For those of you who are familiar with Myron Carlson's hardware, this is the rifle from which he copied his nice set of what he called Rowan County North Carolina hardware and triggers, back about 20 years ago. Ron Borron did a nice line drawing of it as well.
I have always loved this rifle. It is sort of an enigma with regard to attribution. The faceted thimbles and flats on the buttplate tang are rarely seen on rifles from the Appalachian mountains. Not unheard of, but rare. In general the hardware on this rifle suggests a maker who was used to working in the styles of the brass mounted guns of the day as well as iron.
In recent years I too was thinking more Virginia after seeing some of Wallace's articles in Muzzle Blasts, but now after getting a look at the dozens of iron mounted North Carolina examples in Bill Ivey's book, I see some possible Piedmont/western Piedmont North Carolina influence.
The guard profile and proportions, with the bow being about equal to or slightly shorter than the grip rail, and the sideplate shape, are early looking (as far as iron mounts go) and very similar to some of the pieces in the Ivey book - including some guns made as far east as the Deep River area. However, I should note that similar sideplate shapes also turn up in Virginia. The very faint criss-cross engraving on the guard bow (you have to look really close to see it) is a feature that to me, looks like a folky version of the guilloche decorative motifs seen on fancier North Carolina rifles from the western Piedmont - patchbox side panels, toeplates, etc.
The forward triggerguard screw arrangement, which passes through the triggerplate which extends forward under the guard finial a bit, is one of the reasons that Myron felt it was a North Carolina gun. I do not know enough about North Carolina triggers to comment more about that - just that it is not typical for a mountain rifle.
Really hard to pin down, when it is quite possible this gun also is the product of a smith working in a region where the present day VA-TN-NC borders borders now meet, and was a crossroads of settlement back in the day. Lots of gunsmiths and lots of rifles surely passed through the area so this gun could be, for example, an early east Tennessee piece by smiths, or smiths influenced by styles, that migrated into the area, or the gun itself could have been made farther over in North Carolina, or farther northeast in Virginia and brought in.
Guy
