This thread really diverged a bit from Gideon Angstadt. Getting back to him for a moment: Buck, that appears to be the 'story' on Gideon Angstadt. I also have spoken to maybe two or three older guys over the years who claimed to have seen a signed Gideon Angstadt "way back when" but unfortunately one never seems to materialize. One of the old books, I forget which, offered a very brief description of a gun under the Gideon Angstadt listing, so I would assume that the author was looking at a signed gun. It's obvious the guy was a gunsmith in Lewisburg. It's very possible we have seen some of his rifles and not known it. Where I am taking issue here is that there seem to be a whole lot of pieces attributed to Gideon Angstadt, but there are vast discrepancies among them - different stock architecture, different furnishings, different everything. So WHICH might actually be Gideon, and which might be someone else? Impossible to say without a signed example to use as an anchor point!!!!!!! Aaaack it drives me nuts.
As a caveat, I want to make clear I do not simply ignore when one of the older dudes (I'm trying hard not to become an older dude myself) tells me about something he may have seen years ago. Times were different, many pieces had not yet disappeared into the black hole of gun safes, sequestered away for half a century or more. Dillin's book is a great resource because despite the tiny, grainy little photos, there are a number of very interesting pieces therein that STILL have not popped back onto the public scene. And that's about a century now. Rich Hujsa used to visit me up here once or twice a year for show-and-tell because he was hunting out of a friends cabin nearby, and we used to discuss Johannes Moll quite a bit because Moll is an obsession of mine. Rich always said he had seen "years ago" a rifle with huge block letters signed JOHANNES MOLL but of course nobody else had seen one since. I never knew whether to take it at face value or not, but then hot d**m probably around 15 years ago, some guy out of nowhere contacts me about a rifle he inherited, and while it was a more modern restock of old parts, there's the giant JOHANNES MOLL signature inlaid down the entire top of the barrel from breech to rear sight in silver block letters. And I've since seen a second restock with the same barrel marking!
Something to think about here, Kindig may have been on to something when he called the two rifles in there 'early Molls' that are probably Adam Angstadt. Moll was practically on top of the Angstadt farm in Berks county at least as early as 1750-1752, and was there until his move to Allentown. Adam had to learn from someone, and since there is absolutely no evidence that farmer George Angstadt was a gunsmith, it's very likely that Moll was the guy the old history books are remembering when they say George Angstadt had a gunsmith shop there very early on. So potentially, Adam Angstadt may have been Moll's apprentice. It's very interesting that a number of the rifles attributed to him (Adam) have somewhat of a three-petal or fleudelis shaped box finial, exactly as Moll apparently was casting when he moved to Allentown.
