Charles,
I have been thinking about your post for a day now, and I tend to agree with what Laurence explained.

When considering any source of provenance in relation to serial numbers, it is important to uunderstand how the numbers were important to the manufacturer. After a weapon was assembled and found to function properly, it then receieved its serial numbers. These numbers were applied to assist in the disassembly and reassembly of the weapons.

After the numbers were applied, the weapons were racked, stacked or placed somewhere to await government inspection (that is, in the case of the weapons being part of a Federal contract--if not, then they simply were packed for shipping).

More important to establishing a possible Union Army provenance is the government inspector's cartouche. Without it, that means the weapon probably was not passed by the inspector, and therefore, could not be used to fill the terms of the contract.

The absence of an inspector's cartouche, does not mean that a weapon did not see service. The manufacturerr didn't just throw away guns that didn't pass inspection. Rather, they were sold into the secondary market and could easily have been purchased with private funds and ended up in the hands of a soldier.

So when did shippers and regiments or states start paying attention to serial numbers as a form of record keeping, you might ask. Well, in all honesty, in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. Gun sellers and auction companies realized that a weapon generally fell into a strict price range. To get it to jump out and up from that price range, provenance helped. Today, provenance often accounts for up to 50% of the value of a piece.

With so few weapons with a proven, reliabble provenance, sellers and collectors looked for ways to "discover" a weapon's history. Those sequential numbers looked pretty darn enticing (and people had already been mesmerized by the notion of "matching serial numbers"). The first weapons to go through the new-found logic of "weapons must have been issued sequentially" were the "Walker Dragoons". These were easy, though. A few hundred werre purchased by the government and provided to the U.S. Dragoons in 1847. These, however, were mmarked with company letters--much more definitive than serial numbers! Nevertheless, hardly an auction goes by in which a Wlalker (without any company letter) appears with the description, "serial number falls within the range as issued to U.S. Dragoons in 1847".

The next weapons to fall under that mysterious cloud of imposed provenance were Sharps rifles. Everyone knows that early serial numbers means that Berdan's sharpshooters must have carried that weapon! :) Again, auction companies and sellers were quick to seize upon the opportunity to assign new values to their weapons in spite of the fact that there is no known list of weapons with serial numbers that was created at the factory and provided to the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters.

The desire to believe amoung collectors is the motivation of the sellers to "add" stories to items. The profit opportunities is alluring. However, and as Laurence so clearly indicated, records of serial numbers and the subsequent issue to units is close to non-existant.

Compilining lists of weapons serial numbers with known and proven provenance is only one step toward determing a unit affiliation. But that can't be the only one. Extrapolating from that list that a weapon must have been issued to a particular unit because it number falls between the numbers of two "known" weapons is assuming that the group of weapons ALL passed inspection, ALL ended up oin the same packing crates, were stacked together, then pulled to ship together to the state arsenal or armory and then were dispersed together. Those are a lot of unknowns to consider.

Again, though, look at your weapon for the Government Inspector's cartouche. Without it, it probably was never purchased or delivered as part of a Colt contract. With it, you know, at the very minimum, that you have a weaponn that was approved for service in the Union Army.

Sorry for the long-winded explanation. I hope it makes some sense and doesn't discourage you. Rather, I hoppe it inspires you to do more research on your weapon and that you get hours of delight in tracking down its heritage.

With the kindest regards,
John Adams-Graf
Iola, Wisconsin