Dance Pistols

Firearms collectors are willing to pay big bucks for vintage Colt revolvers but the most valuable of all the old guns that were used on the Texas frontier might be the Dance pistols, which were manufactured in Texas.

A number of factors make the Dance guns so attractive to collectors. There is a legend-and-lore aspect, as certain outlaws, Indian fighters and gunfighters stuck with their old Dance percussion pistols even after centerfire cartridge technology made them otherwise obsolete.

One of the most notorious Dance loyalists was Bloody Bill Longley, who has endured in history and folklore despite being nothing more than a murderous psychopath. He claimed to have killed 32 men, which proves him to be a braggart and a liar as well as a murderer. Longley killed one man while he was plowing a field and another, a preacher, while he was milking a cow.

The way Longley told it and Longley apologists repeated it for decades afterwards, Bloody Bill took on his victims, who were all richly deserving of murder by his estimation, in gunfights featuring his .44 caliber revolver manufactured by the Dance brothers of Texas.

There was perhaps one area where Longley’s word is apparently good, and that is in his praise of the Dance pistols’ craftsmanship. That, as well as their rarity, is what makes them something of a holy grail for today’s gun collectors.

The Dance brothers consisted of John Henry, George Perry and David Ethelred, who came to Texas with the rest of their family from Alabama in 1853. (Another brother, Isaac, died of measles in 1862.) They settled in Brazoria County and opened the J.H. Dance and Company Machine Shop, which was put to peaceful pursuits, near East Columbia. Their first manufacture was a gristmill that could be operated by steam, horse or water power, according to what was available. They also manufactured cotton gins.

The Dance brothers didn’t enter the gun making business until the Civil War broke out. James fought for the Confederacy with the Brazoria Volunteers while brothers George, David and Isaac were put to work at the factory in Columbia where they finished and mounted cannons and ground cornmeal. At some point in 1862, they began making pistols and in 1863 joined with two Park brothers, A.R. and Sam, to form Dance and Park. Key to the operation were Otto and Alex Erichson, sons of famous Houston gunsmith Gustav Erichson.

The first shipment of 12 guns was sent to San Antonio in 1862.

The presence of Union troops at Matagorda Island precipitated a move to Anderson in late 1863, where it was believed for a long time that no pistols were manufactured. Recent research, which is included in Gary Wiggins’ book, “Dance & Brothers, Texas Gunmakers of the Confederacy,” reveals that Dance did indeed manufacture pistols at Anderson in addition to casting cannonballs and converting flintlock muskets to cap-and-ball weapons.

In April of 1865, a shipment of 25 Dance pistols was sent to Houston. Somebody broke into the crate and stole five of the guns. That was the last shipment of Dance pistols on record. The factory quit making pistols in May of that year and the Dance brothers went home to East Columbia to get on with the rest of their lives, which included making furniture but not guns. The hurricane of 1900 destroyed the factory and it was never rebuilt.

The Dance pistols are valuable today, not because of the history associated with Longley and the others, but because the Dance brothers didn’t make very many of the guns; they were rare even in Bloody Bill’s day. Less than 400 of the guns were manufactured.

Of the 100 or so Dance pistols that survive today, about 85 of them are .44 caliber models. Only a few of the Dance’s .36 caliber guns survived.

As a note to collectors, if you have a Dance pistol, serial number 4, you might want to have it appraised. That was Bloody Bill Longley’s gun.


© Clay Coppedge
"Letters from Central Texas" September 21, 2009 Column

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