Abstract:
Richard Gordon Gatling was born in a log cabin at Maney's Neck in Hertford County on September 12, 1818. By the middle of the 19th-century, he was world-famous for his agricultural inventions. After the outbreak of the Civil War, he began work on a weapon that would bring him lasting fame -- the Gatling Gun, patented on November 4, 1862. Gatling felt that by building a weapon that was so destructive of human life, it would prevent wars.