AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Antique Gun Collecting => Topic started by: hurricane on July 19, 2012, 04:52:25 PM
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A fine iron mounted rifle of Tennessee origins by John Wishon
Here is the URL:
http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=22665.0
The Museum Committee
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At least a couple of these folks migrated to Arkansas, and made a few guns there. My grandfather had one he got in Newton County Arkansas, that burned up in a house in Bakersfield Missouri. The parts left over from the fire look a lot like these.
Hungry Horse
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A really nice rifle with good extra decorative touches on the hardware. I suspect this could actually have been made over in Henderson County NC. This rifle's hardware and architecture look a lot like the J Whitson (Henderson County NC) shown in Jerry Noble V 1 and the Bill Ivey book - any chance that signature is actually "Whitson"? The guard is almost identical except for the shape of the finials.
Guy
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This rifle came out of Fayetteville Arkansas. The lady (in her 80's) that owned it said that it had been in her family as far back as she could remember. Here is what I have been able to find out about John Wishon: He was born in 1802 in Surry North Carolina. He is listed as a gunsmith in Henderson County North Carolina in the 1850 census. In 1860, he was in Livingston Kentucky listed as a blacksmith. This is the last census that we could find him listed. According to other researchers on Ancestry.com, he died in Pea Ridge Arkansas about 1862. Pea Ridge is about 10-miles from where I live and about 20-miles from where the rifle was bought in Fayetteville. Some of those researchers seem to think that he (John Wishon) was killed at the battle of Pea Ridge, but I can't find any evidence to that effect. I read a story that one of his son's wrote years later that tells of them moving from Henderson County North Carolina and settling for a while in Tennessee and then in Kentucky before finally moving to Pea Ridge Arkansas. I don't know if the rifle was made in North Carolina, somewhere along the way where they may have been living for a while, or here in Arkansas. Since Hungry Horse's Grandfather had found a rifle in Newton County Arkansas, just south of here, it sounds like he may have built some rifles after they arrived in Arkansas. If he did, he continued to build what could be considered a Henderson County rifle.
As far as this rifle maybe having been made by J Whitson, I have my doubts. There is a researcher in western North Carolina that is currently gathering information on western NC gunsmiths for an upcoming book. He currently has this rifle for photos. He feels without a doubt that it is John Wishon, not J Whitson.
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According to a book written about the "Cabin people" living in log cabins in the Arkansas Ozark Mountains, there were Wishon's living there in the late 1940's.
Hungry Horse