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you need JavaScript enabled to view it Home  News  Local News  Historian donates 
gun collection to museum 
  
Historian donates gun collection to museum 
Written by Walt Cook, The Union Democrat December 29, 2008 02:23 pm 

      Carlo De Ferrari stands among the gun collection he donated to the 
      Tuolumne County Museum. Maggie Beck/Union Democrat, copyright 2008The 
      Winchester rifle believed to have killed California’s last grizzly bear in 
      1890 and the Colt pistol that once hugged the hip of Tuolumne County’s 
      first sheriff are among relics included in a $150,000 gun collection 
      recently bequeathed to Tuolumne County by longtime local historian Carlo 
      De Ferrari. 
      The collection — including roughly 80 rifles, shotguns and pistols, all at 
      least 100 years old — is made up not only of guns that are historically 
      significant due to their age, but many of them are believed to have been 
      used by local figures from the 19th century. 
      The guns — most of which De Ferrari has fired to ensure they work — have 
      been featured at the Tuolumne County Museum for some time, while the 
      County Archives has been storing his hundreds of historical of books and 
      periodicals, which De Ferrari also recently gave to the county.
         
      Be that as it may, De Ferrari remained the sole owner of the relics during 
      their display. 
      But now, with the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors formally accepting 
      De Ferrari’s gifts in late December, his responsibilities to the 
      collections are over. And he’s relieved. 
      De Ferrari, 85, who has been amassing his collections since he was 11 
      years old, has often wondered what he would do with the items, especially 
      as he’s gotten older. 
      “It’s been a worry all my life what would happen with these things,” he 
      said. 
      It took recognition of his own mortality for De Ferrari to finally find a 
      permanent home for his life’s work. 
      “I’m going on 86 years old and I haven’t been well,” he said. “And my wife 
      (Harriet) has passed and we don’t have any children.” 
      De Ferrari’s wife died last February. The collections he gave to the 
      county recognize her contribution to them. They are formally called the De 
      Ferrari-Hartvig (his wife’s maiden name) Family Gun Collection and the De 
      Ferrari-Hartvig Tuolumne County and California Historical Library. 
        
      De Ferrari said he has been interested in history since his childhood, and 
      recalled hounding his mother with questions about the past ways of the 
      world’s political affairs. 
      Guns were a part of that interest, ever since his father gave him his 
      first pistol when he was a boy growing up in the Groveland area. 
      That love of guns never left him. De Ferrari thinks it’s unfortunate that 
      guns have such a bad reputation. People tend to forget they have long been 
      used as tools, he said. 
      “The problem with guns is we always associate them with crime,” he said. 
      “The pioneers had guns, but that doesn’t mean they were always shooting 
      each other. They provided protection and provided food for you and your 
      family.”    
      While his gifts to the county were spurred by his advancing years, De 
      Ferrari isn’t about to abandon his life’s pursuit. 
      He plans to regularly add to the book and gun collections – as well as the 
      250,000 index cards that detail the individual items within them. 
      De Ferrari’s work has meant too much to him to give it up easily.    
      “I don’t know how people could not like history – of course, most people 
      are bored to death with it,” he said. “Me, I loved history and I still 
      love it.”     

  
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