Posted August 17, 2017 3:14 pm by Comments

By G&A Staff

BrowningBrothers-1

John M. Browning and Matt S. Browning were sons of Jonathan Browning, inventor of slide-repeating and cylinder-repeating rifles. After his Mormon conversion, the Browning patriarch was chosen by Brigham Young to make guns and implements for the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Salt Lake City. Once Jonathan left, he became a community leader and never made guns again.

Jonathan followed the practice of polygamy, taking two more wives and fathering 22 children. John and Matthew Browning were sons of Jonathan’s second wife, Elizabeth Clark, who also gave birth to a girl who died in infancy. The 12 children of Jonathan’s first marriage were much older, so John became senior to his younger siblings. Even while very young, Matt devoted himself to John, and they enjoyed a close, enduring relationship.

John was 10 years old when he made his first gun out of old flintlock parts. He enlisted Matt to saw off the mangled muzzle of a barrel and make a stock before managing a method to attach the stock and barrel to a lock. Secretly, they decided to take it hunting, and John succeeded in using it to shoot three birds with one incredible shot.

John remained the inventor in the Browning …Read the Rest

Source:: Guns and Ammo

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