The man who owned the pistols is an account of John Barker Church, the adventurer who came to this country under an assumed name, married into the prominent New York Schuyler family and became on of the leading financial figures in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary periods of the young republic. John Barker Church owned the legendary Hamilton-Burr duelling pistols. He left as his legacy to Allegany County, in upstate New York, the promotion of the settlement of Angelica. His son Philip, became the first agent for his father, and later proprietor of the town, was the leading proponent of the development of the county, pushing for transportation, for agriculture and for improvement of living standards. The account of three generations of this family is part of the story of the development of a wilderness area into the present community. It has its villains as well as its achievers. The friends and enemies of the Churches ranged from Washington, Burr and Hamilton to the duPont family, and in later generations Gerit Smith, Thurlow Weed and others. The record of their lives helps to explain not only the times in which they lived, but in part the background of western New York today.