This Day in History: Engraver Herman Ulrich Starts at Winchester

By Logan Metesh

Connecticut – -(AmmoLand.com)- On July 29, 1870, a 23-year-old engraver by the name of Herman Leslie Ulrich took a job at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. When he took the job, he became the second Ulrich to work for the company. His younger brother John had started there in November 1868. A third brother, Conrad, joined them in March 1871.

All told, the Ulrich family had five members who worked at Winchester. Their dynastic presence in Winchester’s engraving department lasted a staggering 81 years until Alden George Ulrich, son of Conrad, died in 1949.

Herman began his career as an engraver at Colt’s in 1860, where he apprenticed under the legendary Gustave Young of both Colt’s and Smith & Wesson fame. While his work is generally lesser-known than that of his brothers Conrad and John, he is regarded as the best of the three men by Herbert G. Houze, the Curator Emeritus of the Winchester Arms Collection and the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Given Houze’s intimate knowledge of Winchester firearms, that’s high praise.