Hugh Orr (2 January 1715 – 6 December 1798)[1] was a Scottish-born toolmaker, gunsmith and inventor in Massachusetts.
He introduced to America new methods of manufacturing cannons during the Revolutionary War, and later of processing cotton.
[2][4] In 1748 he made five hundred muskets for the province of Massachusetts Bay, believed to have been the first weapons of the kind produced in the country.
[2] During the American Revolutionary War, Orr and a French business partner built a foundry to cast iron and brass cannon and cannon-balls.
Their son Robert Orr was a colonel in the Anglo-American War and was armorer of the United States arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts.