Wow!! A lot of the text in that first link looks like words I wrote on this board about a decade ago --
Syracuse Arms Co. (m) -- Syracuse Arms Company was founded by Frank Hollenbeck after he left Baker Gun & Forging Company in Batavia, New York, and returned to Syracuse in 1893. Between 1893 and 95 Frank had nine patents assigned to Syracuse Arms. The early guns are very tricky to take down, but Frank's patent number 523,813 for a "Movable Cocking Shoulder for Breakdown Guns" would have made this easier. After a couple of years Frank left to make bicycle seats but the company continued to operate until possibly as late as 1908. The earlier guns are marked "The Hollenbeck" and after Frank left in August 1895 they are often marked "The Syracuse." Syracuse Arms Company guns were made in two series -- the stock guns, which had grades designated by numbers 00, 0, 1, 2, and 3; and the special order guns which had grades designated by letters, A, A-1, B, C, and D. List prices in the 1902 catalogue ranged from $30 for the 00-Grade with Triplet Steel barrels to $475 for the D-grade with either Whitworth Fluid or Damascus barrels. Operating in the Syracuse area the company had access to some of this country's finest engravers in the Glahn family. I briefly owned a straight-gripped B-grade that had some of the best engraving (not in quantity but in execution) I've ever seen on an American gun. Wish I'd kept it but its blued over Damascus barrels turned me off. The Syracuse Arms collector in Georgia who, last I knew, had it has had the barrels correctly rebrowned and the gun is a beauty.
The ejectors for Syracuse Arms Co. were designed by George A. Horne and featured a cut-off to set them to just extract if wanted. Horne later worked for the A.H. Fox gun Co. as did George A. Moser who was, I believe, the Syracuse Arms plant manager in the later years.
Two excellent articles on Frank Hollenbeck were published in The Gun Report -- "The Syracuse Arms Company and Frank Hollenbeck" by the late A.C. Atterbury in the July 1988 issue, and "New Notes of Frank A. Hollenbeck" by H.J. Swinney in the September 1991 issue. Tom Archer has begun a series of article on Syracuse Arms Co. in The Double Gun Journal. Toms series begins in Volume Fourteen, Issue 1.
After the bicycle seats, Frank was briefly with Baltimore Arms Company, then in 1901 founded the Hollenbeck Gun Co. in Wheeling, West Virginia, to make his three-barrel gun as well as doubles.
