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

http://kindigrifles.com/