Tennessee/southern mountain

[david50]

didnt know where to put this. at what point in time did this style of rifle start to appear...thanks!

[Nate McKenzie]

My understanding is from 1820's right up till the early 1900's but hopefully other with more knowledge will chime in.

[G-Man]

What pops into most people's minds when you think of a Tennessee rifle, is the classic East Tennessee style made by the Beans, Beals, etc. with the banana patchbox, stylized hardware, long tangs etc.  If this is what you are thinking of, then Nate's dating is about right from what we can tell.  It would appear that this style was there by 1830 and persisted right up through the late 19th century.  There were also rifles being made in the southern Appalachians much earlier - these tend to look more like a blending of the styles brought in from places farther east, with simplifications and style changes that grew out of the isolation of the area and availability of resources.  There were probably some rifles being made in East Tennesse, Western North Carolina and Southwest Virginia by the time of the Revolution, we just don't have documented signed examples to go by.  By the 1790s you have people like Jospeh Bogle working in the region (see the great rifle by him in the Virtual Museum); by the early 1800s you have the Bulls, etc.  So if you want to consider these also as southern mountain rifles, then the timeframe stretches back into the late 18th century.

Guy

[Dr. Tim-Boone]

Consider Richard Allen and Wiley Higgins....both among others, building guns in GA as early as 1818 and probably 10 years before that...... I think those guns qualify for "Southern" but not really "Appalachian" in style if we take Bean & Gillespie and Soddy Daisy guns to be Appalachian Mtn. guns.....GA Guns look related to NC guns...ya think.......Not sure about SC or AL guns...although many of the GA builders did move on to AL......

Your thoughts??

[WElliott]

G-Man is correct- it depends on what you mean by "Tennessee/southern mountain."  Guns were undoubtedly being built in the Southern mountains from the time the first gunsmiths or blacksmith/gunsmiths moved there in the 18th century.  The Jos. Bogle rifle, which we believe dates from the early 1790s, is the earliest documented Tennessee "mountain" rifle.  But it is a transitional piece, reflecting Bogle's training probably in Virginia and is not what most folks think of as a "mountain" rifle.  If, David,  you are referring to the long, skinny rifles with iron furniture and banana boxes, Nate is correct - 1820 to 2012 (and counting).  Certainly, as Tim points out, there were many guns made elsewhere in the South (Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, etc.)  much earlier than the time when the "Tennessee/southern mountain" rifle presumably appeared.  If you are thinking more of iron furniture than architecture, there is every reason to assume that iron-mounted rifles were being made in the South by the third quarter of the 18th century.

[G-Man]

One thing you will see from these replies, is that people are getting a better understanding of how just how broad and diverse the spectrum of southern longrifles is.  Even within the mountain rifle styles there are lots of variations.

There used to be a tendency to automatically assume anything iron mounted was a mountain rifle, but it is more complicated than that.  As Tim pointed out  the work of Higgins and Allen shows stronger association with work being done in the Carolina Piedmont than work being done in the Appalachians, and they actually worked well outside of the mountain region, down on the edge of the Creek Territory.  (Wayne has a great display on these two gunsmiths that he has set up at a few shows and really helps put them in a geographic context.)

With regard to your original question, if you are envisioning a "Bean" style Tennessee rifle, this family worked in Upper East Tennessee - the area around Washington, Unicoi and Sullivan Counties, from about the 1780s (if not earlier) through the 19th century.  Surviving examples seem to soundly indicate that the style was there by 1820-1830. It could have been earlier as well - we know Russell Bean was working by the 1780s and there is a barrel signed by him with a 1790s date, but my understading is it was likely restocked, so we don't know what an 18th century Bean rifle actually looked like and how the evolution progressed toward what we think of as the "classic" style.

There are some indications that the Gillespie mountain rifle style was already pretty much there by around 1810 or so.  Earl Lanning's Gillespie rifle (shown ini Dennis Glazener's and Bill Ivey's books) believed to be the earliest surviving Gillespie rifle, if I am not mistaken, and it is not very different looking from rifles made by them a generation or two later in the mid 1800s.

Guy