Merwin Hulbert Baby Merwin

About the Merwin Hulbert Baby Merwin

The Merwin Hulbert Baby Merwin is a small American single-action revolver marketed by Merwin Hulbert & Co. of New York and manufactured by Hopkins & Allen of Norwich, Connecticut. Unlike the company's famous large-frame revolvers, the Baby Merwin shared none of their distinctive twist-open extraction features. Instead it was a seven-shot .22 Short rimfire pocket revolver with a spur trigger and a tip-up barrel, closely copying the Smith & Wesson Model 1, Third Issue. The design copy led to a successful patent-infringement action by Smith & Wesson, after which Merwin and Hulbert paid a royalty on revolvers already sold. Typically finished in bright nickel with pearl or wood grips and a roughly 3-inch barrel, the Baby Merwin was a compact, concealable parlor and pocket arm of the 1880s.

The Baby Merwin is the odd one out in the Merwin Hulbert family: a near-direct copy of the Smith & Wesson Model 1 tip-up rather than a showcase of the firm's signature twist-open frame. A Smith & Wesson lawsuit forced Merwin and Hulbert to pay royalties on the little .22, making surviving examples scarce today.

Merwin Hulbert Baby Merwin specifications

Barrels are marked 'MERWIN HULBERT & CO.' Now a scarce collector's item; it is an outlier in the Merwin Hulbert catalogue, lacking the rotating barrel and simultaneous-ejection system of the firm's larger revolvers.