LG:

I'm gonna step out on the limb and start sawing behind and say unequivocally in answer to the specific question addressed to me that it was indeed the old "professional" class or "status elite" (read social status, not wealth, dammee!!) who bought the S/Ws and Trojans and probably also a few twosiethreesiefours. The post-Civil War mercantile and manufacturing elite which wallowed in wealth from steel, oil, transportation and colossal retailing bought the hundred dollar or thousand dollar gun depending upon just how much they enjoyed the wallow. "Filthy rich at last, thank God!" as Gene Sheperd used to say.

jack