By GEORGE ROGERS
of the Gazette
Though I've often canoed the Plover River near the Portage-Marathon County line, I've never seen a sign of James Paris Lee's mill. But it's been 135 years since it burned, so it might take an archeologist to find the traces.
If you're a deer hunter, you owe something to the inventive talents of Lee, a Stevens Point watchmaker-turned gunsmith. His ideas have been used in sporting and military rifles around the world. "Probably no other inventor, with the exception of John Browning of Utah, has contributed more to the American gunmaking industry of the past and present than James Paris Lee," said Jerald T. Teesdale in the March 1949 issue of the Wisconsin Magazine of History.
Lee was partly responsible for the fact that England finished among the winners in two World Wars. It helped that his mill on the Plover burned during the American Civil War. It may have eliminated any thoughts he had of getting out of the weapons business. Had it not been for the fire, Lee might not have got around to inventing the Lee-Enfield rifle, the basic British infantry weapon in several wars.
Lee gets scant attention in Wisconsin histories. Example: "Wisconsin in Three Centuries," copyrighted in 1906, lists principal inventions by state residents but has only this to say about Lee's work: "Lee rifle, adopted for the British army, by a watchmaker of Stevens Point, whose name it bears." That's all. Not even a first name.
But some belated recognition came from the Milwaukee Public Museum, which featured three Milwaukee inventors, including Lee, in a 1997 exhibit. Lee qualified as a Milwaukeean because he operated Lee's Fire Arms Co. there in the 1860s, after leaving Stevens Point. No mention of Stevens Point was made in the exhibit.
Lee was Scottish-born and Canadian-raised. His fertile mind meandered in many directions, and one of his early inventions was an extract of hemlock bark used in tanning leather. It was to process the bark that he built his ill-fated mill on the Plover, some 16 miles above Stevens Point.
He came to the United States in 1859, settling first in Janesville and a year later in Stevens Point. The census of 1860 lists him as a Stevens Point watchmaker. Perhaps a heel injury he suffered in a youthful firearms accident was what kept him out of the army during the Civil War, but it didn't keep him from hunting in the woods around Stevens Point nor experimenting with weapon designs.
Stevens Point weekly newspapers were aware of his talents. Said the Wisconsin Pinery on March 23, 1860:
"Our readers will observe in another column the advertisement of Mr. J. Lee, who supplies the place left vacant by Mr. J.A. Wright and who will, for the present, be found at the Hardware Store. Mr. Lee, we understand, comes amongst us as a genius - enjoying the reputation of being the inventor of the celebrated one hundred year clock - it being the closest thing to perpetual motion of any machine ever invented; and also of a Rotary Engine, a machine which has long baffled the skill of our most ingenious inventors."
Time has obscured the details of Lee's rotary engine and the celebrated one hundred year clock, as well as his motives for moving to central Wisconsin. Maybe it was the availability of hemlock bark that brought him here. He wouldn't have found hemlocks around Janesville.
In later years, Lee wrote that his work here "took me into the hemlock forests in their original beauty."
The Pinery said on July 5, 1862, that Lee had "a fine establishment in successful operation, making the extract every day, having more orders for it than they are able to fill." The Pinery went on to say that Lee's product would revolutionize leathermaking. And, "there being no limit to the hemlock timber," the industry would equal if not exceed the lumber trade.
Hype was not unknown in the 19th century.
Evidently there were skeptics, for on Aug. 30, 1862, the Pinery felt it necessary to say, "Nobody believes in it yet, any more than they did in Fulton's first steamboat. The day is coming, though!"
Then disaster struck. The Wisconsin Lumberman, yet another Stevens Point weekly, reported on June 8, 1864, that a fire had destroyed Lee's mill and 600 cords of hemlock bark. But Lee had already been spending a lot of time on firearms, and perhaps this merely removed a distraction.
The Civil War was on, and at the outset troops were generally armed with slow-firing muzzleloaders, which is why mass charges sometimes succeeded. The military was looking for rapid-firing rifles.
"In practice, most of the inventors of breech-loading arms have met with objections," said the Pinery on Dec. 18, 1863. "It is known that our fellow citizen, James Lee, Esq., has been experimenting in this particular department for the last ten years, in which time he has patented three different plans for breech-loading rifles, all of great simplicity, and merit."
A year earlier, said the Pinery, he went to Washington and displayed one of his weapons to the secretary of war, who ordered it tested. After some delay the tests were conducted and the Pinery quoted a Major Dyer as saying, "I have fired this rifle about 550 times (without cleaning) and it appears to be in as serviceable condition as it was when the firing was commenced."
It was reported that Lee's weapon could fire more than 10 rounds a minute, and it worked even after being immersed in water and strong brine. Remington & Sons of Ilion, N.Y., testified as to its merits, said the Pinery.
Stevens Point was then a city of only 1,500 souls, without a railroad or telegraph line to connect it to the outside world. Probably late in 1864 Lee moved to Milwaukee and started Lee's Fire Arms Co. He couldn't mass produce rifles in isolated Stevens Point.
On April 18, 1865, he was awarded an Army contract for 1,000 carbines, .44-caliber, but on delivery the government refused to accept them, "ostensibly due to a misunderstanding about caliber," according to the Wisconsin Magazine of History.
Another reason may have been that another Lee, Robert E., surrendered at Appomattox just before the contract was signed.
Lee had other firearms in the works even before leaving Stevens Point. The Wisconsin Lumberman had reported on Jan. 27, 1864, that he had orders for another of his fast-firing breech-loaders "from parties who are preparing to cross the plains the coming spring."
The Lumberman advised, "We would say to all who intend crossing the plains to send in orders at once and provide themselves with this gun. A party of five, can discharge as many shots in twenty minutes, as twenty-five men could in the same time with common muzzle loading rifles."
After his Milwaukee venture, during which he made sporting rifles as well as military weapons. Lee went east. In 1874 he was in Springfield, Mass., to supervise experimental work being done at the National Armory on several of his designs.
He patented the Lee bolt action rifle in 1879. It was said to be capable of firing 30 rounds a minute.
Lee designed a 6 mm rifle used by the U.S. Navy, the first American military rifle loaded with a clip. But for the most part he had difficulty interesting the U.S. military in his designs. He had better luck in other countries, and the Lee-Enfield was his crowning achievement. (Enfield was the name of an armory in Britain.) The rifle, somewhat modified, was used by the British military from the 1890s to the early 1960s, when it was replaced by a semi-automatic.
In one of the early battles of World War I, British infantry encountered German troops at Mons. Barbara Tuchman wrote in "The Guns of August" that "Lungeing at (the bridge at Nimy) in their dense formation, the Germans offered 'the most perfect targets' to the British riflemen who, well dug in and expertly trained, delivered fire of such rapidity and accuracy that the Germans believed they faced machine guns." Actually, they faced Lee-Enfields.
Writing about the same battle in "The First World War," John Keegan said, "The British Lee-Enfieid, with its ten-round magazine, was a superior weapon to the German Mauser, and the British soldier a superior shot."
According to a Reader's Digest article in April 1981, the "ubiquitous World War I-vintage Lee-Enfield infantry rifle" was the favorite weapon of Afghan guerrillas fighting Soviet troops.
Lee died in South Beach, Conn., in 1904 at the age of 72.
Hemlocks still grow along the Plover where Lee had his mill, along with spruce and white cedar, giving the river a northwoods look. It hasn't yet been developed to death. Lee would recognize the river.