Albrecht, Paxinosa, Great Island, 1752 and 1754: New Information

[Stophel]

I'm late to the party here, but would like to add my 1 1/2 cents.  I have no comment on the subject of Paxinosa, or which Shawnee was where, and when.  But as to the guns themselves..  It seems the only thing that might lead someone towards a Shawnee connection is the weird animal (I won't say "panther"... where's its tail?) on the triggerguard bow (I don't see the flaming man on the buttplate or any of the other things that are supposed to be there..).  And someone claims that maybe there possibly could be a signature on the rifle and if it is, it kind of looks like it could be possibly maybe something that sort of resembles "Albrecht a Bethlehem"....

Honestly, if I were to see either of these guns with no attached tales, I would immediately simply think they were German guns. .... Southwest German guns.  This is not where Albrecht was from.  Albrecht lived and worked in North Central-ish Germany, in various places, as I recall.  To my mind, #19, and the matching rifle are not something that would likely have been made by Albrecht, considering his background.  Something like the "Edward Marshall" rifle, on the other hand, is exactly what I would expect to see being made by Albrecht.

No one is even able to prove American walnut yet either, at least not to my satisfaction... not that anyone is required to do anything to my satisfaction.

[Eric Kettenburg]

I think one would have to assume that because he moved around in Germany as well as working as a military armorer, he likely would have been exposed to a fairly wide variety of arms.  Maybe I'm mistaken in that assumption, but using Valentine Beck's lebenslauf as an example, just in his (Beck's) time as a journeyman alone, he sure got around.  Albrecht's life story also indicates a lot of restlessness.  And what would he have seen just in the nature of repair work working in the Bethlehem locksmith shop?  Apparently not so much in the way of NH county *white* customers, but what exactly would the natives have been bringing in for work and/or repair?

It's also unfortunate that we actually know very little about customer expectation and how that expectation may or may not have affected the work of the gun stocker.  His only signed gun is always assumed to have been made following his move to Lititz as way of explanation for the overtly "Lancaster" appearance.  If so, was this due to a regional expectation, or simply a customer expectation?  And, we view the 'Lititz' rifle as a somewhat drastic change, but it's only a change viewed through the lens of our assumptions because we're attributing the Lion/Lamb, the two-tailed dog and/or the Marshall rifle to him.  But those are just attributions almost solely made via an association with Oerter's later signed work, so do these attributions also color how we view #19 and the shorty?

I guess what I'm saying is, would a customer have been in a position to dictate stock style?  Would there have been accepted terminology to indicate "I want a straight stock" or "I want a French stock" or "I want a stepped stock?"  I'm thinking about this lately because in viewing #42, I have to wonder if it may not be as early as we think it is, and if for example it was contemporaneous with Oerter's signed work of the mid 1770s, well, you can see a fairly dramatic contrast in stock architecture - for so long, we've viewed this as a lineal progression, but what if there simply is no progression but rather branches?  So what if the customer for #42 wanted an "old fashioned" step stock from a gunstocker who had moved on to straighter stocks?  What if #19 was built for someone who wanted a French-style stock?  Is the gunstocker going to say no?

[rich pierce]

I think the idea of a customer walking in and requesting a stock style is a popular but unsupported, whimsical idea. I’d be more inclined to believe it if JP Beck made some Lehigh style guns and we saw some snowmen carved on Lancaster styled guns, and if a Verner-styled rifle had a Fainot-styled patchbox.

Some things are barely plausible but require complicated stories. Occam’s razor is locked in the cabinet.

Implausible, out of ordinary, requiring complicated explanations:
1) stock styling of 19 unlike anything else at CS.
2) construction details of wooden box cavity unlike anything else at CS
3) furniture unlike anything else at CS

So a story must be made, rather than logically saying, “this sure looks like it must be Oerter or Albrecht’s work!”

Other than the Albrecht Lancaster gun, which was a wreck before restoration and basically a Dickert clone, what German-trained gunsmith made a variety of styles to suit customers?

Did Dickert?

[Eric Kettenburg]

I don't necessarily think it's a popular idea, nor do I think it was a common occurrence.  However, I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility that it may have happened on occasion for particular customers who may have been... well, particular.  Certainly not to the extent of micro-management, but I'm sure preferences may have sometimes been accommodated.  Of course, we have no way of knowing other than occasional anecdote (Marshall's rifle being a good example of this).

Your three points actually make the case I was trying to verbalize.  In reality, all we genuinely know of CS rifles is Oerter's mid-1770s string of signed rifles.  By that point, he was master of the shop and had been working there sans Albrecht for almost a decade.  Everything else (the other attributed rifles) is entirely speculative and they're all orphans in time - we have no true idea of where or when they were made.  If Albrecht stocked a rifle or rifles in the 1750s in the Bethlehem locksmith shop, we really have no idea what the heck it may have looked like, nor do we know what furnishings it may have used:  purchased?  Cast in-house?  I guess my point is that there is so little solid 'fact' for the period prior to Oerter's 1770s rifles, that we really can only try to make educated guesses as to what may or may work as an attributable piece.

[WESTbury]

This thread and the others that are related to RCA 19 are some of, perhaps the most interesting, I've had the pleasure of reading on this forum. This is great stuff!

[Stophel]

If Albrecht made 19 in a specific style to suit a specific customer... who did he make the rifle for?  19 is obviously not a one-off, and I think it's probably safe to say that these are not "two-offs" either.  I'm going to dare to say that this is just the style of gun that this gunsmith (whoever he was) liked to make.  I'll further dare to say that this is probably not the style of gun that Albrecht liked to make.

 Working back from Oerter and attributing the whole series of "Moravian guns" is conjecture, of course, but it is at least logical (frankly, kind of obvious, for the most part).  We have something to go by.  These two guns are complete anomalies if they really do belong in that little world.  Not just anomalies in overall style, but down to the smallest details.  Before this whole Paxinosa story was unleashed upon us, would it have even crossed anyone's mind to think that 19 was made by Andreas Albrecht???   Arguing whether 42 was made in PA or NC is one thing, this is on a whole other level of conjecture.  Conjecture based on an awful lot of "IF's".... IF the stocks are American walnut, IF that really is the Shawnee panther, IF the rifle is signed, IF it really says "Albrecht a Bethlehem"....  All things that have to be proven, and I have yet to see the evidence, much less the proof.

[Eric Kettenburg]

Granted, yes, it seems pretty clear the guy who stocked up 19 also stocked the shorty.  So he certainly had that style nailed.  However, the furnishings are all different, so my initial impression would be that they were purchased and the guy was a competent gun 'stocker.'  This being said, I can't imagine that it would be rocket science to go from that style to another style if either necessary or desired.  Heck, we all do it now.  Furthermore, to bring up the "Lititiz" rifle, it's a straight stock and the gun looks largely like a Dickert gun, so if one has to insist that the lion and two-tailed dog rifles are Albrecht, then we see one heck of a stylistic change with high competence in both styles.

I personally tend to view the lion/lamb rifle as Oerter, however, and the two tailed dog as potentially someone completely different, so I am coming at this from the perspective that the Lititz rifle is all we have of Albrecht, and that gun being mid-1770s onward.  So what would his work in Bethlehem have looked like, @ 20 years earlier?  I have no idea.

Can we absolutely assume that Oerter's work would necessarily have looked like Albrecht's work?  I don't know if I'm ready go out on that limb as yet, especially given they only worked together for @ what, 4 years?

[Stophel]

The question really shouldn't be "what did Albrecht's work look like", but rather "Is THIS Albrecht's work?".  Are the claims plausible?  Is there any evidence?  Is it just wishful thinking?  All we've got is two guns, one with a weird animal on the triggerguard, the other where someone says that if you are pure of heart, you can hold the barrel up to the moonlight during the winter solstice at Stonehenge and you can see a faint signature that might say "Albrecht a Bethlehem"....

The whole Paxinosa/Albrecht story is cool and all, and I was actually willing to give it the benefit of the doubt (which is very unusual for me!  ), but the more I look at everything, the more I think that none of it holds any water, at least as far as the guns themselves are concerned.  It is not up to any one of us to disprove the claim.  The ones that have put forth this claim are the ones that must prove it.  Personally, I don't think they have come anywhere near close to doing that at all.

[Eric Kettenburg]

It is not up to any one of us to disprove the claim.  The ones that have put forth this claim are the ones that must prove it.  Personally, I don't think they have come anywhere near close to doing that at all.

On that one, I agree with you 100%.  But, I'm also not wiling to rule it out either.  Currently, it's just a loose theory with two very cool, obviously-associated guns.  Furthermore, Scott has put forth valid information which casts a fair degree of doubt upon the assumption that it was Paxinosa for whom Albrecht stocked a rifle, so this further throws a wrench into the works.

Once we've catalogued anything into a neat little box, it's psychologically very hard to extricate it and cast it loose to the wind once again!


 

[WESTbury]

An observation from somebody who does not have a dog in this fight. I've been following all the posts in this thread that began in Feb 2019 and an earlier thread that began in Nov 2017. At this point it appears that neither thread has definitely determined if Albrecht stocked the particular rifle for Paxinosa.

This whole subject reminds me of a friend who owned the Daniel Woolsey Long Land Bess. A Daniel Woolsey was said to have guarded a British Officer, Lt Daniel Taylor, that was carrying a message from General Clinton to Burgoyne in October 1777. This story is related in detail by Bill Ahearn in his book Muskets of the Revolution on page 47.

Anyway, it turns out there were three men named Daniel Woolsey from the same area of the Hudson Valley serving in the militia. I pointed this fact out to my friend and asked him how he was positive that the musket he had with Woolsey's name inscribed on the buttstock was in fact carried by the Daniel Woolsey that guarded Lt Taylor. His answer was quite brief. "Because I want it to be."

[rich pierce]

Exceptionally nice carving there.

The Albrecht/Paxinosa story is much more compelling than another early, unsigned, unattributable smooth rifle with a short sister gun but no other known relatives. Except of course the woodsrunner rifle which, I think, has a similar patchbox cavity construction. Is that enough?  Seems not to me.

[spgordon]

I just need to summarize an earlier part of this thread: the Albrecht/Paxinosa connection depends on a document from April 1754 in which a Shawnee chief remembers having his rifle stocked by Albrecht in 1752. We now know for a fact that that chief could not have been Paxinosa, as we know where Paxinosa was when the other Shawnee chief visited Shamokin and reminisced about having his rifle stocked by Albrecht. If that is not decisive evidence, I don't know what is. So, yes, we know for sure that Albrecht stocked a rifle for a Shawnee chief--but we don't know the name of that chief at present.

I entirely agree with Stophel when he says that "It is not up to any one of us to disprove the claim.  The ones that have put forth this claim are the ones that must prove it.  Personally, I don't think they have come anywhere near close to doing that at all." It is very frustrating when somebody tosses out an often-wild "hunch" and then expects it to stick unless others take the time and effort to disprove it. In this case, however, we have been able to disprove the claim.

Regarding styles: it seems unlikely to me that a customer would have cared about the stock architecture of a rifle. I may be wrong, of course. But is there any surviving evidence from the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries in which an individual even mentioned the shape of the stock? We do have surviving evidence (the Oerter letter) in which a maker describes other features of a rifle (double trigger, silver mountings, etc.). But any indication that any customer or maker paid attention to stock architecture?

[Eric Kettenburg]

Regarding styles: it seems unlikely to me that a customer would have cared about the stock architecture of a rifle. I may be wrong, of course. But is there any surviving evidence from the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries in which an individual even mentioned the shape of the stock? We do have surviving evidence (the Oerter letter) in which a maker describes other features of a rifle (double trigger, silver mountings, etc.). But any indication that any customer or maker paid attention to stock architecture?

No, but on the other hand, there absolutely had to be some level of interaction between a customer and a gunstocker, as while many guns can be generally stocked to suit the bell curve of people, there are always going to be outliers on both ends of the curve.  A guy who's 5'4 is going to need something very different in relation to a guy who's 6'.

Maker's must have paid attention to architecture, else nothing would ever have evolved!  Whatever Oerter learned from Albrecht prior to 1766, his rifles of the mid 1770s display a decided evolution toward a more streamlined style.  Following the War, that same style regionally evolves further into what is seen in the rifles of the Molls, Rupps, Neihart etc.  Something was driving it, and it must have to some extent been a mutual agreement between makers and buyers, else the customers wouldn't buy and the makers wouldn't make.

[spgordon]

Maker's must have paid attention to architecture, else nothing would ever have evolved!  Whatever Oerter learned from Albrecht prior to 1766, his rifles of the mid 1770s display a decided evolution toward a more streamlined style.  Following the War, that same style regionally evolves further into what is seen in the rifles of the Molls, Rupps, Neihart etc.  Something was driving it, and it must have to some extent been a mutual agreement between makers and buyers, else the customers wouldn't buy and the makers wouldn't make.

I was just wondering whether customers had anything to do with it. I guess human nature suggests that they must have. But maybe (as you sort of say here) the innovation occurred entirely on the side of the makers without any pressure/prompt from buyers? I'm just wondering--because there seems to be no evidence of anybody mentioning this stock architecture in the period itself. Maybe customers didn't register or care about the evolution in stock shape at all--or at least care enough to request something (as if they had our categories in their heads when they looked at a rifle).

[Eric Kettenburg]

I don't remember ever seeing anything in print (of the period).  The Oerter letter is probably about the closest thing.  I do agree, I sincerely doubt there were discussions occurring in terminology and/or depth of detail comparable to how we now would view them.  It may have been something as simplistic as just requesting a "new-style" rifle as opposed to an "old" rifle.

This doesn't really address why #19 and the shorty look like they do, and why they don't look like Oerter's later rifles (well, I should say 'assumed later') or the couple of rifles currently attributed to Albrecht.  I don't think there can really be an answer to that question currently, as there simply are no signed Albrecht rifles of the 1750s or 1760s to use as a basis for comparison.

[backsplash75]

snip...
Other than the Albrecht Lancaster gun, which was a wreck before restoration and basically a Dickert clone, what German-trained gunsmith made a variety of styles to suit customers?

Did Dickert?

Doesn't quite meet your criteria but Lancaster born John Newcomer springs to mind (his father was Swiss I believe- Hans NEUKOMMETT) as an 18th century gunsmith who worked in multiple stocking styles.

[Stophel]

Exceptionally nice carving there.

The Albrecht/Paxinosa story is much more compelling than another early, unsigned, unattributable smooth rifle with a short sister gun but no other known relatives. Except of course the woodsrunner rifle which, I think, has a similar patchbox cavity construction. Is that enough?  Seems not to me.

From what I can tell from photos I have of 19, the patchbox cavity has full dovetail rails in the sides.  It's just got a rounded bottom and open through the end of the butt.   The "woodsrunner gun" has just a round cavity.  As if a huge hole was drilled forward into the end grain of the butt (though wood is left at the rear of the cavity), with the hole exposed on the side of the stock by cutting down the flat surface for the box lid... if that makes sense.  It does not have "bottoms" to the "dovetails" in the stock.

[rich pierce]

Ahh, Chris, I was tongue in cheek. Sort of making the point that one detail alone does not a connection make.

[Stophel]

Hey, people have been attributing guns based on one little detail for a long time now!

At least they're not saying that 19 was made in Virginia... or by George Schroyer...

[B.Barker]

Customers must have had stock shape preferences by the 19th century. Just look at the different patterns that the fur companies had made to ship west. The JJ Henry English rifle had a fairly flat wide butt plate but the Lancaster pattern rifle had more crescent shaped butt plate. Stock shapes were different also, so customers must have had preferences when they were wanting a rifle or the fur company would have had just one pattern of rifle to sell. There were a lot of things that happened that weren't written down on paper and we can only speculate. While folks back then weren't exposed to as much as we are today they were still like us today for the most part. Some of us are more fussy about certain things than others are.