doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Fred Adolph

There is a lot of published information out there with both fact and speculation. Some of it is even my own. Shortly before Fred Adolph died in 1957 he put together a written history of his life and outlined all the troubles he faced and the reasons he left gunmaking. He mailed this packet to a magazine that was thinking of doing an article on him, they never did. I was able to trace the packet and I received it a couple days ago. In with the information were pictures of several guns with Adolph’s notes below the gun.

I’ll post the stuff on Daryl’s gun first then we can talk about the Whelen gun which I hope has not been refinished in the last year or so.

Please remember that this was written a few years ago.

Fred Adolph
Published September 2002

I have resisted writing about Fred Adolph. It’s not that I don’t have enough information. In fact, that’s just the problem. I have too much information. My Adolph file is the thickest of any research file I have, plus I have copies of several of his catalogs. The problem is that there is so much conflicting information on Fred Adolph. After many years I am just now getting a picture of the man and his work. There has never, to my knowledge, been a custom gunmaker in America who was as self-promoting as Adolph. His catalogs are works of art, one numbering sixty-seven pages in length. It’s apparent as soon as you start reading an Adolph catalog and looking at the pictures that every gun in the catalog was for the most part made in Germany for Adolph. The exceptions are the restocking of sporting rifles such as the Krag, 1903 Springfields and Mauser rifles. He sold drillings, double rifles, shotguns, both side by side and over/unders, single barreled trap. Also single-shot pistols made by Webber of Switzerland. How much work was done on these guns in Germany and how much did Adolph do? This has always been the big question. I have seen Adolph guns that were made in Germany with engraving done by R.J. Kornbrath in the United States, and a 1903 Springfield with engraving done in German. I have found no evidence that Fred Adolph did any engraving. Most Adolph guns have a lot of carving in the wood and the workmanship is uniform and appears to have been done by the same hand whether on a 1903 Springfield or a shotgun. I am not sure if any totally completed guns came from Germany. Many would have been imported in the white with possibly an inletted stock blank for him to finish, have engraved, hardened and blued. I do believe if you ordered a custom sporting rifle on your action the work would have been done by Adolph.

Both Whelen and Crossman, writing about Adolph in the sporting press in the early years, attributed all the work to Adolph. This is a mystery to me because they knew better, the proof marks on both action and barrels tell the story. For the purpose of this article I will stay with the sporting rifles and leave the shotguns, drillings, pistols and others for someone else to sort out.

Fred Adolph was born in Glantz, Germany one January 29, 1875. After a basic education he apprenticed to a gunsmith in Silesia, a historic region that is now in southwestern Poland. After his apprenticeship he worked in several European gunmaker firms such as Webber in Zurich, Switzerland, Steyr in Austria and Haenel, Sauer and Schilling, all of Suhl, Prussia (Germany).

Adolph arrived in the US in 1908 with his English-speaking wife Minnie and became a naturalized citizen in 1919. It has been reported that Adolph worked for several different gunmakers in New York State. The only employment I was able to confirm was that he worked for a short time circa 1909-10 at Baker Gun & Forging Company Batavia, NY, makers of the “Baker & Batavia Guns”. He did work during 1910 when living in Rochester for Bausch & Lomb, the optical firm.

About the same time that Ludwig Wundhammer made the first 1903 Springfield Sporter for Stewart Edward White out in Los Angles, California, Adolph made one for Townsend Whelen. (This sporter is a part of the NRA museum collection.) Earlier he had made a Krag sporter for Whelen. With Whelen writing about the fine work of Adolph there was no shortage of customers in these early years. Looking over Adolph’s catalogs and advertising it’s clear that many well known sportsmen of the day bought his guns. Some of his customers were Teddy Roosevelt, Townsend Whelen, E. C. Crossman, Charles Askins Sr., Charles Newton, Henry Ford, George Eastman, and Roy Chapman Andrews (the real Indiana Jones). Adolph’s guns were expensive; a plain 1903 Springfield conversion could cost around thirty-five dollars without stock carving or engraving. Some of his doubles sold for over a thousand dollars which would be several years’ wages for a working man. From a used gun ad in Arms and The Man May, 1919 “$175 Adolph rifle, 30 U.S. 24-ribbed bbl. Krupp, very accurate, handsomely checkered, absolutely perfect inside and out, $95.”

Fred Adolph was one of the first in the US to advocate mounting a short telescopic sight with a large field of view on sporting rifles. He designed high velocity cartridges and collaborated with Charles Newton on cartridge development. He also introduced rustless steel barrels and was the sole representative in the United States for the Poldi Steel Works of Vienna, Austria selling Poldi “Anticorro” Steel. Griffin & Howe offered Poldi Anticorro barrels as an option and most will be found on the higher grade and engraved G&H’s.

In these early years Fred Adolph was in a position to become one of the leading custom gunmakers in America. He went so far as to have an architect design the “Fred Adolph Factory”. His talent in advertising was every bit equal to his gunmaking. There was not a sportsman in America who did not know of Adolph. He also wrote articles in The Sporting Goods Dealer, Arms & The Man, The Outers Book, Outdoor Life and Rod & Gun in Canada.

In 1914 with the outbreak of hostilities in Europe the British, who had a strong navy, clamped a naval blockade on Germany and effectively cut Fred Adolph’s supply line from Germany. I believe that he must have had a lot of money tied up in orders that would never be delivered. He tried to carry on but as the war progressed his money problems only got worse. Stockmaking alone was not enough to keep him financially solvent. It was not long before magazines like Outdoor Life wrote warnings about sending Adolph money. Ads in the classified sections showed up with people trying to locate Adolph or other people who had problems with him. When the war was over there was little improvement in his financial position and it’s possible that none of the magazines would run his advertisements. The Genoa, New York, Tribune where this was published reported on July 8, 1921 that Adolph had returned on the liner “Manchuria” from Hamburg, Germany. I suspect that he was in Germany trying to recover his war losses and establish new business connections. By 1926 the bank had repossessed his house and for all practical purposes he had disappeared. In 1935 Adolph is in Brooklyn, NY and writes a letter to Sedgley trying to sell him on the idea of an over/under rifle-shotgun. He says that he had been out of the gun business for some time. On April 1, 1936 he goes to work for Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan as a tool maker and retires from that job on June 30, 1952. I find him again living at the Hotel La Brea, Inglewood, California in 1957 at age eighty-two. He died in Los Angles, California August 15, 1957.
From his problems before WWI until he went to work for Ford in 1936 there are a lot of missing years. Trying to find a man who many considered to be one the best gunmakers in America during those years has been very frustrating. Keep in mind that I am still researching his past and more information may surface. I would like to tell you where I think he was for several of those years. I believe that he lived in the greater New York City area, got up every morning and took the subway to 234 East 39 Street, sat at his workbench and stocked rifles for Griffin & Howe. Please compare the pictured “Griffin & Howe” rifle to the Adolph Kurz-Mauser or Adolph-Springfield ad. I have seen several early G&H’s before they standardized their style and discontinued the stock carving that looked like the work of Fred Adolph. At first I just thought that they where copying his style, now I’m not sure. One rifle G&H No. 139 is marked with both G&H and Adolph’s name. It’s quite possible that this one was sent to him for stocking because it was an early 1923 gun. The others just have the G&H name, so the possibilities are intriguing.

Identifying an Adolph:
His first business address was at 10 Ariel Park in Rochester, New York. There are at least two known guns marked “Fred Adolph Rochester, New York”. Sometime between February 1911 and June 1911 he moved to Genoa, New York.

Once you have examined a few of the carved Adolph rifles they are not hard to identify. However the plain ones without stock carving and without provenance can be very difficult to attribute to Adolph. Notice how Adolph used his coat-of-arms as the initial shield on the Cook rifle. I wish he had done all his rifles this way; it would have made my job much easier. Few 1903 Springfield sporters made by Fred Adolph are signed. Some of the Mausers such as the pictured Kurtz sporter are marked on the barrel “Adolph Mauser Cal. 25”. Although marked 25 caliber the rifle is chambered for the 6.5x54mm Mauser - not to be confused with the longer 6.5x54mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer. I have seen other Mausers made by him that are stamped on the receiver with individual stamps “Fred Adolph Genoa N.Y.” When I saw the first one marked this way I was sure that the marking was bogus. Now having seen three all the same I am convinced that these markings are correct.


From sometime in the late 1920’s until his death I can find no evidence that Adolph, who was such a talented gunmaker, ever picked up another inletting chisel. He wrote and published poetry & music and painted, but turned his back on the thing that had cost him his reputation. I like the rifles that Fred Adolph made. The workmanship is first class; the fit and finish are beyond reproach. Today the carved stocks of Adolph’s may seem a little out of place compared to the modern custom rifle. With so many unanswered questions his work makes one wonder what could have been if he had continued gunsmithing. They are, however, a wonderful portal to the very beginning of the American custom sporting rifles as we know them today.

Mike, your gun photographs above are my gun. The photos and written [typed] text came from Adolph. The engraving sketch seems to come from a "sister" gun. All so very interesting in relation to the development of the custom shotgun, rifle, pistol, and related cartridges. Here is a copy of the flyer I found in a later distributed catalog, around 1924, using the same "big" catalog of 1914 or so with pasted in additions. Note the flyer apparently uses the same photograph that you furnished. Thanks for publishing the 2002 written history. Hopefully some of the "holes" in the Adolph story can be filled in.

Bob Beach, When your going thought all those dusty records you might see if there is anything on an employ by the name of Fred Adolph.

Whelen's O/U as you can see the buttstock has been replaced.

Whelen with this gun in Panama.

Michael, asyouremeber I told you about it long time ago.
S.Buturlin wrote in his 1926 short book "Shotgun and Shooting from it":
- In America fine guns, but extremely expensive ones are making mostly by Adolph and Wundhammer, also by Fox and some others.

Daryl, after looking a "Sister" over I think the drawing is for your gun.