Lehigh County | Revolutionary Rifles

[spgordon]

Perhaps some list members will find this clipping from the Reading Eagle (February 16, 1902) interesting:

[Robby]

That is pretty cool!!! Wish they had pictures.
Robby

[spgordon]

It's interesting that two of the three rifles described in the article were imported. I wonder--if such rifles survive--whether that history has been obscured by the rifles' revolutionary heritage (i.e., whether that has led people to mistake them for colonial-made arms). Or perhaps, in these cases, it is easy to distinguish an import from a colonial-made rifle.

[Tanselman]

These guns were huge, well over 40 lbs. each. They sound more like wall guns than something that would/could be carried in the field...just carrying the balls and powder to support such a gun would probably do me in! Shelby Gallien

[Arcturus]

Very interesting article.  Wonder where these guns are now, 115 years after being written about as being passed down in families for 174 and 147 years!  From my reading of the article, only the third gun mentioned, the last one, was a large wall gun.

[DaveM]

Amazing - thanks for posting.  You had my hopes up when you said "Reading" but still very interesting.  Wonder how many families still care enough to hand down guns or other family relics in this way.  with all of the books on longrifles out there, I have rarely seen any info on the family they were acquired from.  That is really a shame, to me it really tells a story..