Some of you might recall my post on the old board, about a fullstock longrifle I bought in October of 2007. It had been found in the top of an old barn, with some old lumber. It was found near Annawan, Illinois, about five or six years ago, after a farm that had remained in one family since before the Civil War, changed hands. When the new owners found the rifle, they contacted the elderly (in his 90's)gentleman who sold them the farm, and asked him whether he wanted it. He told them he had been born and raised on that farm, had lived there his entire life, and had never seen that rifle nor had he known it existed.
I first saw this rifle about four years ago. It was beyond filthy, rusty, covered with soot, but it was evident that there was a nice old rifle beneath all the crud. I knew that it had a hand-cut script signature on top of the barrel, but it was illegible at that point. It took me three years to buy this rifle. Not because they were unwilling to sell it, but because we just never got around to making a deal. Last October I decided that I should not let it get away, so called the owner and finally set up a time to meet. I was waiting in his driveway when he arrived home from work the following evening. I made him an offer, he accepted it, and I brought the rifle home. Believing that the signature was too pitted to ever be legible, I put off my disappointment by standing the rifle in the corner for the next several weeks. Eventually, curiosity got the best of me, and I carefully removed the barrel from the stock. After soaking the barrel with penetrating oil, I made a brass scraper and started working on the flats of the barrel. It was immediately evident that I was wrong about the pitting, it was mostly surface scale, and came off quite easily. That old wrought-iron rusts differently than steel. It didn't take long bfore I realized that the script on the barrel was legible after all. When I finished scraping and wiped away the rust, there it was...."H. Tope". The rifle went from being an interesting old gun, to a prized possession in seconds! Henry Tope was a local gunsmith here. He worked in Magnolia, Putnam County, Illinois, from 1844 -1848. In March of 1848, he moved to Peru, LaSalle County, Illinois, and opened a shop near the "Steamboat Hotel". Tope and his wife both perished in the cholera epidemic in July of 1849. I have a detailed estate inventory of his tools, a sale bill telling who purchased his tools, and quite a bit more information found in his estate file in the LaSalle County courthouse. This rifle is the first signed example of his work that has ever turned up.
I subsequently did some further research, and learned that Tope was born in Ohio in about 1810. He apprenticed to a gunsmith named John M. Holmes, in Carrollton, Carroll County, Ohio. After completing his apprenticeship, he had a shop at Tope's Mill, Carroll County, Ohio, before moving to Illinois. Neither Tope nor Holmes are listed in the five volume set of books on Ohio gunmakers.
After spending some time in the very capable hands of Dan Breitenstein, the Henry Tope rifle is once again the handsome piece that Henry made, some 160 years ago.
