AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Antique Gun Collecting => Topic started by: Dietle on June 08, 2025, 09:41:28 PM
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I've been working on a chronologically organized study of a family where a widow took up her deceased husband's tools and worked as a gunsmith to support their two young children, and then eventually remarried. The husband was born in 1863, was doing his apprenticeship in 1880 in the shop of his muzzleloading gunmaker father, and died prematurely in 1908. His widow was listed as a gunsmith in the 1910 census records of Bedford County, Pennsylvania. Here’s a link: https://korns.org/gunsmiths/William-B-Stapleton-662025/William-B-Stapleton-662025.html (https://korns.org/gunsmiths/William-B-Stapleton-662025/William-B-Stapleton-662025.html)
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Was that the widow Catherine smith, who wasn't paid for all of her work and had her land and mill taken from her. She walked many miles supposedly barefoot to Philadelphia 13 times to plead her case.
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As usual, your posting is well researched and quite interesting. Being a collector and interested in the guns of James Stapleton, I picked up on your summary of William B and wife. Strangely, although not definitive, I can find no gun business located in Saxton on either of the 1905 or 1911 SANBORN Fire Insurance maps (even though it shows barbers, printing offices, hotels, department stores, etc). I wish I could find a business directory to see if Stapleton really had a business location there. Also, I've learned from many census observations to take the enumerator's entries with a grain of salt. Specifically William was listed as a machinist after the days of individual gun building were past and, with his wife Vester tied down with two little kids to raise, I find it difficult to believe that she was really a "gunsmith who was working at home" as declared in the 1910 census. Please note that I'm often wrong and that I am too suspicious of old records, but I'd sure hope that there was some other corroboration that she really was a "gunsmith".
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OLUT, I think I have a potential answer to your question about how Vester could work, considering the young children. The widow of a brother of Vester's gunsmith father-in-law lived just few doors away in 1910, and might have watched the children while Vester worked.
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OLUT: Another potential candidate for watching Vester Stapleton's children is a grandparent. For example, despite being enumerated in his mother's household in the 1910 census, five-year-old Ward Stapleton is also enumerated as living in the household of his grandfather Oliver Curfman in an April 16, 1910 census record from Todd Township, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.
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This was quite common in the UKI have restored and owned several guns mostly sporting guns by lady gun makers
Feltwad