AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Antique Gun Collecting => Topic started by: spgordon on February 21, 2019, 02:20:16 AM
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I am aiming to tread lightly and politely here.
We know from previous discussions that, on 18 April 1754, a Shawnee chief visited Shamokin from the Great Island [present-day Lock Haven] and asked Daniel Kliest, the Moravian smith there, "about Brother Albrecht who had stocked his rifle 2 years ago to his complete satisfaction."
Some believe that this Shawnee chief was Paxinosa. I was skeptical, for several reasons--one of which is that Paxinosa was living, during these years, not at the Great Island but at Wyoming [present-day Wilkes-Barre].
It turns out that it is impossible that Paxinosa was the Shawnee chief who visited Shamokin on 18 April 1754 and mentioned that Albrecht had stocked his gun. It is impossible because we now know where Paxinosa was on 18 April 1754: he was in Gnadenhütten [present-day Lehighton]. Recent translations of the Gnadenhütten diary reveal that Paxinosa arrived at Gnadenhütten from Wyoming on 12 April 1754 and remained there, except for an Easter visit to Bethlehem, until 19 April 1754, when he left to return to Wyoming.
So, as the lawyers might say, Paxinosa has an alibi. He can't be in two places at once. He cannot have been the Shawnee chief from the Great Island who recalled that Albrecht had stocked his gun two years before.
So, a new question: who was the Shawnee chief at Great Island in 1754 who had his gun stocked by Albrecht in 1752?
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Following
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I should add: Paxinosa did visit Bethlehem in summer 1752 as the first of a series of treaty-making sessions between the Shawnees and Nanticokes from Wyoming with the Moravians at Bethlehem. Delegations of Shawnees visited again in 1753 and again in 1754. You can see the Moravian scribe record the presence of Paxinosa, a Shawnee chief, in July 1752 here (last page):
http://bdhp.moravian.edu/personal_papers/journals/detailed44to53.pdf
So Paxinosa, like many of the other Shawnees who visited at this time, could certainly have had a rifle stocked by Albrecht.
But the Shamokin diary does not lend support to this belief. In fact, the Shamokin diary proves that an entirely different Shawnee chief had his rifle stocked by Albrecht in 1752.
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Hate it when facts get in the way of a good story........
Research trumps speculation every time.
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It's still a pretty good story any way you cut it! :) A great piece of documentation has been uncovered here for sure. What I love about the whole thing is that it definitely shows we are talking about RIFLES in the early 1750s, not as we usually do, (perhaps too) conservatively estimating that most everything is 1770s and later...
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Scott, that is very interesting - note that I have no interest in this story for anything but pure history. From my perspective however I see this actually strengthening ("almost" proving?) the argument that is was paxinosa that stopped at Shamokin. Because if it is documented that he stayed in Lehighton until April 19th, 1754, that would have had him passing through Shamokin (50 miles west of Lehighton) on the April 19, 1754 on his way to Wyoming, correct? and the account shows paxinosa in Shamokin on April 18, 1754. I would think whomever recorded the journals could easily have had his departure (or the date of his visit at Shamokin) off by one or even two days? What are the odds that any other indian chief would have stopped at Shamokin within one or two days of the date paxinosa physically could have stopped there?
Anyway, no way to prove what I note, just a different way to interpret the same data, but I also may be interpreting your notes incorrectly! thanks for your research - this is fascinating! I wonder if there is a map that showed indian trail routes in that area at the time? that may help establish paxinosa's route back to Wyoming?
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DaveM--thanks for the reply!
The diaries show that Paxinosa was in Gnadenhütten from April 12 to April 19 (except for a short trip to Bethlehem for Easter). The other Shawnee chief is IN Shamokin on April 18. The Moravian ministers recorded these diaries every day (William Henry arrives in Shamokin the next day!). These are long entries that note all the happenings--arrivals, departures, prayers, etc.--on a particular day and it is hard to see how they could have got the date wrong of the Shawnee chief's arrival. And both diarists would have to be off by many days (it took several days to get from Gnadenhütten to Shamokin--at least three maybe four days?)
[There are other reasons that we can know it wasn't Paxinosa--who spoke good English. The chief who shows up in Shamokin apparently couldn't. Also, the Moravians knew Paxinosa and used his name all the time in their records. The Shawnee chief who showed up in Shamokin is less familiar and Kliest doesn't record his name. And, most important, that Shawnee chief was from "Great Island," which Paxinosa wasn't. But these reasons are circumstantial. Knowing that Paxinosa was in Gnadenhütten is a different sort of evidence.)
Wyoming is due north of Gnadenhütten/Lehighton. Shamokin is 50 or 60 or more miles west (and tougher travel).
The Wyoming to Gnadenhütten path was a well-traveled one in the mid 1740s and 1750s. There are maps that show it, with the distances between stopping places and the homes where Moravian missionaries, at least, would stop. I'll try to find an image when I'm home from work and post.
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DaveM--here is the standard source on "Indian Paths in Pennsylvania" (Paul Wallace). I've highlighted the route from Gnadenhütten to Wyoming (north) and Gnadenhütten to Shamokin (west). As you can see, Shamokin is twice the distance in the wrong direction. One could look up how long it took to get from Gnadenhütten to Shamokin: it often took two days to get from Gnadenhütten to Wyoming, so quite a bit longer than that from Gnadenhütten to Shamokin.
One more thing! Shamokin was the largest, rowdiest Indian town in Pennsylvania--it wasn't a village of converted Indians like Gnadenhütten. All sorts of Indians lived there and all sorts of Indians passed through on a daily basis, some passing through and others to stay a while. Some came to get their guns repaired once the Moravians stationed a smith there in 1747. The Shamokin diary records arrivals of Indians nearly every day ... this Shawnee chief's arrival there doesn't stand out in any particular way.
From 1747-1755, the years that the Moravian smith worked there, the only time Paxinosa visited there was October 1755 as war was starting. As the diarist writes, "very many Indians from all along the Susquehanna gathered in Shamokin" for a conference. Their "friend Paxinosa" made the long trip from Wyoming. Fearing for their lives, the Moravian smiths abandoned their mission a few weeks later.
(https://i.ibb.co/K2CpYz2/Indian-path.jpg) (https://ibb.co/fkmzbGk)
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Thats a pretty cool map!!! never seen it before.
Robby
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Robby, the book in which this appears has chapters on each of these trails in much more detail--identifying all the stopping places along the way and even explaining how you can follow each path in a car. The book is Paul Wallace, Indian Paths of Pennsylvania.
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Excellent research and reasoning. Good job focusing on the evidence at hand and what it does and does not say rather than what we might want it to say. I take it you are an academic historian based on your work and familiarity with the sources?
EDIT:
I saw your link and your signature and followed it and see that you're a professor in the English department with some particularly interesting research interests.
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That's really an excellent book and very interesting in many ways. It's been the 'old standard' for many years.
Now if only we could pinpoint the 'Sign of the Goose' aka the Moravian Cabin...
BTW the Friedenshutten site, currently a corn field and largely ignored, is soon going to be underneath a new LNG trucking facility!
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So I gather from this RCA 19 could have been made for another indian chief/or not, just not Paxinosa?
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If I can play devils advocate, while the aforementioned information would seem to indicate that the rifle mentioned in the Shamokin diary was not for Paxinosa but rather a different Shawnee, on the other hand, it doesn't preclude Paxinosa having a rifle or other piece stocked by a Moravian as he nevertheless was very well known to them.
In regard to #19, it's probably going to be virtually impossible to *prove* for whom it was stocked lacking a documentable chain of evidence (ie. the type of documentation that 90% exists for William Marshall's rifle - the "griffin" Oerter rifle), but I will once again state what I've stated ad nauseum: Ernie Cowan's "short rifle" is a very key piece and if someone, using some technology, could definitively prove a signature, you would then almost certainly know the identity of the man who stocked up #19 at the least.
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If I can play devils advocate, while the aforementioned information would seem to indicate that the rifle mentioned in the Shamokin diary was not for Paxinosa but rather a different Shawnee, on the other hand, it doesn't preclude Paxinosa having a rifle or other piece stocked by a Moravian as he nevertheless was very well known to them.
Yes, I entirely agree.
RCA 19 or the “short rifle” could still have been made for Paxinosa. There’s just no evidence that points in that particular direction. Or in any other direction. It could have been for that Shawnee chief from Great Island.
I’d just say, though, that the thing that brought Paxinosa’s name to the table here was that Shamokin diary entry, which was misunderstood to refer to Paxinosa. So I’m not sure what else would link RCA 19 to Paxinosa any more? The panther engraving, if it really refers to the Shawnee, could link it to any Shawnee. Paxinosa himself had no particular association with the panther.
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Could have been made for anyone, Shawnee or white, if the link to Paxinosa is broken.
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It is still one of the finest old guns available to study even with the unanswered questions.
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Definitely a fantastic rifle and a historically important one. And is fantastic and important no matter who it was made for.
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Scott, thanks for the additional information. Part of my confusion was switching modern Wilkes-Barre and Lock Haven from your notes, thinking he was passing through Shamokin on the way home. Now I can better see what you are describing. You seem to have this sorted out - great work!
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Not relevant to this discussion--but cool, nonetheless--here's a Moravian travel map showing all the stopping places from Conrad Weiser's in Tulpehocken to Shamokin ("Shemoko").
(https://i.ibb.co/tzksSCc/Moravian-Travel-Map.png) (https://ibb.co/T1p8ZhR)
Original at Moravian Archives.
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BTW should probably make it clear for those looking at maps who are not familiar with PA history that the mission at Shamokin was actually at the site of what is now Sunbury/Shamokin Dam area, basically where the north branch and west branch of the Susquehanna come together as can be seen on the map posted.
Cool map!
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The map book is available from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission:
https://shoppaheritage.com/collections/frontpage/products/indian-paths-of-pennsylvania $19.95
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I hope this will be appropriate in this post, but I have included a link to a wonderful documentary on David Zeisberger that reveals much of the early Moravian history. Knowing that the Moravian interests in America were not for gun building but evangelizing the native Americans, I see gun stocking for natives as a necessary part of that endeavor, and certainly Paxinosa would have benefited from Albrecht's skills. I totally agree with Eric....Find the maker of "shorty" and the mystery of #19 will be solved. Finding a tangible link to Paxinosa is something altogether different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHFWu1X37ag
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Scott, I would like to thank you for sharing the map of the Tulpehocken Path. I was not aware of its existence until now. You can see the location of the Doppelte Adler on the map where the path crosses today’s Swatara Creek. Doppelte Adler is German for Double Eagle. The kind you see on fraktur. In the period you are discussing, there was a large tree along the creel where the Tulpehocken Path crossed it upon which was carved the Doppelte Adler. Today, someone recreated that carving on a tree near the same location. Some where I have a drawing of the original tree and a picture of the re-creation I visited the sight in 2015 because it is located on William Penn’s Spread Eagle Manor. The is the Manor upon which Johan Jost Schreckengast and his sons settled their families to farm and gunsmith sometime after 1764. Later, around 1804, the sons moved via the Shamokin Path to Kittanning and continued farming and gunsmithing there.
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Rob--very cool! I didn't know any of that. There's a "cleaner" copy of that map (which showed the routes of Moravian itinerant preachers)--here's the relevant portion, where you can see all the stops more clearly (including Doppelte Adler):
(https://i.ibb.co/S7q4dtG/mission-map-NCHS.jpg) (https://ibb.co/0VPRFCv)
Original at Moravian Archives.
If I remember correctly, the names of the stopping places are the ones given to those spots by Moravians after Zinzendorf traveled to Shamokin with Conrad Weiser in 1742 (Erdmuth, Benigna, Ludwig, etc.). I don't think that any of those names "stuck"?--so it is interesting that somebody more recently has identified the spot and recreated the tree carving!
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Steve Troutman wrote a nice book about the history of the Tulpehicken Path. It’s worth a read. Thanks Scott
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Scott - the last map you posted, is very interesting and very easy to read. Could you possibly either post or email to me the portion of that map that covers Berks County / reading area? Looks like Reading is caught at the edge of the image you posted as "Reddingstown". Hate to ask you to go to the trouble but I'd love to be able to save an image of the berks county portion of that map!
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Here's the whole map (original at Moravian Archives). I think if you click a couple of times, it'll open a quite large version (in the photo hosting site)--and then by right-clicking and choosing "View Image," you can get a high-resolution image that you can zoom in on.
(https://i.ibb.co/gSCNbHx/Moravian-Itinerant-preaching-map-copy.jpg) (https://ibb.co/1rx1Yhk)
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Scott, do you know when that map was drawn?
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The “clean” version typically is dated 1752 and associated with Matthew Hehl. Nobody has ever used the rougher version (the first I posted) but I guess it was the earlier version. That rougher one is definitely pre-1756, since Lititz isn’t on it. Looks like Lititz has been added to the clean version.
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Thanks for posting this map! With it showing Reading as a town, probably dates it to after 1751 or 1752. Interesting that the next place shown northeast of Reading is the Moravian School House in Oley ("Oleyer Shulhaus") - that was established in 1745. I believe this is the only early map I have ever seen that labels that school house.
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We used this map in the first Moravian Gun Making book to illustrate the regular travel from Bethlehem to North Carolina and these many points between, with their Wachovia Wagons. Obviously arms design, components and the men and boys who stocked them moved around, making attribution more interesting. The early names of some of these locations tie to early records. bob
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I find it interesting that the location of - or very nearly - what became Allentown is noted as Maguntsche / Macungie. Now there also was a larger area or region that later became upper and lower Macungie and that area is also noted as Maguntsche on the map, but there appears to be an actual town symbol noted as Maguntsche somewhat incorporated with Emmaus, which as best I can tell should essentially be Allentown / Allen's Town / Northampton. It's why I asked re: the date of the map, because I have documented accounts of Northampton town being commonly noted as Allen's Town or Allentown as early as the late 1740s, so it's particularly interesting to see these common names (Allen's Town or Northampton) completely absent on this map. Very interesting.
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Eric--Are these early references to Allen's Town on your website? (If so, I will look for them there!) I ask because I've also come across one or two of these in documents--letters being written from "Allen's Town" or (below) "Allenstown"--and was very puzzled, since there was no settlement called that at what is now Allentown until the 1760s. Here's one of them, interesting, in part, because it discusses a shipment of guns going awry.
(https://i.ibb.co/W0kPnQy/Allentown.jpg) (https://ibb.co/HCtx70z)
It turns out this letter, though it says "Allentown," was written from "Allen's Township" (which the writer had abbreviated). There was an Allen's Township in what is now Northampton County as early as 1748, if I remember correctly.
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I believe the terms "Allen's Township" and "Allen's Town Township" were used a bit interchangeably initially, while at the same time Northampton was also used to refer to the town itself (probably not prior to the mid 1760s). Of course William Allen commissioned or drew up the well-known map of 1762 and there was a road petition mentioning 'Northampton' town of the same year - there is ample mention of this in the old county history. HSP has a map somewhere (I can't find the specific file reference at the moment) that is dated 1760 and contains a notation of "Allen's town" and the 1758 Horse and Wagon Census also notes "Allen's town." I don't believe these were abbreviations for Allen's township although I may be wrong and perhaps they are. I don't remember off the top of my head how it may be noted in the little publication the WPA put out in the 1930s of the 1761 county-wide tax lists but the Easton library should still have a copy of that.
The PA gazette has a notation from July 17, 1755 that mentions Allen's Town township: "Whereas there was a note of hand given the 11th day of November, 1754, by Joseph Brown, Blacksmith, of Allens Town township, Northampton County...". This seems a pretty clear reference to a location at least regionally referenced as Allen's Town, even if it is within a marginally larger locality of a township? That's my interpretation of it, anyway. Otherwise, why the redundancy?
I'm not clear on how to interpret the letter you posted - it reads "Allenstown" with no visible break. I can see it referring to Allen/Allens township or it could refer to a town location within the broader township, perhaps? In light of the PA Gazette reference I wonder if the two terms were being used interchangeably?
When I was rapidly posting stuff to my site I know I came across references to the actual location of what would become the town being inhabited by a small cluster of houses ca. 1739/1740 and growing from there. Unfortunately I don't know exactly where I found those references and I only briefly noted it on my site. It certainly was not being called Allen's Town at that point in time. This is one of the things I find so interesting about this map, however, because it clearly displays a symbol which appears representative of a cluster or settlement (judging by the use of the same symbol all over the map) and it seems clearly marked "Maguntsche" immediately above Emaus, although I can't quite decipher the black ink marked word or abbreviation between the two. This is the first time I have seen any representation of Macungie as a village or town around the location for later Allentown - I always viewed the Macungie area being further west, where it is also marked "Maguntsche" vertically on the map.
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Actually now that I look at the map again in more detail, the black ink additions may have been added later? Possibly, the settlement noted as "Maguntsche" may be representative of Emmaus and someone later on is noting this on the map itself. This might make sense in light of some of the other black ink additions, i.e. "Lynn" added in a bit up the Lehigh etc.
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I am not sure about any of this stuff, either. But the local historians who I asked out of confusion when I was working with this 1755 letter pointed out that Allen's Township (now East Allen Township), which was erected in 1748 from part of the Allen Tract (then part of Bucks County), included the Irish Settlement--and a Captain Hays led a company of men from there at this time. So it is very, very likely that this letter, however the letter-writer abbreviated things, does not refer to a settlement where present-day Allentown is. He's talking about a shipment of arms that went to Easton instead of to the Irish Settlement.
Allen's Township is not near the current-day Allentown.
The area that the Moravians referred to as "Macungie" (various spellings) became Emmaus. So not at present-day Allentown. The black ink on the map (I think) indicates a later name for the place--in this case, somebody has added Emaus. They are two names for the same place, not one place north of another. Any settlement at the spot that later became Allentown or Northampton-town would have been marked closer to the bend of the Lehigh River, I would think?
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Ah, sorry, our posts overlapped!
I believe the German-word there is "jetzt" (with an "i" for the "j"), which means "now." So it's "Maguntsche now Emaus."
A key issue here (which doesn't resolve any particular reference) is that the Allen's Township from which the letter I posted came and that is "active" during the 1755 period is not where present-day Allentown is. So they aren't interchangeable names for the same place. It could be that two places were called roughly the same thing--but some of the references, at least, to Allenstown refer to an Allen's Township that included Craig's Settlement (near present-day Weaversville, maybe 7 or 8 miles northeast of Allentown).
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Well that is extremely interesting! That may clear up my confusion here, although I still find it odd that Emaus was referenced as Macungie and at the same time further west there is a broader region on the same map referenced as Macungie, which *appears* about right for what did become the Macungie townships.
I agree very much about the bend in the river comment although I have no idea just how accurate or to scale this map actually is.
How do you view the 1754/1755 explicit notation of "Allens Town township?" I can't see how that references anything else but what would become the town of Northampton/Allentown, although I'm always open to other interpretations!
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How do you view the 1754/1755 explicit notation of "Allens Town township?" I can't see how that references anything else but what would become the town of Northampton/Allentown, although I'm always open to other interpretations!
I don't know. That's a puzzling one. I just have never come across any references to any folks settled at the area that would become Allentown in 1754 and definitely no reference to any settlement being called that at that time. That's why when I came across this 1755 letter I was so confused by the "Allenstown" (which I now believe means Allen's Township). So, yeah, just puzzled.
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To offer one more map--and return the topic to question of the Shawnee Chief who arrived in Shamokin in April 1754 (and who had his rifle restocked by Albrecht two years earlier)--here is a detail from a spectacular and enormous 1756 map of the Susquehanna that Joseph Shippen had made. You can see Fort Augusta (where Shamokin had been a few years earlier) and the path along the west branch of the Susquehanna to "Great Island," where the Shawnee chief (unidentified at present) had traveled from.
The map is on four large pieces of paper--a student at Bucknell digitally stitched them together and added the labels.
The part of the river above Muncy Creek runs in a westerly direction (although it seems to run north here, due to the constraints of the paper).
For best viewing, click on it so it opens in the image hoster--and then click again for a large, high-resolution version.
(https://i.ibb.co/1Rn5Dqm/Shippen-map-stitched-and-labelled-copy.jpg) (https://ibb.co/nQ0vHcL)
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Interesting again Scott with this other map! I have been there - a number of years ago I was at Shikellamy Park which is on the north side of the fork between rivers. Shikellamy was the major indian chief there. Looking him up just now Shikellamy was chief of both Oneida and Shawnee at this location till he died in 1748. Here is a picture of him with his rifle (painting was around 1820 so likely just a fanciful rendition of the artist's concept of a gun):
(https://i.ibb.co/TtvNgvb/Oneida-Chieftain-Shikellamy-by-Anonymous.jpg) (https://ibb.co/JHBSsBy)
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So Scott, getting back to your original question about the Shawnee chief who had his gun stocked in 1752 and then stopped there in 1754 - could it have been John Shikellamy? I just read he was the son of Shikellamy (Sr.) who died in 1748, and that he is the person who succeeded Shikellamy (Senior) when he died in 1748. Reading further the Senior Shikellamy sounds like a key figure in dealing with both Conrad Weiser as well as the Moravians. Interesting also is that some claimed the senior Shikellamy was originally French, and captured by indians as a boy.
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DaveM, I have had a good amount of trouble finding out much about which Shawnees lived at Great Island in the mid 1750s. As at other Indian towns, both Shawnee and Delawares lived there.
Apparently when William Dunn showed up there in the late 1760s he found both a Delaware chief, Newhaleeka, and a Shawnees chief, "Shawnee Ben," there. But earlier in the 1760s the settlement at Great Island was deserted when Pennsylvania militiamen showed up there--convinced that some Indian raids had been organized and launched from Great Island. But I have not been able to find a source (based on some quick internet research) the identifies the Shawnees who lived there in the mid 1750s.
There's a book called "Shawnee Heritage" (searchable online) but the only "hit" in it for Pennsylvania's Great Island points to Shawnee Ben, but he seems to have been elsewhere before 1768. I haven't followed up on the references (see entry below for him) that would indicate where he was when.
I always thought Shikellamy, with whom the Moravians had very close relations (he was the one who urged them for several years to set up a smith at Shamokin), was Oneida (i.e., Iroquois): he was the Iroquois representative at Shamokin, placed there to oversee other Indian groups that the Iroquois thought of as their subordinates. So I don't know that Shikellamy's son would have been identified as a Shawnee chief, though honestly I just don't know. I don't know anything about Shikellamy's son--but was he stationed, like his father, at Shamokin or would he have "arrived" there from somewhere else, as the Shawnee chief did?
(https://i.ibb.co/1sV4jFC/Shawnee-Ben.png) (https://ibb.co/SQTZGFk)
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Scott, I read a bit more of what I could find about about the senior Shikellamy - it was noted that he lived prior to there in another Shawnee village till 1742 near modern day Milton Pa. Then it said he moved to Shamokin in 1742. He was noted as the chief of the six nations which included the Shawnee. Apparently the first any of the European settlers had any record of the senior Shikellamy was when he just kind of showed up in Philadelphia in 1728. John Shikellamy, Senior Shikellamy's son, was also known as John Logan, or just "Logan". I read that John Logan moved from Pennsylvania in 1760 or so, perhaps that is why in the early 1760's there was a void in indian leadership there?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_(Iroquois_leader)
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Given how familiar the Moravians were with Shikellamy, I would think that if his son arrived in Shamokin in 1754 Kliest would have identified him by name. The Iroquois league was a confederation of five (and later six) Indian nations--but the Shawnee were not part of the confederation (Seneca, Oneida, Mohawk ... couple of others and then the Tuscarowas were added to make six). They claimed sovereignty over other Indian groups, including the Delawares and, I think, the Shawnee, and Pennsylvania's government encouraged Iroquois supremacy because it gave them a clear entity to deal with (and then expected the Iroquois to police other Indian groups). But Shikellemy was not Shawnee (he was Oneida).
More generally, I think it's okay to not know who this Shawnee chief was (for now)--because the mystery might lead people to do research to find out which Shawnees were at Great Island, etc. The problem with the Paxinosa identification (besides that it was wrong) was that it was made so definitively that it told people: no need to look further, we know the answer here, etc. So not knowing for a while might lead to new and more accurate information ....
But I will admit to being stumped at present. I wonder if the local historical society at Lock Haven would have good information about the Native Americans who lived at Great Island?
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Greetings All; I may be opening a big can of worms, or maybe I will just need to learn to enjoy the flavor of crow;-) I was a friend of Ernie Cowan's over the years, and I have only recently become a member here. Late to the party as always. I cannot say with certainty (can anyone?) who RCA 19 was made for. I will stick my neck out though, and say that I did have the opportunity to personally examine the "short rifle" in Ernie's shop in August of 2017. I will admit that the signature on top of the barrel is very weak, but it DID look like it added up to "Albrecht Bethlehem" or something very close to that. I have been looking at early rifles for many years, always with the "missing link" in the back of my mind. The short rifle seems to be just that missing link; a German rifle, made "right off the boat".
Also a note to Rich Pierce. On another thread, you mentioned a gun that George Shumway published in Muzzle Blasts. You wrote that it was the November of 82' issue. I want to thank you, as I am still the owner of that gun, and was at the time of that article. I was never able to retrieve my copy, as it was lost in the shuffle, but I DID have my Muzzle Blasts in chronological order! When I saw you mention the description of the gun, I knew it had to be mine! I found my copy, and now have gun and article together again. If you would like the opportunity to examine it at some point, let me know.
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Ranger, I’d love to see that rifle someday, thanks.
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Welcome to the forum Ranger1759. It's been a learning experience here and I've eaten some crow myself but that's all a part of a healthy debate. I had the pleasure of seeing the mysterious short rifle myself a couple of times- most notably in September of 2017 when I picked up one of Ernie's bench copies. Sad to say I didn't have any reading glasses, magnification, etc., nor did I thoroughly examine the reported signature location in anything other than overhead fluorescent shop lighting. Hopefully someday it'll be available for a more detailed examination. Regardless, although I posted these photos on another thread a while back, here they are again for your viewing pleasure. The original, and then one of Ernie's five copies. Sorry for the mediocre shots - not exactly taken under ideal conditions.
(https://i.ibb.co/ZBYNs7Z/19-Sister1.jpg) (https://ibb.co/ByrwDF1)
(https://i.ibb.co/CPRXmKJ/19-Sister2.jpg) (https://ibb.co/sW8Db95)
(https://i.ibb.co/hmFC1Lc/19-Sister3.jpg) (https://ibb.co/5Rh2xGk)
(https://i.ibb.co/PcQ3YMm/19-Sister4.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Cb2Nt61)
(https://i.ibb.co/VwcgMHp/19-Sister5.jpg) (https://ibb.co/FHL58sq)
(https://i.ibb.co/P5Y36hk/19-Sister6.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Q6czKN0)
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120RIR, thanks for the photos. We are (I am), so cavalier about things sometimes. When I was at Ernie's in August of 2017, I should have asked if I could photograph the guns. When I was there, if I am remembering correctly, the short rifle AND RCA 19 were both there! In the moment, you just think, oh, there will be another opportunity...not necessarily so! Anyway, my last visit to Ernie was in mid July of 2018. While he was stressed with moving and the breakup with Rick he still seemed in pretty good spirits, and I was shocked to learn at Lewisburg of his passing. Anyway I hope that rifle is somewhere safe, and will be available for future study. ALL these early guns are important artifacts, REGARDLESS of where they lead us!
Anytime Rich, and I could probably "update"photos of the gun if you would like.
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It would be fantastic to be able to learn more about that signature on the "shorty" rifle. I am very interested in Albrecht--who isn't?--have written about him and he will feature prominently in a book I'm working on--so to know that this rifle carries his signature (and from when he was working in Bethlehem) would be amazing.
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I guess we're all seeking certitude, and that may or may not be forthcoming. I'm sure everyone - or mostly everyone - can view the short rifle and #19 as being by the same hand. Some believe a signature is present and some do not. Given that a few people do feel that there is 'something' there indicating a signature, I'm sure there is some form of non-destructive means of rendering what may be there in greater detail. I'm no photographer but I suspect that some form of high res photography pieced together from perhaps an entire series of angles and lighting could probably answer the question.
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I believe Albrecht could build anything he desired due to his extensive journeyman experience, but the stark differences in patchbox cavity construction and decorative details compared with Bethlehem and Christians Spring rifles remain as logical stumbling blocks for me.
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I guess we're all seeking certitude, and that may or may not be forthcoming. I'm sure everyone - or mostly everyone - can view the short rifle and #19 as being by the same hand. Some believe a signature is present and some do not. Given that a few people do feel that there is 'something' there indicating a signature, I'm sure there is some form of non-destructive means of rendering what may be there in greater detail. I'm no photographer but I suspect that some form of high res photography pieced together from perhaps an entire series of angles and lighting could probably answer the question.
I don't have a clue why it's taking for ever to get this figured out. Seems a simple thing to do. What's up with all the dad blasted delay concerning this?
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Unfortunately, the now-deceased owner of the short rifle was never amenable to outside testing or independent detailed examination. The current disposition of the rifle is currently unknown but it is likely in the possession of Mr. Cowan's long-time companion. I have not actively tried to pursue making contact with her - wanting to give it something resembling a decent interval.
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I'm sure there is some form of non-destructive means of rendering what may be there in greater detail. I'm no photographer but I suspect that some form of high res photography pieced together from perhaps an entire series of angles and lighting could probably answer the question.
I wonder if the stacking/enhancing program I use with my astro photography might bring out more detail in a signature.
I know that where as a single 3 minute exposure might not show anything or maybe just very little, when you take fifty to a hundred 3 minute exposures, then stack and enhance them, you'll see a fantastic structure. This is obviously because of collecting more and more light photons and adding them together, so to say.
Imaging a signature might not work exactly the same, but I think, as you said, that if by angling the light, its intensity and/or color wouldn't bring out a more complete signature. The imaging would have to be done in a very specific way, but wouldn't be all that difficult.
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How much would something like this cost?
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Scott, I wouldn't think much of anything, if someone was close enough to not have travel costs.
I don't know where the rifle is, but chances are that there is an astronomy club near by, and astro imaging is pretty popular.
The pictures could be taken with any good quality DSLR that could be mounted on a stand or tripod, and held steady. And actually anyone could take the pictures. They'd only need to be able to make reference points and understand varying the light to create a degree of contrast. Then the set of pictures could be put on a memory stick and mailed to whomever was going to process them.
I'd love to give it a try if pictures were ever available!
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Scott, Bucknell University has an astronomy lab. John Steiner Gold, who was descended from George Gold, one of the original Moravians with Zinzendorf, taught math and astronomy at Bucknell years ago. There is a math scholarship there in John Steiner Gold's name.
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I didn't know about the descendant of George Gold at Bucknell! I run across various Golds in Moravian records but haven't focused on any of them. The only thing I remember about George Gold is that he was part of the "Great Wedding" in July 1749 when nearly thirty marriages took place at once.
I guess we don't know where the short rifle is now--but if it's close to Bucknell maybe they could do the inspection there.
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BTW, reading over again this morning the Gnadenhütten diary before putting all this away: on Easter Sunday (April 14, 1754), Paxinosa leaves Gnadenhütten for Bethlehem at 8am and then, after breakfast, four other Shawnee follow him--"for they wanted something done at the smith shop." It's possible that this was gun repair and so possible (though purely speculation) that Albrecht worked on Shawnee rifles in April 1754 as well as in summer 1752. This group of Shawnee, Paxinosa and the others, returned to Gnadenhütten in the afternoon of April 17.
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I believe Albrecht could build anything he desired due to his extensive journeyman experience, but the stark differences in patchbox cavity construction and decorative details compared with Bethlehem and Christians Spring rifles remain as logical stumbling blocks for me.
You know Rich I can see it both ways. One thing to consider is that *IF* these rifles were made by Albrecht in the early 1750s - basically 'right off the boat' guns to some extent - there really is nothing else (Moravian) comparative of that period to use as a basis for comparison. OR I should say, nothing that can be proved to be of that period. Of course there's all the Oerter rifles that are signed and dated but they're 20+ years later. There's the Lion/Lamb rifle which to my mind now is fairly clearly Oerter, but again, later. Marshall? Kind of impossible to say when it was made but my guess would be 1760s. And others we all debate.
Something that has offered somewhat of a new perspective in more recent years is all of the research that Bob has published and the subsequent realization that it appears as though a lot of work was being done for the Indians. How might work differences materialize as a response to preferences varying between two entirely different cultures and needs? Albrecht worked all over the German lands, and in a martial setting too. Then he worked for natives that were about as different from old world Germans as could be. Then, later on or even contemporaneously perhaps, the clientele may have been wealthier white individuals such as Richard Shackleton. And then the Revolution and the years beyond. I would imagine he was working for a much wider ranging client base than we today, and I'm not sure it's possible - especially in light of all the work for the Indians - to completely understand what may have been wanted, and how an extremely competent gun stocker with a wide range of experience may have responded to such changing and varied wants/needs.
Kind of excessively verbose way of discussing differences in box cavity construction, but I do believe both methods (large and gouged/hogged out vs. smaller squared box) were both used at the same time in Germany and so he surely would have been familiar with both. So: how would these differing box cavity styles be viewed by varying clientele? I don't have an answer to that, but one thing we do know empirically is that here in America, the squared contained box style won out in very broad fashion, likely due to the development of the brass box. But earlier, pre brass box: can we envision reasons why any particular customer base might prefer one over the other? Deep thoughts...
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We also have to keep in mind that pretty much all of the work they did for the Indians is very likely long, long gone. Not a lot of Native American firearms survive. Even those made at much later dates were pretty much used until they were worn out and then discarded or repurposed.
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The funny thing is that if I had to envision a rifle of the 1750s + or - which would be desired by a native of some status, and perhaps suited to such a life as opposed to an immigrant farmer or tradesman of the same period, I would be fairly hard-pressed to envision something other than an approximation of #19!
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I've always admired #19. It's very plausible to consider this gun stocked up for an indian by one of the smiths sent to the indian villages to fix indian guns. It appears to have an old French trade gun barrel and the buttlate certainly has a French design, some parts either left over from a busted up French gun that a chief may have had some sentimental attachment to. either It could easily, or maybe obviously, have been stocked up by a smith with German training as Albrecht and others had.
To me it doesn't seem to have any architectural similarity with what we now know was made in CS , Bethlehem, etc. I would assume we'd see at least some resemblance to what is currently attributed to Albrecht's work. At least a stepped toe. But who knows, maybe the chief didn't like step toe'd guns.
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Just a quick note that we know the identities of lots of Native people who took their guns to repair at Bethlehem (and Christiansbrunn)--and none was a "chief" (except for that Shawnee chief who recollected having his gun repaired in 1752). Even in the 1754 Gnadenhütten diary, Paxinosa goes to Bethlehem and then four Shawees follow him who need help from the smith. So Moravian smiths were routinely repairing guns for "ordinary" Indians (and many more Indians, I think, than white people in these early years).
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How might work differences materialize as a response to preferences varying between two entirely different cultures and needs? Albrecht worked all over the German lands, and in a martial setting too. Then he worked for natives that were about as different from old world Germans as could be. Then, later on or even contemporaneously perhaps, the clientele may have been wealthier white individuals such as Richard Shackleton. And then the Revolution and the years beyond. I would imagine he was working for a much wider ranging client base than we today, and I'm not sure it's possible - especially in light of all the work for the Indians - to completely understand what may have been wanted, and how an extremely competent gun stocker with a wide range of experience may have responded to such changing and varied wants/needs.
Eric--I'm asking this out of ignorance, not skepticism. I can see why different craftsmen might make different patchboxes, depending on their training, say. But why would a customer prefer one patchbox style over another (gouged/hogged out vs. squared box)? I can see why a customer might prefer a large vs. a small patchbox. But would construction matter (even be visible in the sense of something to care about) to a customer?
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Scott - when I refer to the 'hogged' style, I'm indicating a cavity that is generally round-bottomed from front all the way back to the inside of the buttplate, i.e. generally no web of wood between the cavity and the inside of the buttplate. Also if cut correctly, the angled walls can serve as a mating surface for the dovetail on the bottom of the box lid, so no need to cut 'rails.' A squared cavity, on the other hand, is cut just like a small box and typically retains a web of wood between the cavity and the inside of the buttplate. This type of cavity also necessitates the cutting of 'rails' to accommodate the wood lid. This would be comparable to the AA coffee mill. The short rifle and #19 are of the larger gouged/hogged variety, which Rich mentioned (I believe) because no other surviving piece attributed to Beth or CS is cut in this manner. It's a much rarer cavity type relative to surviving American guns, though fairly common in German work.
In terms of preference, there are pros and cons of both types. I can't think of any reason a customer would prefer one over another, save that the 'hogged' type is usually larger so if you're the type of shooter that carries a lot in the box, you might prefer such a cavity. As a gunsmith, I have no preference either way myself. The smaller boxed type is more time consuming to cut in my opinion because of the need for rails, but on the other hand, the gouged type (preferably) should make use of an inletted buttplate (as opposed to flat sawn at the rear) to prevent the presence of a gap or crack at the bottom of the cavity into which small pieces of 'stuff' might get lost. I guess it's 6 of one, half dozen of other in terms of time.
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Eric -- Thanks, I vaguely grasped the difference between how the two were constructed--what I was asking (and you answered!) is whether there would be a reason for customers to prefer one or the other. It seems that there really isn't. So--just as a thought--I'd think that it would be less likely that Albrecht tailored different patchboxes for different cultures and needs, since there is no "need" that one patchbox over the other would satisfy. It would seem more likely that the different styles of patchbox signal different craftsmen. Just more likely--no certainty here.
Or am I getting something wrong?
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Unless it was typical for a native to want to carry a lot of 'stuff' in a box (no evidence for this one way or another to my knowledge), I can't think of any reason they might prefer one box style over another. Typically, I would (as with Rich) lean toward viewing it as something specific to a particular gun stocker, however as I mentioned, given Albrecht's broad experiences in Germany, he surely was familiar with both. *If* he stocked the shorty/#19, then he apparently changed his method later on, at least by the time of the assumed Lititiz-made rifle, and also, it is more likely all the other unsigned surviving work we currently attribute to CS may be Oerter or others. Unless he changed his style earlier, or use both types, in which case we are back to square one and the box cavity means nothing!
Just to reiterate the obvious, it's really all going to come down to whether not there's a readable signature on that shorty. Everything else is just fun speculation.
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Eric--Came across this the other day: seems to support your theory that what we now know of as "Allentown" was indeed called Allentown earlier than I had thought. It is very early, May 1761: most sources say that the earliest reference to any settlement that became Allentown was in December 1761, in a petition to build a road to a "new Town which is built on Mr. Allen's land." But here's somebody building some sort of a road six months earlier and calling the place "Allenstown"! (See the bottom-most invoice in the photograph below.)
(Given the names mentioned, that letter from 1755 that I posted earlier, though, has got to refer to Allen Township.)
(https://i.ibb.co/hH9p7Q9/Allenstown-1761.jpg) (https://ibb.co/MpSq2wS)
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That's extremely interesting - thanks for posting that Scott! It's great to see first-hand sources. From what I've been able to gather based upon just a few scraps here and there, I strongly believe there were already houses at the site before the town was "officially" laid out in William Allen's 1762 plan of the town, although probably not many. I'd like to know more about it but there just doesn't seem to be much (if any) reference.
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As I read Bob Lienemann's latest book, I am struck with the question..."Is there any documentation in the Moravian archives for these guns being built by Oerter." My point is the only evidence we have these are indeed made by Oerter for, say Samual Coykendall, is the gun itself. If I need further written proof by a journal entry, or some other forensic evidence, I would be out of luck. I have to rely on the object itself as evidence that it was built for Coykendall by Oerter, and isn't that what is being presented by those who view #19 as the evidence for it's authenticity? I have a 1750s French fusil in my shop for restoration, and when the gun was brought into my shop, I was floored by how much it looks like #19. Obviously whoever built #19 had seen these French guns before, and was building an Americanized version of one. Recognizing there are no signatures on either of these guns in question make attribution almost impossible, but that same reality exists for RCA #42, and look what has happened there......Just sayin
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They should have made a law that all guns must be signed on the top and bottom of the barrel, Dan!
I am amazed and delighted at the primary source documentation on the Moravian gunsmiths and whole community. Those original documents make me want to copy their cursive style.
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Rich Pierce, I wish it were always so neat! That's a professional & trained scribe or bookkeeper there. Most Moravian handwriting is so much sloppier...
By the way: coincidentally, the first receipt on the photo above indicates that William Okely has bought a carpenter's rule for Peter Rice. Peter Rice was a boy who had been sent to Christiansbrunn to work under Albrecht when Albrecht gets sent there on 3 September 1759. I speculated in my article with Bob L. that this was necessary because, in Bethlehem, Albrecht had available help (since he was working in the locksmith shop), but in Christiansbrunn he would not have easily available help. Anyway, Rice doesn't last long with Albrecht and soon after gets apprenticed to the cabinetmaker. Which goes to show that, just because a name is associated with the gun trade at some point, we cannot assume that he became a gunsmith or practiced as a gunsmith.
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I'm late to the party here, but would like to add my 1 1/2 cents. I have no comment on the subject of Paxinosa, or which Shawnee was where, and when. But as to the guns themselves.. It seems the only thing that might lead someone towards a Shawnee connection is the weird animal (I won't say "panther"... where's its tail?) on the triggerguard bow (I don't see the flaming man on the buttplate or any of the other things that are supposed to be there..). And someone claims that maybe there possibly could be a signature on the rifle and if it is, it kind of looks like it could be possibly maybe something that sort of resembles "Albrecht a Bethlehem"....
Honestly, if I were to see either of these guns with no attached tales, I would immediately simply think they were German guns. .... Southwest German guns. This is not where Albrecht was from. Albrecht lived and worked in North Central-ish Germany, in various places, as I recall. To my mind, #19, and the matching rifle are not something that would likely have been made by Albrecht, considering his background. Something like the "Edward Marshall" rifle, on the other hand, is exactly what I would expect to see being made by Albrecht.
No one is even able to prove American walnut yet either, at least not to my satisfaction... not that anyone is required to do anything to my satisfaction.
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I think one would have to assume that because he moved around in Germany as well as working as a military armorer, he likely would have been exposed to a fairly wide variety of arms. Maybe I'm mistaken in that assumption, but using Valentine Beck's lebenslauf as an example, just in his (Beck's) time as a journeyman alone, he sure got around. Albrecht's life story also indicates a lot of restlessness. And what would he have seen just in the nature of repair work working in the Bethlehem locksmith shop? Apparently not so much in the way of NH county *white* customers, but what exactly would the natives have been bringing in for work and/or repair?
It's also unfortunate that we actually know very little about customer expectation and how that expectation may or may not have affected the work of the gun stocker. His only signed gun is always assumed to have been made following his move to Lititz as way of explanation for the overtly "Lancaster" appearance. If so, was this due to a regional expectation, or simply a customer expectation? And, we view the 'Lititz' rifle as a somewhat drastic change, but it's only a change viewed through the lens of our assumptions because we're attributing the Lion/Lamb, the two-tailed dog and/or the Marshall rifle to him. But those are just attributions almost solely made via an association with Oerter's later signed work, so do these attributions also color how we view #19 and the shorty?
I guess what I'm saying is, would a customer have been in a position to dictate stock style? Would there have been accepted terminology to indicate "I want a straight stock" or "I want a French stock" or "I want a stepped stock?" I'm thinking about this lately because in viewing #42, I have to wonder if it may not be as early as we think it is, and if for example it was contemporaneous with Oerter's signed work of the mid 1770s, well, you can see a fairly dramatic contrast in stock architecture - for so long, we've viewed this as a lineal progression, but what if there simply is no progression but rather branches? So what if the customer for #42 wanted an "old fashioned" step stock from a gunstocker who had moved on to straighter stocks? What if #19 was built for someone who wanted a French-style stock? Is the gunstocker going to say no?
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I think the idea of a customer walking in and requesting a stock style is a popular but unsupported, whimsical idea. I’d be more inclined to believe it if JP Beck made some Lehigh style guns and we saw some snowmen carved on Lancaster styled guns, and if a Verner-styled rifle had a Fainot-styled patchbox.
Some things are barely plausible but require complicated stories. Occam’s razor is locked in the cabinet.
Implausible, out of ordinary, requiring complicated explanations:
1) stock styling of 19 unlike anything else at CS.
2) construction details of wooden box cavity unlike anything else at CS
3) furniture unlike anything else at CS
So a story must be made, rather than logically saying, “this sure looks like it must be Oerter or Albrecht’s work!”
Other than the Albrecht Lancaster gun, which was a wreck before restoration and basically a Dickert clone, what German-trained gunsmith made a variety of styles to suit customers?
Did Dickert?
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I don't necessarily think it's a popular idea, nor do I think it was a common occurrence. However, I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility that it may have happened on occasion for particular customers who may have been... well, particular. Certainly not to the extent of micro-management, but I'm sure preferences may have sometimes been accommodated. Of course, we have no way of knowing other than occasional anecdote (Marshall's rifle being a good example of this).
Your three points actually make the case I was trying to verbalize. In reality, all we genuinely know of CS rifles is Oerter's mid-1770s string of signed rifles. By that point, he was master of the shop and had been working there sans Albrecht for almost a decade. Everything else (the other attributed rifles) is entirely speculative and they're all orphans in time - we have no true idea of where or when they were made. If Albrecht stocked a rifle or rifles in the 1750s in the Bethlehem locksmith shop, we really have no idea what the heck it may have looked like, nor do we know what furnishings it may have used: purchased? Cast in-house? I guess my point is that there is so little solid 'fact' for the period prior to Oerter's 1770s rifles, that we really can only try to make educated guesses as to what may or may work as an attributable piece.
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This thread and the others that are related to RCA 19 are some of, perhaps the most interesting, I've had the pleasure of reading on this forum. This is great stuff!
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If Albrecht made 19 in a specific style to suit a specific customer... who did he make the rifle for? 19 is obviously not a one-off, and I think it's probably safe to say that these are not "two-offs" either. I'm going to dare to say that this is just the style of gun that this gunsmith (whoever he was) liked to make. I'll further dare to say that this is probably not the style of gun that Albrecht liked to make.
Working back from Oerter and attributing the whole series of "Moravian guns" is conjecture, of course, but it is at least logical (frankly, kind of obvious, for the most part). We have something to go by. These two guns are complete anomalies if they really do belong in that little world. Not just anomalies in overall style, but down to the smallest details. Before this whole Paxinosa story was unleashed upon us, would it have even crossed anyone's mind to think that 19 was made by Andreas Albrecht??? Arguing whether 42 was made in PA or NC is one thing, this is on a whole other level of conjecture. Conjecture based on an awful lot of "IF's".... IF the stocks are American walnut, IF that really is the Shawnee panther, IF the rifle is signed, IF it really says "Albrecht a Bethlehem".... All things that have to be proven, and I have yet to see the evidence, much less the proof.
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Granted, yes, it seems pretty clear the guy who stocked up 19 also stocked the shorty. So he certainly had that style nailed. However, the furnishings are all different, so my initial impression would be that they were purchased and the guy was a competent gun 'stocker.' This being said, I can't imagine that it would be rocket science to go from that style to another style if either necessary or desired. Heck, we all do it now. Furthermore, to bring up the "Lititiz" rifle, it's a straight stock and the gun looks largely like a Dickert gun, so if one has to insist that the lion and two-tailed dog rifles are Albrecht, then we see one heck of a stylistic change with high competence in both styles.
I personally tend to view the lion/lamb rifle as Oerter, however, and the two tailed dog as potentially someone completely different, so I am coming at this from the perspective that the Lititz rifle is all we have of Albrecht, and that gun being mid-1770s onward. So what would his work in Bethlehem have looked like, @ 20 years earlier? I have no idea.
Can we absolutely assume that Oerter's work would necessarily have looked like Albrecht's work? I don't know if I'm ready go out on that limb as yet, especially given they only worked together for @ what, 4 years?
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The question really shouldn't be "what did Albrecht's work look like", but rather "Is THIS Albrecht's work?". Are the claims plausible? Is there any evidence? Is it just wishful thinking? All we've got is two guns, one with a weird animal on the triggerguard, the other where someone says that if you are pure of heart, you can hold the barrel up to the moonlight during the winter solstice at Stonehenge and you can see a faint signature that might say "Albrecht a Bethlehem"....
The whole Paxinosa/Albrecht story is cool and all, and I was actually willing to give it the benefit of the doubt (which is very unusual for me! :D ), but the more I look at everything, the more I think that none of it holds any water, at least as far as the guns themselves are concerned. It is not up to any one of us to disprove the claim. The ones that have put forth this claim are the ones that must prove it. Personally, I don't think they have come anywhere near close to doing that at all.
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It is not up to any one of us to disprove the claim. The ones that have put forth this claim are the ones that must prove it. Personally, I don't think they have come anywhere near close to doing that at all.
On that one, I agree with you 100%. But, I'm also not wiling to rule it out either. Currently, it's just a loose theory with two very cool, obviously-associated guns. Furthermore, Scott has put forth valid information which casts a fair degree of doubt upon the assumption that it was Paxinosa for whom Albrecht stocked a rifle, so this further throws a wrench into the works.
Once we've catalogued anything into a neat little box, it's psychologically very hard to extricate it and cast it loose to the wind once again!
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An observation from somebody who does not have a dog in this fight. I've been following all the posts in this thread that began in Feb 2019 and an earlier thread that began in Nov 2017. At this point it appears that neither thread has definitely determined if Albrecht stocked the particular rifle for Paxinosa.
This whole subject reminds me of a friend who owned the Daniel Woolsey Long Land Bess. A Daniel Woolsey was said to have guarded a British Officer, Lt Daniel Taylor, that was carrying a message from General Clinton to Burgoyne in October 1777. This story is related in detail by Bill Ahearn in his book Muskets of the Revolution on page 47.
Anyway, it turns out there were three men named Daniel Woolsey from the same area of the Hudson Valley serving in the militia. I pointed this fact out to my friend and asked him how he was positive that the musket he had with Woolsey's name inscribed on the buttstock was in fact carried by the Daniel Woolsey that guarded Lt Taylor. His answer was quite brief. "Because I want it to be."
(https://i.ibb.co/2NzxYZC/The-Don-Carroll-Collection-a-039.jpg) (https://ibb.co/WtrZpVM)
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Exceptionally nice carving there.
The Albrecht/Paxinosa story is much more compelling than another early, unsigned, unattributable smooth rifle with a short sister gun but no other known relatives. Except of course the woodsrunner rifle which, I think, has a similar patchbox cavity construction. Is that enough? Seems not to me.
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I just need to summarize an earlier part of this thread: the Albrecht/Paxinosa connection depends on a document from April 1754 in which a Shawnee chief remembers having his rifle stocked by Albrecht in 1752. We now know for a fact that that chief could not have been Paxinosa, as we know where Paxinosa was when the other Shawnee chief visited Shamokin and reminisced about having his rifle stocked by Albrecht. If that is not decisive evidence, I don't know what is. So, yes, we know for sure that Albrecht stocked a rifle for a Shawnee chief--but we don't know the name of that chief at present.
I entirely agree with Stophel when he says that "It is not up to any one of us to disprove the claim. The ones that have put forth this claim are the ones that must prove it. Personally, I don't think they have come anywhere near close to doing that at all." It is very frustrating when somebody tosses out an often-wild "hunch" and then expects it to stick unless others take the time and effort to disprove it. In this case, however, we have been able to disprove the claim.
Regarding styles: it seems unlikely to me that a customer would have cared about the stock architecture of a rifle. I may be wrong, of course. But is there any surviving evidence from the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries in which an individual even mentioned the shape of the stock? We do have surviving evidence (the Oerter letter) in which a maker describes other features of a rifle (double trigger, silver mountings, etc.). But any indication that any customer or maker paid attention to stock architecture?
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Regarding styles: it seems unlikely to me that a customer would have cared about the stock architecture of a rifle. I may be wrong, of course. But is there any surviving evidence from the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries in which an individual even mentioned the shape of the stock? We do have surviving evidence (the Oerter letter) in which a maker describes other features of a rifle (double trigger, silver mountings, etc.). But any indication that any customer or maker paid attention to stock architecture?
No, but on the other hand, there absolutely had to be some level of interaction between a customer and a gunstocker, as while many guns can be generally stocked to suit the bell curve of people, there are always going to be outliers on both ends of the curve. A guy who's 5'4 is going to need something very different in relation to a guy who's 6'.
Maker's must have paid attention to architecture, else nothing would ever have evolved! Whatever Oerter learned from Albrecht prior to 1766, his rifles of the mid 1770s display a decided evolution toward a more streamlined style. Following the War, that same style regionally evolves further into what is seen in the rifles of the Molls, Rupps, Neihart etc. Something was driving it, and it must have to some extent been a mutual agreement between makers and buyers, else the customers wouldn't buy and the makers wouldn't make.
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Maker's must have paid attention to architecture, else nothing would ever have evolved! Whatever Oerter learned from Albrecht prior to 1766, his rifles of the mid 1770s display a decided evolution toward a more streamlined style. Following the War, that same style regionally evolves further into what is seen in the rifles of the Molls, Rupps, Neihart etc. Something was driving it, and it must have to some extent been a mutual agreement between makers and buyers, else the customers wouldn't buy and the makers wouldn't make.
I was just wondering whether customers had anything to do with it. I guess human nature suggests that they must have. But maybe (as you sort of say here) the innovation occurred entirely on the side of the makers without any pressure/prompt from buyers? I'm just wondering--because there seems to be no evidence of anybody mentioning this stock architecture in the period itself. Maybe customers didn't register or care about the evolution in stock shape at all--or at least care enough to request something (as if they had our categories in their heads when they looked at a rifle).
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I don't remember ever seeing anything in print (of the period). The Oerter letter is probably about the closest thing. I do agree, I sincerely doubt there were discussions occurring in terminology and/or depth of detail comparable to how we now would view them. It may have been something as simplistic as just requesting a "new-style" rifle as opposed to an "old" rifle.
This doesn't really address why #19 and the shorty look like they do, and why they don't look like Oerter's later rifles (well, I should say 'assumed later') or the couple of rifles currently attributed to Albrecht. I don't think there can really be an answer to that question currently, as there simply are no signed Albrecht rifles of the 1750s or 1760s to use as a basis for comparison.
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snip...
Other than the Albrecht Lancaster gun, which was a wreck before restoration and basically a Dickert clone, what German-trained gunsmith made a variety of styles to suit customers?
Did Dickert?
Doesn't quite meet your criteria but Lancaster born John Newcomer springs to mind (his father was Swiss I believe- Hans NEUKOMMETT) as an 18th century gunsmith who worked in multiple stocking styles.
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Exceptionally nice carving there.
The Albrecht/Paxinosa story is much more compelling than another early, unsigned, unattributable smooth rifle with a short sister gun but no other known relatives. Except of course the woodsrunner rifle which, I think, has a similar patchbox cavity construction. Is that enough? Seems not to me.
From what I can tell from photos I have of 19, the patchbox cavity has full dovetail rails in the sides. It's just got a rounded bottom and open through the end of the butt. The "woodsrunner gun" has just a round cavity. As if a huge hole was drilled forward into the end grain of the butt (though wood is left at the rear of the cavity), with the hole exposed on the side of the stock by cutting down the flat surface for the box lid... if that makes sense. It does not have "bottoms" to the "dovetails" in the stock.
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Ahh, Chris, I was tongue in cheek. Sort of making the point that one detail alone does not a connection make.
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Hey, people have been attributing guns based on one little detail for a long time now!
At least they're not saying that 19 was made in Virginia... or by George Schroyer...
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Customers must have had stock shape preferences by the 19th century. Just look at the different patterns that the fur companies had made to ship west. The JJ Henry English rifle had a fairly flat wide butt plate but the Lancaster pattern rifle had more crescent shaped butt plate. Stock shapes were different also, so customers must have had preferences when they were wanting a rifle or the fur company would have had just one pattern of rifle to sell. There were a lot of things that happened that weren't written down on paper and we can only speculate. While folks back then weren't exposed to as much as we are today they were still like us today for the most part. Some of us are more fussy about certain things than others are.