Hello:
I just stumbled on to this forum and signed on.
Jesse Maurice Barlow was my gg-grandfather. He lived much of his life and is buried in Rush County Indiana about 12 miles from where I am sitting. I own a sort of a mini-farm in Moscow Indiana which is where he lived and made guns about a mile north of the village for many years. I look after his grave site some as well as having a lot of other family in that cemetery.
To my knowledge he always signed his guns in script as "J M Barlow". I was told by my father (BTW, I am 70) that Jesse in later years bought some kind of roller device that would put his name on the barrel and that he was supposedly very proud of it.
I was always told the his son John made a few guns at Moscow in a small structure that sat on the property that I now own there. The little building is labeled on the old maps as a "wagon shop" and referred to by some as a blacksmith shop. Another building sat next to it which John's brother, my g-grandfather (Ariss Barlow) used as a fence factory (he made fence of white pickets held in place by twisted 11 gauge wire much like the wood snow-fence used a lot some years ago). I was always told that while John made guns that it was not in the kind of quantities that Jesse did. Much of the family information came through my grandmother, Oma Elizabeth (Barlow) Robinson.
Jesse Maurice Barlow's father was also a Jesse Barlow (born about 1779 at Lyncburg VA) and was also a gunmaker/gunsmith. Jesse Maurice's middle name came from his mother's (Nancy Gosnell) grandfather Maurice Gosnell.
I used to own one of his rifles but have since passed it on down to one of our daughters who will pass it to her daughter. They are very attached to the gun and its history. It was what I call a "poor boy", pretty plain with iron fittings. I always thought it was a 36 caliber but never measured it as I had no intention of shooting it. A 32 caliber round fit loosely in the end of the barrel and a 38 special round would not enter at all.
Jesse's house and gun factory are long gone now but were standing when I was a young man and I was taken back the long lane and shown it by an aunt that had spent a lot of time there as a young girl. Jesse married Mahala Waggoner who was my gg-grandmother and when she died he married her sister Sarah. At one time he was farming around 400 to 500 acres there much of which had belonged to his father-in-law. He also did some locksmithing and did a good deal of lock work on the county courthouse. I believe that as a young man he lived in the city of Rushville for a time. Jesse also made gun locks and shipped them to other gunsmiths. I have read that those were signed J M Barlow on the backside.
Family history (we all know about how family history can be) said that during the Civil War that he was shipping guns to the south even though he had 2 sons in the union army. The story also says that the government confiscated more than one batch of guns that were to be shipped south. Like I said, Family history...
I was also told that Jesse showed some of his more fancy guns at fairs etc. and that he won a number of prizes.
A surprisingly large number of the Barlow's were metal workers of some kind. Gunsmiths, blacksmiths, jewelry makers... One is said to have made the dies to mint coins for Brigham Young in Utah.
It was I think a cousin Milton Barlow and his father (who became astronomy experts in their day) who produced a "rifled cannon" early on.
This is a busy time for me but I will try to dig out the old pictures of Jesse's house and log gun factory out of my regular pictures and scan them to post. I don't have any digital pictures of them. I also have one poor quality picture of Jesse himself. I understand that few were taken. As a kid growing up anytime that I was being stubborn I was told that it was because of the Barlow blood in me.
I am happy to share any information I might have or find.
Have a great 2013.
