Andreas Albrecht

[spgordon]

Back in late 2013, I finished a long article on Jacob Dickert that a number of members of this list had generously helped with (http://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entry.php?rec=180). I'm about to start working on a similar one on Andreas Albrecht. It's for the same institution and I have about six months to complete the article.

If any list members have documents related to Albrecht, I would be grateful if you would contact me. I'm especially interested in any traces of him in documents that are still in private hands and that haven't been discussed in print (or at least not in familiar places: I am familiar with Albrecht's memoir or lebenslauf, with what has been published on him in the KRA Bulletin, in the Moravian Gun Making of the American Revolution book, etc.).

The Albrecht biography (like the Dickert one) can include up to 20 images--so I can include images of documents as well as of guns. If you have suggestions about what to include, please let me know.

Scott Gordon

[JTR]

Sorry I don't have anything to offer, but I'll certainly be looking forward to your article!
John

[mr. no gold]

Scott, I trust that you have addressed this matter to the KRA members, as there are several who have some knowledge of Albrecht.
Dick

[spgordon]

I have contacted a few KRA members, who I know and who have done research on or own objects related to Albrecht's work. They're probably some of the folks, at least, that you're thinking of. But, although I am a member, I don't know of a way to contact KRA members as a group: there is no list-serv or email list that I know of. Just mass mailings of the Bulletin and information about the annual meeting.

Scott

[jdm]

Scott,
 There is an ad section on the back of each K.R.A. bulletin. You could place one there to reach all the membership.   JIM

[DaveM]

Hi Scott, that is a neat project.  It would be very interesting to know who his network of gunsmiths (employers, coworkers) were while he was in Germany.  For example, was he working with other gunsmiths making guns between 1748-1750 while living with the Brethren at Herrnhag?  Or was that a period in his life where he took a break and focused on other duties?

Maybe in Germany there are similar Moravian journals from the period that he lived with them?  Too bad I never took German!

[Stan]

Scott if you go to the Bethlehem ( Moravian) site you will find many original documents some of which list Albrecht. Stan 

[spgordon]

Thanks for these suggestions. I have pored through box after box after box of materials at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, looking for traces of Albrecht while he was in Bethlehem, Christian's Spring, and Lititz, and have found some interesting things, but I am sure there is more to be found in places I haven't thought to look.

It hadn't occurred to me to consult Moravian records related to his time in Germany. One problem with any such search, though, is that Albrecht's time in Herrnhaag coincided with what later Moravian historians refer to as the "Sifting Time," a moment of extremely radical religious and social experimentation--so extreme that by the 1750s the Moravian church was so embarrassed by it that it began to systematically destroy materials related to the period. As a result, both the congregational and the single brothers’ diaries of Herrnhaag for the years 1748 and 1749 (when Albrecht was there) were destroyed. It may be that other materials from Herrnhaag during these years were not destroyed, and I'll check on this.

Scott

[mark esterly]

the mercer museum has the edward marshall rifle attributed to him and who knows what else in their archives http://starweb.mercermuseum.org/starweb/MercerCollections/servlet.starweb

[JDK]

I have nothing to contribute to this other than my interest in the subject.

My Mom is an Albrecht, my grandfather was from a line that settled in Iowa.  If I were to find out I'm decedent somehow it might explain all my "problems".....i.e. "My name is J.D. and I am a longrifle addict."

Seriously though, if anybody has done the research on Albrecht's line, I would be very interested and appreciative of anything you could share.  E-mail or PM would be fine.

Thank you and Enjoy, J.D.

[Mike R]

Good luck with your task--I liked your Dickert article very much and hope your Albrecht one will shed light on why Dickert's rifle carvings are so much like Albrechts--I read at least one opinion that Dickert and Albrecht were connected in some way other than both being Moravian, but have seen no documentation for a link [such as apprenticeship, etc]...any ideas?

[spgordon]

Unfortunately, there is no documentation--at least none that I have found or any I expect to find (I looked while writing the Dickert article)--that establishes any link between Dickert and Albrecht. Dickert did not apprentice with Albrecht: he apprenticed in Lancaster when Albrecht was in Bethlehem. In addition, Dickert was not a Moravian when he served his apprenticeship and so could not have been an apprentice to Albrecht, who would have trained only Moravian boys in trades. I suspect, too, that Dickert would have mentioned Albrecht in his memoir had he apprenticed to him--because Albrecht would have been known to the audience for whom the memoir was written (the Lancaster congregation)--much in the way that William Henry mentioned Matthias Roesser (because Roesser had been a member of the congregation to which the memoir was meant to be read).

So, regretfully, I may be able to point to the similarly of the carvings on Dickert's rifles and on Albrecht's (the one signed, the several attributed)--but I will probably just be able to speculate about it.

If anybody has further thoughts about this ... I would greatly appreciate hearing them!

Scott

[Karl Kunkel]

There was a thread several years ago (may have been on the old board) that tied Albrecht, Dickert and several other smiths together through tertiary references and speculation.  I had saved it but lost it in a computer meltdown.  I can't locate it via the search function, but I'm usually not very successful.

[spgordon]

All I could find under the old board is this from 2001 (which didn't have a thread but just this initial post):

     http://americanlongrifles.org/old_board/index.php?topic=2019.0

And this long thread from 2004:

     http://americanlongrifles.org/old_board/index.php?topic=2154.0

The current board has discussed the Albrecht-Dickert connection several times, including here in 2011:

     http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=18355.0

Here in 2010:

     http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=11026.0

Here in 2014:

     http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=32782.0

[spgordon]

I do just want to re-emphasize one thing, in case people took the time to read through the threads I gathered above, because there is some confused information there (written long ago, so I'm not criticizing, just saying that we know more now):

Dickert was not a Moravian until 1765. He was not a Moravian, that is, when he trained/apprenticed as a gunsmith. Moravians allowed only Moravian boys to apprentice to Moravian master craftsmen. Even in 1800, the church did not allow William Henry II to accept anybody but Moravian boys as apprentices and allowed him to hire non-Moravians ("strangers") to work in his shop with great reluctance (and only because he convinced them he was at risk of defaulting on a government contract).

I can't see that there is any possibility that Dickert apprenticed to Albrecht. We need another explanation for the similarity in some of their work.

Scott

[rich pierce]

Keep up the good work.  It seems doubtful that search can ever reveal such details as why one gunmaker's carving is quite similar to another.  We are left with speculation.  Albrecht would have been exposed to a variety of stocking architectures and carving styles during his journeyman training in Europe, so it does not surprise me that step-wristed and straight wristed, Lancaster style rifles are attributed to him.  He may have made what customers coming through the shop wanted.  How and why some Lancaster makers used cheek piece carving that seems to have been established in Bethlehem and Christians Spring is an unknown.  We can assume that there were rifles being made in Lancaster that were contemporary with, or pre-date the Moravian-attributed rifles from Bethlehem/ Christians Spring. It is at least theoretically possible that there were Lancaster influences on the Bethlehem/Christians Spring rifles.  It's just that none of the earliest (1750s and 1760s) Lancaster rifles are known.