Nord, I think your response was/is potentially misleading to a casual reader. Let me pull it down here and explain:
"All this neat and concise information is totally negated by the fact that your rifle was made in an era where travel and migration were easy and common. Same with the various components on the piece. While the gun certainly suggests NY, it could just as easily have been made in Michigan or westward from there."
It is not true that this gun "could have just as easily been made in Michigan or westward from there." There may be shared details with guns such as the Potter rifle made further west, as there are with most regions' guns and gunmakers in later years due to natural migration, but the single trigger made of brass is a major identifying detail of NY guns, not Michigan or midwest guns. It is highly likely that this particular rifle was made in New York, highly unlikely it was made in Michigan or further west.
A similar gun without the single brass trigger could have been "made in Michigan or westward," but that was not stated in the posting. Rather, that detail for establishing the gun's place of origin (second only to the hard-to-read signature) was ignored, and a generalization given that implied this particular gun could just as easily have been made in Michigan as in New York. That, I believe, is inaccurate, and should be rebuted due to the educational objective of this site. The single brass trigger tells us a lot about the gun's origin, both where it was most likely made, and where it was probably not made. Perhaps I have misunderstood the intent of the statement, but if so, I believe others will do the same, i.e. read it with the same meaning as I did, so a clarification is still needed. Shelby Gallien
