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Colt died while the Civil War raged – indeed, while the outcome was very much in doubt. On a cold February morning two years after he was buried, the city of Hartford awoke to the news that Colt’s factory was in flames. At 8:15 that morning, smoke was reported issuing from the attic wing. Flames spread so rapidly that by 9:00 a.m. Colt’s well-known blue and gold onion dome with its trademark rampant colt weathervane had collapsed into the fire. Although the workers battled valiantly to save the building, its machinery and stock, by evening everything was reduced to smoking rubble. The cause of the fire was never determined, but there was some evidence of Confederate sabotage.

Unfortunately Sam had never bothered to insure the ruined building. Elizabeth had done so in a partial manner and she spearheaded reconstruction with the pitiful one-third of replacement value they eventually wrung from the reluctant insurance companies. By 1867 the new armory, now with firewalls three feet thick, was “not only an unsurpassed workshop but, also a monument to the memory of the late Colonel Colt and was fully consistent with Elizabeth’s determination to live a life of ‘faithful affection’ and memory.”