"Rev War rifle"

[WESTbury]

For those on this forum who subscribe to Man at Arms magazine, check out the newest issue, Feb 2020. Purported Rev War rifle with name stamped in the barrel. No documentation linking the rifle to the Rev War that I'm able to glean from the article. Maybe someone else can see something that I am missing. The lock appears to be English with a sliding safety.

However, it is an attractive rifle.

[JV Puleo]

I am fairly certain the name is engraved on the barrel. The lock does not appear to fit the mortice perfectly but it is tough to tell if that is because it was replaced or it's simply a matter of wear and hard use. It shows every indication of having had that lock for a very long time...the holes for the side nails aren't redrilled and the side plate appears unaltered. If original to the rifle, I suspect it was reused from a very good quality fowler. As far as the name on the barrel is concerned, I suspect it was the owner rather than the maker.

[Eric Kettenburg]

Can we elaborate here, short of posting photos?  Just looking at the description (i.e. the sliding safety), are we talking about the Tileston rifle?

[WESTbury]

Yes, the Thomas Tileston rifle.

Is there any published provenance?

[James Rogers]

That lock on the Tileston is almost identical to the lock on a silver mounted English fowling piece by Joseph Heylin from the late 1760s.

[Eric Kettenburg]

I'm fairly certain Merrill Lindsay mentioned the Tileston rifle in print at some point.  It's been known since at least the 1960s.  Lindsay pointed it toward a Massachusetts maker, mentioning Tilestons being south of Boston if I remember correctly.  Wallace has tried to place it in Virginia and I recall him mentioning Tilestons there as well.

Someone here may see this and may opt to post some photos. There are a lot of very good, high resolution photos of this rifle but I'm not involved in the "permission" string.  I have handled it when it had recently been auctioned and was at a KRA show in the early 2000s, and it sure does seem to be a really great early rifle.  It's definitely early.  The iron furniture on it is probably the most accomplished iron furniture I've ever seen on an American rifle - you would think you were looking at modern investment castings, it's that good and that comparable to brass furniture of the 1770-1780 period.  The lock is clearly a Brit lock of exceptional quality but I personally would question the originality to the rifle.  It's definitely been on the gun a very long time but it's ever so slightly mis-fit.  The pan fence is actually back behind the breech of the barrel.  Given the quality of the rifle, I have a hard time seeing it as being made that way as original work.  the barrel signature (stamped) and the 1773 date:  one can only wonder.  It certainly seems all original.  Some think the piece is a restock of lock and or barrel, some think it's all original, some think this or that.  It's always been a somewhat controversial piece.  Some portions of the furniture have a residue on them which appear as though they were coated with some type of black preservative, which I know Wallace has mentioned in regard to southern pieces being coated. Speaking for myself, there's not enough of it to make this determination and it could be simply severely oxidized oil.  I don't know.

I personally tend to take the gun, including signature and date, at face value albeit possibly with an early in-use lock replacement.  It's really an awesome rifle, and it does seem architecturally and stylistically to match the 1773 date.

The carving around both sides of the comb matches almost identically one of the New England fowlers in Grindslades book, as in "same carver" identical, which lends a lot toward the long history of a New England provenance.

[WESTbury]

Thanks for all your insightful observations Eric.

[galudwig]

If anyone is interested, the Thomas Tileston Rifle was also featured on the cover of the December, 2015 issue of Muzzle Blasts magazine with an accompanying article by John Kolar. One of my favorite rifles, for sure!.

[HIB]

Gentlemen,  The Thomas Tileston rifle was displayed by the Kentucky Rifle Foundation at the NRA  national meeting, Phoenix 2009.
At the time the gun was owned by Richard Zeschke. The gun was supported by a Rev War era document indicating Tileston was a gunsmith under contract to the newly formed USA government. The document and the gun itself won a coveted 'One of Ten Best' NRA silver coins.
I would expect the silver NRA award and the framed Tileston document to still be with the rifle.
Perhaps the document will help shed some light on the above questions.   Regards, HIB 

[Eric Kettenburg]

It would be wonderful if someone has definitively placed Tileston, as the maker of the piece has been located up and down the east coast from Mass. to SC!  It's such a unique rifle.

[WESTbury]

Were I to see another rifle like this one, with out any identifying tag attached to it, on a table at a gunshow, my initial speculation would be that it was possibly an early New England Rifle with a replaced lock and a barrel stamp that was added by an owner, at some point in time, to make the rifle appear to be something it was not.

As we all know, Joe Kindig Jr expressed his opinion, in his book on Golden Age rifles, that "many early dates have been added to Kentuckys to entice collectors".--Thoughts on the Kentucky Rifle in its Golden Age Annotated Third Edition, page 38

Reading some of the posts made over the years concerning this particular rifle on the ALR Forum, it is evident that many questions have not yet been answered. It is possible that no definitive answers will ever be found.

[rich pierce]

For me, the gun has no near relatives. First, the fine iron furniture. Was it imported or crafted here?  If crafted here, why do we not see anything similar?  Second, the idea that it was made in New England at a time when almost no rifles were made there makes that an unusual event, if so. Of course unusual events happen every day.

The carving and architecture draw no connections to other rifles, for me. We could all concoct a story but one’s as good as another. Would like to have that article. 

I’m not inferring at all that there is anything spurious about it. Can’t confirm or deny that, obviously. Instead I’m ok with it being a mystery rifle, even if it’s tied to a place and maker and the mystery is why it’s a one-off.

[Eric Kettenburg]

I took a look and found the fowler I was thinking about:  it's the piece numbered NE-46 dated 1801 in Grinslade's book.  Sure looks (to me) like the same guy carved both.

[WESTbury]

To Eric's point, there is an article in the Nov/Dec 1982 issue of Man at Arms Magazine, Observations on the New England Flintlock Rifle by Don Andreason that has a brief reference to the Tileston Rifle. Andreson writes that, in his opinion, this rifle was made by Holbrook of Sherborn Mass. The NE 46 fowler, as well as N45 in Grinslade's book, are attributed to Holbrook.

In a presentation to the ASAC, Al Thompson states that both Lemuel Leland and John Mason "probably apprenticed with Holbrook". Both Leland and Mason made rifles. That might lead one to speculate (perhaps wild speculation at best) that one of them is the source of the Tileston rifle. It's as good a story as any for this rifle, pending more definitive information.

The iron furniture, "mixed" design characteristics of the rifle and lack of documented provenance, all previously noted in this thread, are in my opinion, the fly in the ointment.

[Elnathan]

Just to throw out another bit of chum into the water:

IIRC, I believe that I was told a couple years ago that the then-current owner had located a Thos. Tileston in South Carolina. A South Carolina piece made locally for a wealthy (and possibly eccentric) plantation owner made sense to me - the iron mounts are analogous to the kind of iron and steel mounts found on high-end European guns, and the decoration and high-end lock would also fit the idea of a  longrifle made to fit the aesthetic sensibilities of someone used to high-end British pieces.

As for the presence of rifles in the SC Tidewater area, William Dobein James's biography of Francis Marion mentions their use by some of his band. Since the author was himself one of Marion's partisans, albeit writing many decade later from memory, I think that "rifles" probably can be taken to mean rifles, not generic shoulder arms.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has heard this theory.

[rich pierce]

I’ve heard that hypothesis. If there are New England fowling pieces by the same or similar hand, until something similar shows up in SC, I’d lean northeast.

Of course I’m from the northeast so there’s probably some inherent bias there.

[JV Puleo]

Gentlemen,  The Thomas Tileston rifle was displayed by the Kentucky Rifle Foundation at the NRA  national meeting, Phoenix 2009.
At the time the gun was owned by Richard Zeschke. The gun was supported by a Rev War era document indicating Tileston was a gunsmith under contract to the newly formed USA government. The document and the gun itself won a coveted 'One of Ten Best' NRA silver coins.
I would expect the silver NRA award and the framed Tileston document to still be with the rifle.
Perhaps the document will help shed some light on the above questions.   Regards, HIB

I believe the document in question says that Thomas Tileston sold a rifle to the government. It doesn't say he made it...this may be the very rifle.

[WESTbury]

Most arms and equipment procured by the fledgling U.S. Government during and after the Rev War, were stamped and/or branded with the "US" property mark and some form of "USTATES".

[JV Puleo]

Yes, but they did that because so many of them were going missing so it stands to reason that a significant number were not marked. I'm very skeptical of surcharges.... good friend, now gone twenty years, once told me that he spent years trying to find a surcharged musket (this would have been in the 40s and early 50s). They were very rare although he did eventually get one. With the advent of the re-enactor movement and vastly increased values of surcharged muskets, the markings are now fairly common.

There is also some evidence that most of the surcharging was done after the war when the guns were turned in...so anything that wandered off during the war was much less likely to have been marked.

[WESTbury]

Yes very true, many, possibly a few thousand were taken before Washington's order to mark the arms was actually circulated to all units in the field. And, you are right many were marked after the War in the various repositories in which they were stored. The French had supplied in excess of 100k muskets and I doubt that half were marked "US" and/or "USTATES" during the war.

As you are well aware, there is to this very day, controversy as to the size of the "US" letters stamped into the lockplates and barrel breech as to when they were stamped.

Attached are photos showing what are considered to be "war time" surcharges.