1898 – 1971
- Gun Collector
- encyclopedic collection of more than 500 guns
- Quaker who has never fired a gun
- vegetarian
- largest collection of Kentucky long rifles in the world
- 1947 his son Joe III joined him in the business
- 1952
“Joe,” a wealthy York business man said,”when are you going to get a shave and a haircut and look like other folks?”
“On the day,” Mr. Kindig snapped back, “when you give $5000 to charity.”
The man took him up on it, and wrote $2,500 checks for two needy causes. Mr. Kindig, as good as his word, sat painfully through a shave and haircut. “It was awful,” he told a reporter. “With my hair and beard gone, I looked as ridiculous as you do right now.”
- May 1955, Life magazine published its first-ever foldout, highlighting Joe’s rifles
- 1960 wrote Thoughts on the Kentucky Rifle in Its Golden Age
- his book changed popular attitudes from thinking of the rifle as a weapon to appreciating it as an art form & the gunsmith a skilled artisan
- Few rifles are ever offered to the collecting public.
- Ninety-five percent of it remains intact
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