The Salem School - Program and Future Book

[mbriggs]

Blake Stevenson (the manager of the 1831 Timothy Vogler gun shop) and I have agreed to partner on a book titled "The Longrifle Makers of the Salem School." We plan to publish this book during the spring of 2019.  We are hoping to photograph all important Salem School Longrifles. I am asking this forum to please forward contact information to us on anyone you know owns an original Salem School rifle.

Please look at the attached flyer below.  We are hosting a day of discovery, identification, and documentation at the Old Salem Visitor Center at 10 A.M. on Saturday, March 10th. We are inviting the public to bring in any old Longrifle, powder horn, hunting bag, bullet mold for us to identify and document. We have provided a list of known gun smiths from this school.  It is our hope that relatives of these men who might have paintings or images of them, or any important  documents including deeds, wills, or receipts will allow us to photograph them to put in the book.

Blake and I will give a program on how to identify a Salem School Longrifle at 10 A.M.  We plan to have many outstanding examples present for the public to view.  There is no cost to attend.
If you have any questions, please send me an email.

Michael Briggs

     

[Mike Brooks]

Put me on the "pre sale" list!

[spgordon]

Me, too!

[Eric Kettenburg]

Looks very exciting!  I will surely buy a copy.

Joseph Muller should be on the list.  He was apprenticed to or worked under Andreas Betz and took over the gunsmith shop when Betz left in 1767, and was the gunsmith until about 1774 (if I recall correctly ) when he also left.  Muller was referred to in the records as a 'gun smith' and was running the gunsmith shop in Bethabara and then apparently in Salem for a year or two, while at the same time Valentine Beck was referred to as the "gun stocker" and was working in his own gun stocking shop.

This is directly from Fries' translation of the records.  I believe Wallace has some information on Joseph Muller also.  I think he ended up in Tennessee and did not do well there, sadly.

Edit:  Following his departure in 1774, Muller initially was married and living near Bethania for some time, and seems to have "rejoined" the congregation for a time along with his wife.  Eventually moved West into the mountains, Ashe County NC, and may have ended up in either TN or KY but I am not certain of this.

[spgordon]

Eric--related to Joseph Muller--I remember trying, a couple of years ago, to try to sort this all out.

I know Fries prints one membership catalog that lists Betz (gunsmith), Muller (gunsmith), and Beck (gun stocker and tinsmith).

Fries has two Joseph Muller's in her index--one comes from PA when the Wachovia tract is settled, the other she marks as "gunsmith." But my memory is that none of the other entries indexed under "Joseph Muller (gunsmith)" mention any gunsmithing activities.

Is there other information in Fries that I'm not remembering that mentions him apprenticing under Betz or running the shop in Bethabara or Salem?

BTW, the fact in that Valentine Beck is listed as both gun stocker and tinsmith may indicate that, in Wachovia as here in Northampton County, the gun stocker just didn't have enough to do and so they assigned a second activity/trade to Beck.

Or maybe not.

[Eric Kettenburg]

Scott - I wrote this a number of years ago when I had all of Fries' work here on loan, and Johanna Miller Lewis had just published her book dealing with the work in NC.

http://www.erickettenburg.com/Site_2/Part_11.html

It might need some revisiting at this point, not really sure.  NC was not my primary focus as it was all somewhat tangential to the digging I was undertaking into Northampton Co., side opening boxes and Wallace's assertions.  Wallace in fact will surely have much more concrete information on Muller, I'm sure.  I only know what I was able to find in Fries' translations as well as what Lewis had published.

My impression is that Betz and Muller were doing the majority of the 'grunt work' when it came to gunsmithy type work - repairs etc. - and Beck was something of a "level above" as a gun stocker, but I don't think they had much work for him.  There is the reference to him as a tinsmith, also a reference to him in some kind of turf war with Loesch later on over the casting of pewter spoons, and of course he ended up as a pastor and devoting all his time to that endeavor.

[spgordon]

I love all these articles! I hadn't looked at the NC one in a while. But, even there, if you search your article for "Muller," you'll see that you identify him from the first reference (and after) as Betz's apprentice but there's no citation to Fries. I have all the Fries volumes here & have been looking through vols. 1 & 2 and, again, the only reference I can find that speaks of Muller as a gunsmith is that 1765 or 1766 catalog, which you mention in your article (when the Antes siblings visit--that is a very cool detail!).

Again, I'm not particularly concerned about Muller ... I was just wondering whether there are additional sources that I'm not aware of. Maybe the information about him being Betz's apprentice comes from Wallace.

BTW, as vast as Fries's translations are, they are just excerpts. Would be great to see whether there are a lot of gun trade material in the stuff she didn't translate.

[Eric Kettenburg]

I went back and looked.  The information on Muller comes from Johanna Miller Lewis - go here....

http://www.erickettenburg.com/Site_2/Part_10.html

....and scroll all the way down to nearly the end of the text for that page.  I probably should have referenced this information in the subsequent segment but when I posted all of it, I was assuming that it would be read chronologically; once I initiated a reference, I generally did not revisit it just for the sake of brevity alone!

I apologize for the formatting of the website.  I have not been able to do any updates to my site in many years, as I worked it all up on a long-dead computer with iWeb which is no longer supported and will not run on newer Macs.  The idea of trying to convert it all over to a more updated web development tool is just too much!  I'm surprised the layout remains readable after all this time, as the text formatting in particular has suffered.

Also, I apologize for not organizing my references in a way that is acceptable i.e MLA or whatever.  I'm a high school dropout so I do the best I can!

[Joey R]

A future sale as well.

[spgordon]

Eric—thanks. I should have been able to find it. And I need to get back to Lewis. Your articles are all amazing and incredibly researched. Don’t ever let this site lapse!

[mbriggs]

Eric and Scott, thanks for all of the comments.  I found Muller and a couple of other names but had to edit them off of the flyer to make it all fit on one page. Blake and I welcome all of the information you guys and Bob Lieneman can recommend.

We are blessed the Moravians were such great record keepers. It helps understand how things got started down here.  The big issue is that before Christoph Vogler takes over in 1787, we have no signed rifles by any of the earlier makers.

We do have a several great Salem rifles that have not been previously published we can introduce. I look forward to what new items we can learn over the next year as we go thru the process.

Please forward or recommend anything you think would be helpful.

Michael

[OldSouthRelics]

This is great to hear. I will be waiting for an opportunity to get a copy of the book. Thank you for all the work you do regarding North Carolina Longrifles Mr. Briggs, and I'm happy to hear Blake Stevenson will be your partner. Mr. Stevenson is an exceptionally kind and knowledgeable person. I hope some more information regarding Salem Longrifles can be brought to light by this event for the book.

Regards,

Bob

[blienemann]

Mike and Blake, your project sounds very interesting - good luck.

We hope you have time to explore the original documents at the Archives - Southern Province.   The many notes and translations at MESDA that John Bivins and Frank worked up over the years provide some starting points, along with Adelaide's work.  Richard Starbuck may have retired, but could be very helpful.

Ms. Fries copied the name Peter Christ as apprentice to Valentin Beck in 1772 from the Salem Diary, and his name has been repeated this way for years.  But the scribe made a mistake that day.  What is wonderful about the Archives is that there are three concurrent diaries plus other documents.  The Bethabara Diary shows "the married couple Beck and his apprentise (sic) Rudolph Crist (sic)" were moved to Salem.  A Catalog of Salem from the following year lists the Single Brother Rudolph Christ, who was about 21 yrs old and lived in the Single Brothers House there.  He shows up in other records, and few years later he was working with Brother Aust as a potter.  Rudolph Christ went on to be a very talented and creative tradesmen - wonder what artistic skills he learned from his time with Beck? 

Now interestingly Scott has just posted a mould of a panther in the RCA sister rifle thread by this same Rudolph Christ - onetime gunstocker apprentice and later master potter. 

We might have some fun putting Christ, Beck, Albrecht, Kliest, Paxinosa, smooth rifle 19, the RCA 19 sister rifle, the Shawanose and the Cherokee together somehow?   

Bob

[Eric Kettenburg]

Break out the blender.... 

Thanks for posting this information, Bob.  Hopefully, anyone in the future searching for such things will come across your references.  I know I certainly would have been clueless! 

[spgordon]

We might have some fun putting Christ, Beck, Albrecht, Kliest, Paxinosa, smooth rifle 19, the RCA 19 sister rifle, the Shawanose and the Cherokee together somehow?   

And Martin Meylin! Yes, Martin Meylin. Like Obi-Wan, his influence is strongest when he's invisible.

[mbriggs]

Hi Bob,
Thanks for your comments.  We have been searching for the missing Peter Christ for many years. (smile)  To make things even more confusing there is a local rifle signed PC.  Bivin's attributed it to Davidson School.  I finally documented him last year.  He lived in Rowan County but trained under Andreas Betz.  I think we can put that one to bed.  We will reveal him in the book.  MESDA now owns the P C rifle.

One name I have not seen mentioned is George Betz.  He was Andreas younger brother.  He moved to Rowan County when his older brother.  A Rowan deed list him as a gun smith.  When and where did he train?

Scott, please send your email address and phone number to mbriggs@callcoverage.com for follow up questions.

I would request that everyone on this forum please forward me contact information for any collectors or families that own Eagle or Distelfink patchbox rifles that look as if they may be from North Carolina.

I believe there are many examples that we have not seen. 

We collectors who live in North Carolina are blessed to see many more local rifles than people who do not live here. Of the nine Longrifle Schools in this state we agree on what to look for and how to separate rifles into the correct school most of the time.  The big exception to this is the Salem - Davidson Schools. We have long discussed if Salem and Davidson where two separate schools or one big school. There is no question that while there is a lot of similarities between the rifles from two schools, they mostly operated independently from each other.

   


To many collectors the rifles from these two schools look the same.  They do for the most part share the same stock architecture and fore-stock molding. They also both used Eagle patchbox finials on most of their rifles.  They are also a few rifles with Distelfink patchbox finials found on rifles in both schools. There are a few subtle differences in the two schools I have learned to look for.  The barrel tang, fore-stock molding termination, and flow of the wrist to the comb help to determine the school.  Another issue is the great number of unsigned rifles from these two schools.  John Bivins' believed the rifles look so similar because the top Davidson School gun smiths Henry Ledford and Andrew Long both likely trained under Christoph Vogler.  That fact has never been documented. The Salem Collegium did often complain about Christoph bringing in "outsiders" to work in his gun shop.

Bill Ivey, Kenneth Orr, Arron Capel, Joe Byerly, Blake Stevenson and myself often friendly disagree on if a unsigned rifle is from Salem or Davidson.  We have all had many fun discussions on this subject.  I have asked Blake to please include a chapter on how to tell the difference between double-set triggers built by Christoph Vogler [who set the standard for Salem] and triggers built by Davidson County blacksmith James L. Smith. [He built all of the triggers used by the Davidson School rifle makers, but not any of the Salem school makers.]  We will include a lot of photographs.

It is my hope that the two new books by Blake and I will help students and collectors appreciate these beautiful rifles and the men who made them in the future.

One last question for Eric. Did any of the Moravian gun smiths in Pennsylvania use the Distelfink patchbox finial?

Michael Briggs



       

[Eric Kettenburg]

Michael as far as I am concerned, the only rifles that can be *definitively* viewed as PA Moravian rifles are the signed pieces by Oerter.  Anything else is speculation.  The so-called "lion and lamb" rifle is probably either Oerter or Albrecht via comparison with William Marshall's 'griffin' Oerter rifle - this seems to be a very safe bet - and of course there is one signed Albrecht rifle which likely is a product of his later years in Lititz.  All the other stuff is much more speculative.

I have not seen any rifles I would even remotely view as products of the Bethlehem or CS shops utilizing a box that looks anything like those that you are displaying.  Of course you can find rifles with 'bird' based boxes which likely are representative of a distelfink, but I've not seen any I would view as being potentially Moravian.  Maybe others might have differing views. 

I have a hard time viewing these Salem or Davidson rifles as being any earlier than the 1790s at earliest, and potentially later, which unfortunately renders a very large void as to how the earlier rifles have appeared.  Bob and I were discussing this a while back and he brought up a valid point which hopefully he won't mind me sharing:  Christoph Vogler, trained by Loesch (iirc), had not progressed through the "proper" apprentice/journeyman period of training at the time Loesch left him on his own.  They only worked together for @ 3 years?  Did Vogler receive additional help from someone else, or somewhere else?  Was he an artistic genius who rapidly developed his own style which essentially founded the Salem school? 

There has to be a reason that the rifles attributable to Salem appear to have sprung from nothing prior.  As I've personally interpreted what information I've seen in Fries' work as well as Lewis' work, I feel that there was a whole lot more gun repair occurring than new gun construction amongst the early guys - Betz and Muller, George Schmidt maybe helping out also?  Beck did not seem to have a large quantity of 'new' gunstocking work and this was in fact specifically mentioned at least on one occasion.  Then he moves on to proselytizing and is made Pastor.  Loesch moved down there and promptly seems to have become a giant pain in the a**, not to mention also engaging in all kinds of other work which does not make a lot of sense if there were many new guns to be stocked or he was otherwise occupied.

Of course the elephant in the room is the entire brouhaha surrounding rifle #42, Wallace's opinions on the piece as well as the relic self-contained boxes he discussed (not to mention the restocked silver mounted Calhoun piece dated 1780-something with the same style box).  How do they all tie in?  If the side opening box lid on #42 is original as it now exists (that is still a big question mark, to my mind), then I can view it as one way, but if it is a very early repair/replacement and the original box was one of those self-contained doodads, well that's a different thing altogether.  So who knows where that whole mess fits in?  None of it looks anything like what it is assumed Vogler was doing, or anyone subsequent.

What would a Jacob Loesch rifle look like?

[spgordon]

As I've personally interpreted what information I've seen in Fries' work as well as Lewis' work, I feel that there was a whole lot more gun repair occurring than new gun construction amongst the early guys

This is definitely the case in Bethlehem as well, and perhaps even Christiansbrunn, until after 1762--so for at least twenty years and even during Albrecht's first ten years in Pennsylvania. Even if we consider all the work recorded in the Moravian ledgers as "stocking" a gun as new and not repair, it amounts to very, very little. Most of the work recorded is repair work, especially during the uptick of business during the French and Indian War. And we know of no inventory labeled in the documents as "new rifles" until, I think (going from memory), 1764. We do know that when the Moravians needed weapons to defend themselves, they purchased them from others.

I think we need to ask: why would Moravian gunsmiths in places like Bethlehem or Salem have been producing new rifles? Were they selling them to non-Moravians? Is there evidence of this--before the Christiansbrunn shop in the early 1760s? Or from Wachovia records, which I've not consulted (that is, are there lists of customers or inventories of "new rifles")?

As I tried to argue in the article I published with Bob, Moravians needed a gunsmith for repair work (especially crucial for their relations with Native peoples) and they needed to train a new generation so they would have gunsmiths for repair work (so most of these gunsmiths had apprentices), but they were not in the business of producing rifles for general sale until the Christiansbrunn shop begins to have a small inventory in the 1760s.

Eric mentioned the evidence that there wasn't enough work--even repair work, presumably--for Beck in Wachovia. We know that the same is true for Albrecht in Bethlehem and once he moved to Lititz. There was simply not enough work for a gunstocker. (If he was trying to build up an inventory of new rifles ... presumably his time would have been occupied easily?)

Of course, most of the men you're talking about in Salem come later than this ... but I think such fundamental questions need to be asked, and answered as best as possible (and evidence needs to be considered in a new light), rather than assuming that wherever a trained gunsmith or gunstocker was that he is producing new product.

Scott

[BOB HILL]

I look forward this publication very much.
Bob

[Eric Kettenburg]

Scott - I agree wholeheartedly, excepting this:  there is somewhat of a generational lag when comparing NC vs PA, as I see it.  By the early 1770s and leading up to the War, it is fairly obvious that Oerter was cranking out a decent number of new rifles.  During the 1777 through 1779 period in particular, Northampton Co. was on fire because of the Brits overrunning Philly and Bethlehem was hopping as well.  Oerter had at least one contract for arms, no less, and there are records of numerous arms being sent to Bethlehem for repair.  In other words, a very large quantity of gun work.  During this exact same period in Salem, Christ is sent over to the potter because Beck does not have enough work, Muller leaves, and by 1776 Beck moves to Friedberg to fill the role of Pastor.  They're actively hiding firearms in Salem so as not to draw soldiers or other attention to the town.  It seems to me that gun work in Salem did not really reach a comparable point relative to PA until the 1790s and once Vogler was running the show.  Prior to this point, it seems very disjointed, with seemingly well-trained workmen (Beck, Loesch, maybe Betz and Muller although we know nothing of their work) struggling to fill the time.

JMHO, as I interpret the information available to me.

[spgordon]

Eric -- Oh, I totally agree with everything you've written here. It is only the war that transforms the Christiansbrunn shop; beforehand, the quantity of "new" product each year is, I believe, quite modest. But the shop swells to try to meet Oerter's crazy contract (for me, the holy grail would be more information about that: what discussions preceded it to allow him to secure it, etc.). After the war, though, the shop shrinks back to pre-war size and in fact closes entirely by the end of the decade. And, just about the same time (end of the 1780s), Henry in Nazareth abandons his work in the gun trade for nearly a decade.

So: with Henry out of the business and the Christiansbrunn shop closed, are any Moravians in Northampton County making guns in, say, 1793?

[Marcruger]

Just for fun, a couple of modern "Distlefink" patchboxes. The top one by Ed Wenger, the lower one by Mark Silver. 

Michael, is this book going to be produced by Old Salem?  Also, will it be hardbound? 

Look forward to seeing you all there in Salem.  God Bless,   Marc







lightshot

[mbriggs]

Below is a photo of a boys rifle made by John Vogler for his son Elias Vogler.

[Eric Kettenburg]

That is one spectacular box!  Do you have an estimate of the date it was made?  That is truly beautiful.

Scott:  I'm sure you or Bob would be more inclined than I to know of any Moravians working in NH county by the early 1790s.  I think that ship had sailed but I could be wrong.  By the early 1790s, Moll, Rupps and Neihart just in the Allentown area alone are going full speed ahead (although Moll had been working contemporaneously with Albrecht, Oerter and right on through).  Then there were the Youngs and probably others in Easton.  The market was likely saturated.

I do find it a very interesting comparison to view the status of the Moravian gun stockers in NH Co. by the late 1780s/early 1790s and compare them to the rise - for lack of a better way to term it - of the Salem school in NC.

[mbriggs]

Eric,
I think the boys rifle John Vogler made for Elias would date between 1830 and 1840.  It is a great little rifle. A side hinged patchbox is a rare feature in North Carolina.

We attribute several boys rifles to this maker and plan to explore them in detail in the book.

As to what happened in the Salem School prior to Christoph Vogler we have a lot of records and no signed rifles.   Blake and I do not plan to get deep between your and Wallace's debate on RCA 42. We will stick with what we know, not what we wish.

We do have several new rifles from the 1780 to 1800 period that have not been published that we will introduce and explore.

Michael