. It's French. It's fancy.

Uh-huh. Would you like to stay the night on my futon? I am picturing the neck-bearded man who would say that to someone. Me lady? Yeah. Let me hang my fedora and present to you this photon on the floor of my living room. We will make love on it. Okay.

Uh, yeah, it is futon. I said fatone for... Like until a couple years ago. Until I met Christy. No, you kept saying it because you kept saying that I was wrong. Okay. Let's calm down. Let's continue the story.

Let's move on. I can't say words very well, okay? It's not like it's important for what you do for a limit. I know. It's shocking that I am on a podcast. Okay. Okay. So Samuel is obsessed with inventing a new type of gun.

He tries tying a bunch of pistols together to make a giant gun. doesn't work very well, but he keeps on experimenting. From that point on, John and Samuel's lives would go in different directions. Both were certainly ambitious young men, but there was a key difference. Samuel was hyper-focused on his passion, firearms and how to improve them. But John was a little more scatterbrained. He wasn't really sure what he wanted to do. He tried everything, accounting, the military, farming, teaching, and as we will soon learn, John dipped his toes in just about every profession imaginable. There might be some undiagnosed ADHD here, Kristen.

Okay, I was thinking when you told the part about him going to his uncle's farm and manual labor being so good for him, I thought, this poor boy has ADHD and no one knows it, but he's able to just exhaust himself. So is that a thing? Manual labor, like, if you have ADHD, does that help? Well, I guess I shouldn't go that far, but I know that for me personally, like, working out like a really exhausting workout is wonderful because it allows me to kind of calm down and focus. But also maybe that thing of like there is a task that has to get done and it's just this one thing and you do it until you finish this row or whatever. Interesting. It can be good as opposed to the childhood that he was having before where it sounds like it was.

was kind of like, all right, do whatever. Oh, but don't get into trouble. Yeah, he kind of was all over the place. Yeah. In 1826, John Colt was 16 years old, working at the textile mill, doing his double-entry bookkeeping, making decent money. But John couldn't seem to stay in one place for too long. That year, he went AWOL from his job, and he turned up three weeks later in Albany, New York.

Why Albany? Some sources say he had visited the area previously with his dad and it was just kind of his vibe. He liked it. Others claim it was his attempt to try and get into West Point. Albany is about 100 miles from West Point. No, maybe he was still hoping that he could get into that school without his family's help. Regardless, John's dad found him and encouraged him to come home, which he did reluctantly. John never really got along with his new stepmom. And his time at home was very brief. In 1827, at the age of 17, he left home. What followed were a series of jobs in various places. He went to Baltimore and worked as a math teacher at a ladies' seminary. He possibly dabbled in some real estate investing. He got a job working on a canal, and he actually did quite well in that job.

Again, manual labor. But the hours were long. The work was very hard, and eventually he developed a seriously bad cough. and in his mind he immediately assumed the worst. I have tuberculosis. Yeah. The same disease that killed my mom and my sister. So right then and there, he decided, I can't live a life of labor.

You know, it's too risky for my health. He wanted like a desk job. Yeah. So John went back to school for a brief time in Massachusetts. But in 1829, his studies were interrupted by terrible news. his other older sister Sarah Ann had died, but it was not from tuberculosis. Sarah had actually killed herself by drinking arsenic. There's been a lot of speculation over why Sarah Ann Colt took her own life.

Some say she fought with her stepmom too much. Others believe she couldn't handle living a life of labor. She found it humiliating and embarrassing. but the Colt family, believe it or not, said that she had become, quote, deranged from applying herself too closely to her books. What do you think of that? I mean, I think all of it's bullshit. I do, too.

I just thought the Colts family reasoning was very strange. Well, back in that time, there was a lot of thought about not educating women. Right. And so maybe that seemed logical at the time that she was doing something unnatural. Like reading. Reading too much. Yeah, you know, you read too much, Kristen. It's dangerous.

And that's why we can't keep any arsenic in the house, no matter how badly I want to drink it. No, I, you know, not that we understand a ton about mental illness and depression and all that these days, but I think we understood even less back then. So yeah, she reads too many books. We'll blame the books. Okay. In any case, Sarah and Colt was gone. John had now lost all of the most important women in his life, his mom and his two older sisters.

He was grief-stricken by it, and he dropped out of school. He was determined to travel, to get away, to escape. He wanted to, quote, leave the country and pass the rest of his days in some foreign land. But, you know, easier said than done, John didn't really have much money, but then a friend suggested a great idea. The friend told John, hey, if you want to travel, just join the Marines. It's super easy. All you got to do is like stand guard for a few hours a day. I mean, that's pretty much it. So that's what John did. He packed up, traveled south to

Norfolk, Virginia, and he enlisted in the United States Marines. John thought, wow, just think, In three months, I'll be on a ship heading for the halls of Montezuma and the shows of Tripoli. But then reality. Is that why you've been singing that song around the house all week? Have I been singing that? You have. Yeah. It's a very catchy song.

But then reality slapped John in the face, Kristen. John actually hated the Marines. He hated the strict discipline. The pay sucked. Yeah. And guard duty was boring as hell. Well, oh, well, yeah. And if he's got ADHD, the boredom is not a good thing.

Okay. And then to make matters worse, John contracted a violent fever, and he was laid up in the infirmary for weeks. And once again, his mind's racing. Oh, my God. Tuberculosis. Yeah. In fact, he was so sick. Officers were like, well, looks like you won't be able to get on your ship, which is headed for a cruise around the Mediterranean.

So instead, John Colt had to stay behind, and he served as a clerk for some stupid colonel. Oh. It reminded me of that Simpsons episode where Bart forgets his permission slip for the field trip, and the field trip is to the chocolate factory. I mean, this is kind of comical how fun this sounds, a cruise of the Mediterranean. Yeah, they're just going to go explore the Mediterranean. Yeah, that sounds amazing. and instead he's a clerk for some old dude.

Yeah. Eventually, John Colt was like, F this, I am leaving the Marines, but his enlistment was for a couple years. He only signed up three months ago. So you got to shoot your shot. John put in a formal request for a discharge. Kristen, what was the Marines answer?

Hell no. Yeah. Oh, you don't like it? Wow, we've never heard that before. Excuse me. I would like to leave. I'm actually not having fun. So, yeah, put in a formal request.

Marine said no. He was getting ready to just go AWOL until the mischievous John Colt came up with a brilliant idea. Kristen, what do you think he did? What was his idea? To get out of the Marines. Have someone else come and poses him.

That is so close. Really? You are so close. Okay. I'll tell you what he did. Oh, oh, fakes his own death. He does not fake his own death. Sorry, I got excited.

Your original answer was better, actually. Okay. Here's what he did. John forged a letter claiming to be a farmer named Hamilton from Massachusetts. Okay. Hamilton wrote to John's superior officers that John Colt was not who he said he was. He was actually Hamilton's son who was underage and had run away from home, and he enlisted into the Marines without his parents' permission.

Hamilton also claimed, oh, we're so sick. We need our son to come home and take care of us. Uh-huh. So John forged that letter. He sent it to his younger brother, James, and James postmarked it from Massachusetts. Not bad.

And then sent it to John's commanding officer. Not too bad. All right. And shockingly, that worked. John Colt was officially discharged from the Marines after serving for only three months. Pretty clever. Yeah, not bad. I'm surprised you, you like pretty much nailed it your first guess, pretended to be somebody else.

Well, I'm very mischievous. I'm just like this guy in every possible way. ADHD. You said you were a murderer. Yeah, well, maybe. I'm really the victim of a bad trial is what happened. Ah, interesting. Sadly, the dream of traveling the world, exploring foreign lands never materialized for John Colt.

But it did for his little brother, Samuel Colt. Samuel had actually been inspired by John leaving home and joining the Marines to see the world. You know, he kind of wanted to explore the world, too. So in 1830, at the age of 16, Samuel left school, and he joined the crew of a merchant ship called the Corvo. Samuel would serve as a navigator's assistant. and he would learn the ins and outs of that job. Samuel was off to see the world, including stops in Calcutta and London, and along the way, he found inspiration.

While in Calcutta, Samuel frequently stopped at various gun stores, gazing at the latest weaponry available, and it was there he saw it, a gun unlike any other. It was called the Collier-Flytlock Revolver. It was a pistol that could fire five shots without reloading. and it used a patented rotating cylinder to load new bullets into the gun's barrel. The gun had been invented 12 years earlier by Elisha Collier. It was an incredible advancement in gun technology.

But Kristen, this gun had some serious drawbacks. Number one, it was super expensive. Each gun was handmade with tons of parts. Tons of parts. In fact, only about 250 of them were ever. made, mostly for wealthy collectors. The gun was very fragile. It broke very easily.

But the biggest drawback was the rotating cylinder. You had to rotate it manually, and if the chamber didn't align with the barrel properly, it would just misfire. So this gun sucks. It's very likely to misfire, and when it misfires, you know it just goes to pieces. And it sounds like there's a thousand pieces, so good luck picking them all up. Meanwhile, you get shot by the guy who's got just a regular gun. Well, here's the other thing.

It was a flintlock revolver where you have to like pour the gunpowder. Oh, my Lord. So like a misfire could be very dangerous. You know, it could blow up in your hands. Sorry. It's not funny. But that gun, like the rotating cylinder idea, that was revolutionary. Sure.

And Samuel Colt was determined he could, quote, do better. Is that the origin of the original? of the phrase do better Kristen? I believe so. Was he smug when he said it? A little condescending? Absolutely. There we go. On the voyage home, Samuel wondered how he could fix the annoying, manually rotating cylinder of the Collier revolver. Samuel thought to himself, there's got to be a better way. And then he had that stereotypical eureka moment. Samuel noticed the ship's windlass. Basically, it's a ratcheting rope system to raise and lower the anchor

of the ship, okay? And he thought, oh, it's a ratcheting system. My new gun could do something very similarly. You know, every time you pull the trigger, the cylinder will rotate automatically and lock into position, and it would align everything up perfectly.

So Samuel Colt whittled up a wooden model as the Corvo ship headed back to America. And in 1831, the ship docked at the Boston Harbor and Samuel Colt deborded, and he began a new adventure. He was going to raise money for his new gun idea, and he was 17 years old. Wow! Yeah.

Okay, good for you, Sam. He was only 17, but he knew what he was meant to do with his life. But John Colt, he still wasn't really sure what he wanted to do. You know, after his failed stint in the Marines, John moved to New York City. His cousin, an attorney named Dudley Selden, offered him a job, as a clerk. You're smiling. You like the name Dudley?

I don't understand why we have lost this name. Dudley? Why aren't there more Dudleys? Dudley do right. Who is that? The cartoon character. Yeah, that doesn't count. That doesn't count.

I want to just be introduced to a gang of fellas, and we've got all the regular names plus Dudley, and we call him Dud for short. This is my boy Dudley. He's the enforcer of the group. We got any pregnant folks listening? I hope so. Dudley and Norman are the hot trending baby names. Yeah, if you're going to draw a name from a hat, please consider adding Dudley and Norman to the hat.

And those should be the only names in the hat, just so we're clear. So yeah, John Colt moves to New York City. His cousin, who is an attorney named Dudley Selden, uh, hires him as a clerk. So John Colt's looking over legal documents. Kind of boring, but it is kind of inspiring to him. He's like, yeah, you know, maybe I should just go back to school. So he goes to the University of Vermont, and he focuses on the one subject he thought he was really good at, which is math. But I think by now, Kristen, you know, John Colts's not going to stay in one place very long. In the summer of 1832, he drops out of the University of Vermont, and he's on the road again. And he tried anything and everything.

You ready for this list? Yeah. Fur trading in Michigan. Land speculation in Texas. Soap manufacturing in New York. dry goods merchant in Florida grocery salesman in Georgia and here's my favorite one

an event party planner in New Orleans and the people of New Orleans were like no we've got that covered dude this is the party city Chris and I recently took a trip to New Orleans that food was amazing delicious city

delicious we ate our way through it and by that we mean of course vaginas Hey, whoa. Sorry. Anyhow. There are certain people on Bourbon Street. I don't know if we want to be eaten through this city completely, Kristen. Norm, don't shame the folks of Bourbon Street.

I'm just saying, you know, it'd be a lot of work. Maybe not always pleasant. Anyway, so that was my favorite, event party planner in New Orleans. But he finally ended up a school teacher in Kentucky. And John kept in touch with his brother Samuel. They wrote letters to each other. And John heard about Samuel's gun idea and how he was raising money and testing out prototypes. Samuel hoped to get into manufacturing soon for the new gun.

And that was inspiring to John. He wanted what Samuel had. He wanted that passion, that drive, that thing that he could be known for. John was only 24 years old. But he felt as if he had lived 100 lives and accomplished absolutely nothing. And then it came to him, Kristen. Like a bolt of lightning. He knew what he had to do with his life.

John Colt declared, I will write the greatest book of all time on double-entry bookkeeping. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Yay. Oh. Kristen, you don't sound very enthusiastic about this idea. Listen, as someone who has ADHD myself, I know how hard it is to sit down and write a freaking book.

So you already had me there. Like that was enough. I, I don't know why, thought he was at least going to try to write an interesting book. It never occurred to me that he'd be writing the most boring book of all time and this poor fellow has ADHD. He can't do this. Well, hang on. You know, he's good at math. He understands double entry bookkeeping, which not a lot of people understood at that time.

It's not that I don't think he has the ability. Well, what are you saying exactly? You don't believe in John. His brain is going to get in his own way, is what I'm saying. Okay, well, fair point. It does kind of get in his way a little bit. To be fair to John Colt, this was actually a good idea because double entry bookkeeping. Yeah, no, it's a good idea.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So it's extremely beneficial to businesses. It was very hard to understand. So John thought, I'm going to be the guy who's going to strip away. all the complexities of double entry bookkeeping, and I'm going to explain it to the every man, the merchant, the tradesman,

and they can do it themselves. This was the original like four dummies idea. I literally wrote that down. Oh, sorry. Wrote it down, Chris. Sorry. Our minds are synced. This is why we're married.

This is why we're partners. This is why? You've wondered, why the hell did these two team up? It's because we've got one brain that we share. No, I think it's sweet. Oh. John Colt was inspired.

He threw himself into his work in the summer of 1834. He set up shop in Cincinnati, Ohio. He read every accounting book he could get his hands on. He took extensive notes. He honed his craft by giving public lectures and teaching classes. And Kristen, I'm going to read to you a few of John Colt's ideas on bookkeeping. He said that bookkeeping promoted the values and ideals from the Declaration of Independence. Wow. It allowed people to, quote, enjoy the blessing of enlightened life by helping them achieve money, property, and possessions.

What do you think of that? Okay. I can kind of see where he's going with that. I can kind of see it. But it also occurs to me that the way he talks about his book is kind of the way we talk about our Patreon. We're like, man, you sign up for this thing. Your whole life's going to improve. Everything's going to be better, okay? You're just going to be really happy. All your problems will be solved. And, you know, it's kind of true that some problems will be solved. You won't be bored. Got all this stuff to listen to.

Distract yourself from your problems with an old-timey podcast. So John Colt is working on his magnum opus. And meanwhile, Samuel Colt pays him a visit in Cincinnati. Samuel was actually on tour. He was raising money to develop his new gun. And would you like to know, how he was raising money. He demonstrated laughing gas.

What? Yeah. So he got people high as fuck and then asked for money? So it was basically a show. It was like, I'm Dr. Samuel Colt and I want to show you all laughing gas and its effects on the body. And so he charged 25 cents a ticket. People would come in.

Volunteers would get on stage. He would administer them laughing gas. And people would just be entertained by all the wild shit. people would do high on laughing gas. Okay, that sounds like a fun show. Yeah, see, there you go. And he also did private parties. Oh, I bet he did.

Yeah. So Samuel Colt made decent money doing that. And with the money, he was able to set up a contract with some gunsmiths in Baltimore who started making early versions of his new gun. Meanwhile, John Colt continued to work on his double entry bookkeeping book. He was having trouble kind of finding the time to work on it, though. He was teaching, doing lectures. Maybe the ADHD was kicking in a little bit.

But also, he had found a special lady. Oh. A Norwegian woman named Francis Anne Frank. Francis was a singer and a musician. She was sexy. She was described as having a fine bust. Oh, wow. Forehead, broad, and high.

We call that a five head. Forget about the booms. Look at that four. Damn, look at that dome. Complexion animated. Large, full black, fiery eyes with dark brown, luxurious hair. John Colt spotted her while attending one of her performances. He was, quote, enraptured by her beauty and manner.

You know, John Colt was a decent looking guy himself, by the way. He was between 5-9 and 5-11, which was basically a giant back in the 1800s. He had dark, thick, curly hair, and he had long, dark sideburns. Kind of like Martin Van Buren, you know, they would all the way down. Very attractive. So there was an instant attraction physically, but John and Francis connected on a personal level, too. They enjoyed sharing stories from their strange wild lives. Francis shared that she had already been married twice already.

She got married at 15 to a riverboat gambler. Wow. And then again, she got married to a wealthy German industrialist who blew all of his money on reckless luxury. And then he died. Francis also had a baby girl. John Colt shared his stories of traveling, of working on the canal, joining the Marines, party planning in New Orleans. He talked about how he was working on a new book that he thought would make a big difference. Francis loved John's determination.

She found him intelligent, kind, charming. The two of them seemed inseparable. You know, when John was away giving a lecture, they wrote letters to each other. And then when John came back to town, they were all. always seen together. It seemed like a storybook romance, Kristen, but it wasn't. You know, Francis was pretty smitten with John. She wanted to marry him and settle down. But John Colt was resistant to that idea. I think he kind of enjoyed being pursued. Yeah. He liked his freedom, and he still had not finished his book. So, to quote a do not disturb sign we once saw in a

Norwegian hotel, John Colt told Francis and Frank, no, sorry, now is not the time. That was our favorite do not disturb sign of all time. Yes. I wish, I took a picture of it, but I wish I would have just taken it with me. No, I remember stopping you. I want to hang that up. Francis was really sad about the rejection, but she thought, well, you know, maybe eventually he'll come around. But things just got worse.

Yeah, no, if he doesn't want you, he doesn't want you. Yeah. John was very controlling. He had this very specific image of who Francis and Frank should be. And when she strayed from that image, he got mean. One day, Francis revealed to John that she wanted to pursue a new career. She wanted to be an actor race. I'm holding up a skull here.

Sure, yeah, we can all see it. John Colt was not supportive at all. in his mind Francis was a musician. She should continue being a musician. Was this around the time when actors and actresses were seen as like these unseemly characters? Yes. Yeah. I was just about to get to that.

Yeah. John said the theater scene was awful. He said theater goers were insincere, inhumane, had no sympathy or values, no feelings for others. Wait, even the theater goers, even the people just see it. The show sucked. According to him, which is weird, because he met Francis in the theater. He went. Well, he would know.

But I think the real reason was John didn't want other men ogling Francis on stage. In John's mind, being an actress, was the equivalent of being a wher. Yeah. In a letter, he wrote to Francis that if she decided to pursue that career, she would be set down as a bad woman and ranked among the most worthless. Okay. Dude, you suck so bad. If you don't want to be with this woman, move along. Kirsten, you think this is bad.

Wait till you see what he does later. Well, I know he's a murderer, so. Allegedly, we don't know yet. We're pretty sure. That was an awful thing to say. It was so hurtful to Francis. Yeah. So she responded by not responding.

She gave John the silent treatment. Okay. John wrote Francis again, playing dumb. He was like, hey, what's wrong? I haven't heard from you. Is everything okay? Ever since I said horrible things to you and called you worthless, you've not wanted to hang out so much.

And I'm just wondering what the hell is wrong with you. Yeah, I called you. Aside from being a worthless whore. A worthless wherer who's a bad woman. Francis ignored that letter too. Good for her. And that set John Colt off. He wrote her one more time, basically saying,

fine if you don't want to talk to me then be that way we're done and i want all of my love letters back okay uh-huh in the 1800s christin this is the equivalent of picking up your old records from your ex's place uh-huh uh you you need a more updated version oh records are back in style now okay all right pick up your cassette tapes is that better christian no it's not what year are you living in pick up my zune mp3 player from my ex's place Why is that there? CDs. How about CDs?

I'm picking up my DVDs. Oh, God. Okay. Where's my family guy, season two? DVD set. Huh? So, yeah, John wrote to France. It was like, it's over, baby.

When John got back to Cincinnati, Francis showed up at his office, and there in front of him, she dumped all of his love letters onto his desk. They had been shredded into little pieces. Wow. Their relationship was basically over. Francis took the breakup pretty hard. She really truly loved him, but had been so hurt by his lack of support. She had made efforts to reconnect, but John refused them.

And he was basically like, let's just be friends. Yet even still, John Colt continued to hound this poor woman about her decision to pursue acting. In one letter, John wrote, quote, Forget the past entirely. Read the books I sent you. spend all your time in improvement. Exclude yourself for a while from the world. Abandon old friends.

You need in many great respects to improve your education. Jesus Christ. And so should you follow the advice I am so often given, you will be altogether happier than you now are and perhaps more so than you have been in all of your life. Sir, how about you work on your own life, you miserable piece of... Yeah, how's that book coming along? Jackass.

Or fur trading or event planning or anything else. I mean, he's so clearly talking to himself. Unfortunately, he has found a woman who, instead of holding up a mirror to him, is absorbing everything he's saying. I'm going to read you another letter he wrote. Oh, God. Think these things over, Francis. God knows if I thought you would be happy in leading such a life. Say no more about theaters.

it puts me in the perfect chill to be forced to write such letters as this. Oh, okay. You forced me to be a jackass. Wow, that is rich. Follow up on your music and all will be well. This is coming from a man who had basically spent most of his life wandering around, trying to figure out what he wanted to do. And then lying to get out of whatever he found himself in.

Yeah. He was being a huge asshole. Yeah. And you're right. Francis absorbed it all, and she started drinking heavily and doing drugs. Old-timey drugs, Kristen. Opium? Yep.

That's the only old-timey drug I know. Well, that's what she was taking. Okay, well, there we go. Meanwhile, Samuel Colt's dream was becoming a reality. In 1836, he opened Colt's patent firearms manufacturing company in Patterson, New Jersey. And his new gun, the Colt Patterson, was born. Kristen, the Colt Patterson was a huge improvement

over that old collier revolver. And I'm going to spend the next hour talking about the differences. Oh my God. Okay, I'm just kidding. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do a brief summary of why this gun was cool.

The Colt Patterson used percussion caps to shoot the bullets instead of a flintlock mechanism. So, you know, the flintlock is you have gunpowder and then you have a piece of flint and it hits metal and the sparks hit the gunpowder and then the gun fires.

percussion caps, it was like a little tiny metal cap. Mm-hmm. And then when the metal hit it, it did the spark, and then it set the gunpowder off and fired the bullet. It was way safer. Right. They were faster, safer, more reliable. The Colt Patterson's rotating cylinder locked into place at certain positions as you pulled the trigger, which ensured the bullet chamber and the barrel were never misaligned.

That's pretty neat. And finally, the manufacturing process was streamlined. The Colt Patterson was made completely out of inner. interchangeable parts on an assembly line. Samuel Colt was kind of the Henry Ford of his day. The Colt Patterson was a revolutionary gun, but people were very reluctant to buy it. It was new technology. Oh, scary.

It was also expensive. It was 50 bucks. It just for inflation, $1,000. Oh, yeah. And you compare that to a single-shot flint-lock pistol. You could get a decent, single-shot flint-lock pistol for about, $5 back then. Yeah, and there'd be no new training on how to use it.

Exactly. Okay, yeah. So Samuel Colt thought, okay, the key to making money on this thing is government contracts. I have to convince the government to buy my gun and let the army use it. That's smart. So in 1837, he demonstrated the gun to old Hickory himself, President Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson thought, this is pretty neat. But it's never going to replace the single shot.

flintlock pistol, but Samuel Colt didn't give up. He secured a spot for his new gun in army trials at West Point that summer. But unfortunately, users had a ton of problems with them. Officials deemed them complicated, liable to accident, and quote, entirely unsuited to the general purpose of the service. Ouch. Yeah. Samuel Colt got desperate. He went on the road. He gave demonstrations to the public. He bought fancy clothes and he whined and dined potential clients hoping to get contracts. And investors in his company were not happy about it, including John and Samuel's cousin, Dudley Selden, the lawyer. Dudley Selden wrote a strongly worded letter to Samuel, saying, quote, you use money as if it were drawn from an inexhaustible mine. Oh.

So Samuel Colt's new company is struggling, but Samuel did not give up. all in on making his business work. And that mentality really rubbed off on John. It inspired him. And he even helped Samuel by working part-time as a gun salesman. He would sell Colt Patterson's to dealers and speculators in Cincinnati. But in the back of his mind, he had that nagging feeling, gosh, I really need to finish my book. Yeah. By the end of 1837, John Colt dropped all of his other obligations, teaching, lecturing, tutoring, and he dedicated himself full time to finishing his book.

And the next year in 1838, it was finally finished, Kristen, the greatest accounting book of all time. And it was called the science of double entry bookkeeping. Okay. Honestly, this is the most surprising thing of this whole story

that he finished this book. Not the body found in the crate. We smelled that one coming a mile away. John Colt was. a man who had lived a thousand lives, you'd think he would have struggled to write a concise book on accounting, but to his credit, Kristen, this was a good-ass book. Yeah. John Colt broke down double-entry bookkeeping with, quote, such clearness and simplicity,

perfectly comprehensible even to a child. Like a good teacher, John also included real-life examples. He included practice worksheets and exercises. Publisher, N.G. Burgess and Company, released the first edition to glowing reviews. Educators wanted the book. Merchants wanted the book. Bankers wanted the book. They praised it. They called it the best we have ever examined. So John Colt was ecstatic. He had done it. He had found his thing. He had hit the big time. And he thought, I'm set up for life now. I'm going to have a yearly income. I'm taking care of. But you know, Kristen, he's not going to settle down and just live off

his book, you know, there was more to do. I mean, just like his brother Samuel. Samuel was working his butt off. He was running his own company. You know, John was like, why stop it just writing a book? So John took his money and he invested. He became a partner in his publisher's company. So NG Burgessing Company became cult Burgesson Company. The Science of Double Entry Bookkeeping was their number one seller. And now as a partner, John was on the lookout for their next big release. And he thought he found it, Kristen. It was a book called

An Inquiry into the Origin of the Antiquities of America. What? What does that even mean? It was a weird book by a man named John Delafield Jr. It was basically this weird bullshit origin story of Native Americans and how they relate to the Bible. Okay. And it was like, here's the location of Noah's Ark.

Uh-huh. There was a supplemental work in the book entitled, A View of the Causes of the Superiority of the Men of the Northern Hemisphere over those of the Southern Hemisphere. What was that about being concise and writing clearly? It was destined for Reese's Book Club. Let me just say that. Okay. Great book. So John Cole was like, wow, Antiquities of America.

This is going to sell like gangbusters. This has incredible new evidence of Native Americans came from the Bible and Noah's Ark. And so he went all in on this book. This was a very extravagant, expensive book. It had engraved plates inside, hand-colored engraved platings in the book. It had fold out documents. And you're not going to believe this, Kristen, the book flopped. Nobody wanted this book.

Well, I cannot even imagine how expensive it was to make. I can't even dream how much you would have to charge someone to make money off this thing. And I'm assuming they made a ton of them. I don't think they made a ton at first. Okay. But it was a very expensive book. And I think I recently saw an auction where you could buy a copy of the original printing from Colt Burgesson Company. I didn't say what it went for, but this was a very fancy book.

Okay. The book flopped. The company was basically surviving thanks to John's accounting book. Right. But, you know, just like his brother Samuel, John Colt wasn't going to give up. So in the winter of 1838, he decided, I'm going to leave Cincinnati and I'm going to go to New York City because that's where the money is. John wanted to set up an office in the city where he could work with printers and bookbinders and book merchants. His ex-girlfriend, Francis, heard about John leaving, and she decided to write to him one more time.

And in her letter, she asked if she could join him in New York. She still had hope that their relationship could be salvaged. John wrote back his answer, no. Several hours after receiving that answer, Francis showed up at her sister's doorstep, acting delirious. She was frantic. She was panicking. She said she couldn't see. Her vision was failing.

Family members tried to calm her down with medicine, but she refused to take anything. She eventually laid down. She was breathing heavy. She was sweating. She said she was dying. She demanded that someone write down her last words. And it was the following. You will never see me again.

For in a few short hours, I will be in heaven. Forgive me for I am dying now. She never said who the message was for, but it was definitely for John Colt. Yeah. By the next morning, Francis and Frank was dead. Later, her family learned that after Francis had received John's rejection, she had swallowed 150 grams of opium, which is a very, very fatal dose. Like, that is so much opium.

For the rest of his life, John Colt would always maintain that he and Francis were strictly friends. They were never lovers. Oh, shut. Their letters say otherwise, of course. In any case, John Colt left Cincinnati without Francis and moved to New York City. He was determined to get his publishing company out of a financial hole. He worked day and night, according to him, in the most frugal manner.

The company opened a few bookstores, too, which I guess was a pretty common thing to do at that time. Book publishers had their own stores. Sure. You could go in and just buy every book in their catalog. Okay. But the hours were long. The work was stressful, and old mischievous habits came back. John got into trouble. He drank almost every night. He stole money from a business partner. He was briefly arrested for breaking into a law office. John maintained he was drunk, and he just thought it was his own office. He traveled to several major cities for work. After being in Philadelphia for a time, he returned to New York City in 18. with a woman. It was a dressmaker named Caroline Henshaw.

She was noted for her beauty, described as beautifully fit and trim, a complexion of cream and roses. Oh. Her hair, the color of corn. I know. People used to say that all the time as like a compliment. It just sounds awful. Your hair looks like corn. I'm just imagining.

like a Marge Simpson corn on the cob sticking out of your head. Yeah, old-timey descriptions of women are just ridiculous. I don't know, a fine bust and a big old forehead. I like it. I do like that. But tell me I've got hair like corn and suddenly I'm not feeling so sexy. I'm not in the mood tonight. When you use a blow dryer, you get popcorn.

That's dumb. So, yeah, John Colt returned to New York City in 1841 with Caroline Henshaw, a young, beautiful woman, and colleagues were kind of surprised. They were like, who's this? Yeah. It was so sudden. It must have been a whirlwind romance because Caroline Henshaw was also pregnant. Oh. John Colt presented her publicly as his wife, and they roomed together in a boarding house, which was very controversial, by the way.

Well, not if everyone believed that they were married, but. True. By then, John Colts publishing company was done. He was working for himself now, self-publishing, his accounting book, and he would sell copies of it at big trade shows. And the struggle was real. John's brother, Samuel, was also struggling with his gun company. Samuel had a brief glimmer of hope when U.S. troops fighting the Seminole tribes in Florida purchased about 50 of his new revolvers. And the soldiers seemed to love them when they worked.

an army officer wrote to Samuel Colt I am very sorry to report that your arms have proved an entire failure when put to the test of actual service there was a lot of problems with that first gun burst barrels exploding cylinders accidental discharges

the idea is great but it's just it just didn't work that well he needed to workshop it some more but Samuel Colt pressed on he kept traveling he kept demonstrating the gun he was frequently in New York City now because his company decided to open a retail store to try and generate sales.

Business was slow, but hey, you know, at least Samuel got to see his brother John from time to time in New York City. John Colt no doubt kept Samuel up to date on his own business ventures. In the summer of 1841, John was getting ready to print the ninth edition of his accounting book. John had also rented an office on the corner of Broadway and Chamber Street, across from City Hall. Hall Park. He was working in the heart of the financial district. It was where all the printers and book binders and book dealers worked. John Colt was eager to get that ninth edition of his book printed up quickly for some upcoming trade shows in New York and Philadelphia. You know, there was money to be made. This is how his business survived. Yeah. Luckily, John Colt had just signed a

contract with a printing company, and it was run by a man named Samuel Adams. Oh. On the next episode of an old-timey podcast. Somebody owes somebody money. John Colt behaves very strangely, and Samuel Adams goes missing. Hmm. I hope you're not going to try to blame John for this. Because just by saying that, just by setting it up the way you did, it makes you kind of a worthless whore.

Am I a bad thing? And I say that to be nice. I say that because I'm a nice person and I'm just trying to help you out. And you're honest. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry for being so honest with you. Thank you, Kristen.

Uh-huh. Now, just improve in every way, and then maybe we can be together. Here's what I need you to do, Kristen. Uh-huh. Forget about all of your friends. Uh-huh. Spend all of your time studying and reading. Okay, very good.

And focus. But only the stuff you send me. Right. The books I buy you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. You have me sufficiently intrigued. Oh.

Excellent. I was a little worried about this. episode. I was like, am I explaining too much? But I did find their early lives very interesting. The cult family is interesting to me. I would love to know more about what their lives were really like to create this situation where, you know, there's this ambition. There's also clearly depression. Something else is going on there. Right. But definitely a need to prove yourself. Yes. not just in a small way but to the entire world.

I'm sure a lot of that came from their father, Christopher, who was the big-time merchant trade guy. But also Sarah's dad, their grandfather, was a very successful businessman as well in Hartford. Well, the dad didn't sound too successful. He was very successful until the financial panic of 1819, which we really just can't get into, folks. No one wants to know about it. We got into it way too much. I read two sentences. about it. That was too much?

Yeah, it was. It was. Oof, okay. Sometimes you've got to lay off the context. You know, Kristen, historians, even to this day, still debate about what caused the financial panic of 1819. I'm going to PanicCon next year. It's a convention where all we talk about is the panic of 1819. Well, I hope there's plenty of coffee. Well, Norm, well done.

Thank you. I'm excited for this series. Thank you. A quick plug for our Patreon again. If you like a bargain for just $5 a month, you get all of our bonus episodes. With video, by the way. With video. Of course, ad free.

You also get into our Discord to chitty chat the day away. It's a good time. History Hoes are posting adorable photos of their pets all day, every day in that Discord. It is true. Shout out to my favorite, a little white dog named Buddy. I wondered if you were going to play favorites. everyone, just so we're clear, we do not own a little white dog. But if you have a little white dog and you post a picture of that little white dog in the discord,

Norm will become creepily, parisocially obsessed with it. I do have parisocial relationships with other people's dogs. It's weird. June, another fabulous dog. I met June in real life, though. Yeah, yeah. So it's not creepy. It's all very normal.

Right. June hasn't responded to any of it. my letters, though. Weird. Or your pictures that you keep sending. So I wrote to June, because June's giving me a silent treatment, so I wrote June, you are a bad dog.

Oh, no. And a hooer. And I demand that you bring back all of my love letters. So, balls in your court. Kind of like fetch, you know. Good boy.

Well, should we wrap this up, Kristen? Let's do it. You know what they say about history hoes. We always cite our sources. That's right. For this episode, I got my information from the books. Killer Colt. Murder, disgrace, and the making of an American legend by Harold Schechter.

The Devil's Right Hand. The tragic story of the Colt family curse by M. William Phelps. The story of Colt's Revolver, the biography of Samuel Colt by William B. Edwards. And here's a doozy, Kristen. Remarkable trials of all countries by Thomas Dunphy. That's too many things. It's an old-timey book. That's all for this episode.

Thank you for listening to an old-timey podcast. Please give us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. And while you're at it, subscribe. Support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash old-timey podcast. Join the Reddit community, R-slash-old-timey podcast. Follow us on Facebook and YouTube and Instagram at Old-Timey Podcast. You can also follow us individually on Instagram. She is the lovely Kristen Pitts-Carruso.

I go by Gaming Historian. and until next time, Tudaloo, Tata, and Cheerio. Bye. Bye!