Phillip Gillespie Rifle

[gibster]

Just returned from the Princeton Ill. show and thought that some of you may be interested in the Phillip Gillespie rifle that I was lucky enough to pick up there.  By the way, if you weren't there, you missed a great show, as always.
Here are the pictures. I'll post a few dimensions at the bottom.


















Barrel length - 46 1/4-inches long. I initially thought that this was the original length of the barrel. But while taking pictures, I noticed where there barrel had be set back about an inch based on the plugged holes in the stock.
Caliber - .40
LOP - 13-inches
The trigger plate is for set triggers, but there is only the front trigger.  The lock will not hold on half cock but holds on full cock. The trigger pull is pretty light. I don't know if the triggers broke and the repair was to just have a single trigger. There is a neat repair to the nose of the stock. I thought that the brass plate under the drum may have been a repair, and it may have been.  But the Phillip Gillespie in the library has a similar brass plate under the drum also.  Based on the similar shape of the forward part of the side plate to the shape of this plate, I am leaning towards this being original to the rifle to protect against erosion from the caps.  The engraving on the plate also seems to match with the engraving on the side plate.
My wife checked on Ancestery.com for a C ORR and found that on the 1850 censes, there was a C ORR listed in Ashville that was 23-years old and a carpenter.  No idea if it was the same person or not. But he wasn't very far from where the Gillespie shop was located.
According to the guy I bought this from, the rifle was in a small private roadside museum based in a log cabin that was built in the 1890's in Wisconsin where they did nickel tours.  He said it has been there for the past 80 or 90-years.

[Shreckmeister]

That's cool.  Nice find.  I heard there was a heavily engraved Shreckengost halfstock at the show too.

[Dennis Glazener]

Barrel length - 46 1/4-inches long. I initially thought that this was the original length of the barrel. But while taking pictures, I noticed where there barrel had be set back about an inch based on the plugged holes in the stock.
Caliber - .40

Eric,
A couple of things that I have noticed. For some reason, not sure why, the Gillespie's seemed to like the odd XX 1/4" barrel length. My Mathew has an uncut barrel that is 45 1/4" long. Early Lannings unsigned Gillespie has the same uncut barrel length of 45 1/4". Now yours shows up with a 46 1/4" length or 47 1/4" before it was cut. Kind of interesting since most makers would use full inches i.e. 40, 42, 44 etc

Also the 40/41 caliber seems to be a favorite caliber for them. I have seen more 40/41 calibers than any other caliber.
Dennis

[Dr. Tim-Boone]

Good job Gibster!!

[bones92]

Very nice. I assume a lot of brass was added later as reinforcement to the stock, or as repair.

[WElliott]

Gibster, that certainly must have been his most ornate rifle. Very folky. Good for you!

[Mark Elliott]

Phillip just went wild with the wiggle-work engraving.   It seems like I have seen a lot of that on Gillespie's; and other southern guns for that matter.