Prime for the taking, Winchester moved in and purchased the rest of the company, moved the production plant to New Haven, Connecticut, and changed its operating name to the 'New Haven Arms Company' by the end of April 1857. By the end of 1856, the company had fallen on hard times and the Volcanic line proved a commercial failure, seeing only limited production. They incorporated to become the 'Volcanic Repeating Arms Company' with several investors in the stable - chief among those was clothing businessman Oliver Winchester. With the foundation now in place, the burgeoning group needed the capital to further their Volcanic firearms endeavor. In turn, Smith & Wesson then purchased the Jennings patent from Robbins & Lawrence and - perhaps most importantly - poached their shop foreman, inventor Benjamin Tyler Henry (1821-1898) of whom the rifle was eventually named after. Jennings had purchased the Hunt patents in 1849, added some workability into the system and produced small quantities of his rifle through Robbins & Lawrence of Vermont.

Horace Smith took the basic principles inherent in the complex Lewis Jennings Rifle (itself based on the failed Walter Hunt 1848 Volition Repeating Rifle of lever-action and its 'Rocket Ball' caseless ammunition) and produced an improved form through the 'Volcanic' rifle and pistol lines. To trace back the start of the Henry Rifle, one has to visit a part of the lives of the aforementioned gentlemen beginning with Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson. The rifle fired an all-new cartridge from a then-hefty ammunition count contained under the barrel and had certain famous gunsmith names associated with her origins including that of Horace Smith, Daniel Wesson and Oliver Winchester. The Henry Rifle saw limited service in the American Civil War as well as the Indian Wars and was produced in an equally limited number of examples. While not the 'perfect' lever-action repeating rifle, the Henry Rifle was the revolutionary culmination of two previous major lever-action repeater attempts and forged the way for the successful line of Winchester arms to follow.

Henry repeater