In my 40 years of collecting and researching Tansel powder horns, there have been only two original bag & horn sets found, both early Indiana era sets. One of those sets has an interesting story behind it, which I thought might be a "warm fuzzy" for those of us who love these horns. Some of you may have seen an Indiana Tansel horn with an elaborate bone powder measure on Ebay a couple months ago. I fortunately also saw it. The horn and measure were part of the best Tansel bag & horn set I had ever seen, in a county museum in Indiana. I had photographed the full set over 20 years ago for my records, with a knife sheaf on the bag's back side. Considerable wear on the horn attested to its hanging on the bag, in the field, for many years.
I was concerned that the item might have been stolen from the museum, so I made sure I got it, and planned to confront the seller after receiving it. The seller was in Indiana where I live, so I asked if I could pick it up to prevent damage or loss in shipping [really to meet the seller and get an i.d.] and he was fine with it, even offered to have his wife meet me close to where I live and deliver the horn. When I met his wife, I felt awkward asking her about the history of the horn, but felt obligated to do so. I told her I had photographed the horn, with its bag, in the county museum over 20 years earlier, so was familiar with it. She told me it was a family heirloom on her husband's side, whose family had an early history in the County. The family had loaned a large number of family items to the museum many years ago. Recently, they learned that several of their family pieces had disappeared from the museum, upsetting them, so they pulled their remaining family items from the museum. She then proceeded to give me four (4) old 1950s and early 1960s local newspaper articles that documented the bag & horn and other accoutrements, with two articles providing a full provenance from the first family that owned the bag & horn set, up to the present day. I was flabbergasted, and to make it even better, two of the old newspaper articles had photographs of the owner's grandfather holding/showing the exact Tansel bag & horn with the great bone charger dangling off its side... and he was holding the original rifle and spike tomahawk that had accompanied the bag & horn set. Quite a surprise and kind of a heart-pounding experience.
I told the owner's wife that the horn and measure originally had a leather hunting bag with it, and asked if they still had it. She said all the family's returned items were piled up in their basement, and she would look for it. I then asked about the rifle and tomahawk. The rifle had been sold off years before, and the spike tomahawk was one of the family items that had disappeared and caused the family to pull the remaining items from the museum.
A few days later the owner's wife contacted me and said she had found the "old bag, and it wasn't in very good shape, so did I still want it?" I told her I did, and she said she was coming up my way in a few days and would deliver it. I got the bag a few days later, compared it to my old photos and it was the correct bag, exactly as it looked 20+ years before. With the photos, I also knew the orientation of the horn on the bag during its last years, and in a few minutes, it was all back together, reunited after an "almost disastrous" sale on Ebay. PICTURES: top is Ebay listing picture... bottom is reunited bag & horn set.
There are two post scripts to this story:
1) Had I not seen the bag & horn set 20 years before, or had some other Ebay buyer gotten it, no one would have asked "Where's the bag?" and one of the only two known, original Tansel bag & horn sets would have parted ways forever. I never got a good answer for why the owner removed the horn and measure from the bag, but his wife intimated that they thought the bag was beat up and of little value. It was probably not long for this world, had I not asked about it.
2) An Ebay scam artist, since the Ebay auction, has posted the same horn and bone measure several times, using the same pictures and descriptions, trying to get a buyer to "make a good offer" directly to the seller, who is "a pawn shop going out of business." I contacted Ebay each time I saw the listing, and they removed it by/before the next day. But if you see it for sale on Ebay again, or somewhere else, I'd advise you to not bid on it and report it immediately; it's a scam and the horn and measure are not there... they are sitting in my gun safe.
Note: Additional information on this and other Tansel powder horns in the form of short, easy-to-read articles can be found on my web site,
www.kentuckygunmakers.com. The site is devoted to Tansel powder horns and muzzle loading rifles from Kentucky, the "true" Kentucky rifle.
Shelby Gallien
