This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

And here to tell another great American story is our own Ashley Lubinsky,

a frequent contributor here at Our American Stories. He is the former co-host of Discovery Channel's

Master of Arms, the former curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum, and she's the co-founder

of the University of Wyoming College of Law's Firearms Research Center.

Here's Ashland.

A lot of people know the name Winchester.

They know the name Winchester as the quote-unquote gun that won the West.

They know the name from any

Western movie that's ever been made since Buffalo Bill filmed some of his work. So the Winchester

name is so prominent that sometimes you forget that there are other people behind the company

name. And one of the people who was attributed with

making Winchester really what it was was a guy named Thomas Bennett now that's a

name you probably don't recognize but he basically built the company into what it

was he went to Yale very smart he was a college wrestler. So Thomas Bennett

was a very kind of big, stocky individual, and he was an avid sportsman and loved fishing,

hunting, all of that stuff. So you know, perfect fit for Winchester, right? And this is an

really interesting part of his backstory is that he's actually a first lieutenant

in an African American regiment during the Civil War.

And so he ends up starting for Winchester in 1870, and he's an apprentice engineer.

So he starts kind of bottom of the totem pole.

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