S&W .32-20 Hand Ejector Model of 1905 (Fourth Change), owned by famous Texas judge Perry Riley Price (P.R. Price) (1878-1953).
A factory letter dated December 20, 2013 (shown here) says, "your handgun, with serial number 66928 was shipped from our factory on January 1, 1915, and delivered to Judge P.R. Price, no address listed. The records indicate that your revolver was shipped with a 4 inch barrel, blue finish, and checkered walnut gold medallion grips."
The gun has all matching numbers (66928), including a penciled number on the inside of the right grip panel. I would say the blue finish is in about 95% condition. There are no signs of refinishing--for example, the beveled edge of the ejector knob is in the white, as it should be. Since the gold-medallion grips are also in excellent condition, as is the bore, I believe this revolver was fired little.
Using Internet search engines, Ancestry-dot-com, and other resources, I found many references to one judge in the U.S. (and only one) who went by the name "P.R. Price," who was in 1915 a 36-year-old trial court judge in El Paso, Texas. His full name was Perry Riley Price, but in both court documents and news stories, it appears that he was always referred to as "Judge P.R. Price."
Judge Price went on to have a long judicial career. He was promoted to an appeals court, on which he became chief justice and served until his death in 1953, serving a total of 39 years as a judge. When he died, both the El Paso Herald-Post and the El Paso Times ran stories on the top of their front pages.
A search on Ancestry-dot-com for newspaper/periodical items mentioning Judge Price's name produced 4,130 hits.
El Paso was, I think, still a pretty wild town in the early 20th century. I came across oral history in which a one-time clerk described an incident in the El Paso courthouse in which a woman walked into the courtroom of one of Judge Price's colleagues and shot one eye out of her two-timing husband's head. I like to imagine that Judge Price kept this revolver in easy reach when he was on the bench, just in case. (You've heard of "bench shooting," right?)
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