Schoharie "parts musket" or militia musket

[rich pierce]

This is a musket of the sort often mistakenly called “Committee of Safety” muskets.  I’d prefer  to call it a “militia musket”.  Stocked in maple, it has a sheet-metal, engraved buttplate that has broken at the heel, indicating long service.  This buttplate is not dissimilar to at least one form of "Type G" English trade gun buttplate in size and form.  But it could also be a narrowed-down sheet brass early Hudson Valley fowler buttplate, as these were often made of sheet brass.  I could not get views of the sideplate side of the gun, but would be delighted if it had a flat dragon sideplate.  Currently the gun has the percussion ignition system.  It was clearly a flintlock initially, with a large (about 6” long) robust Germanic flat-faced lock that may be from a Dutch musket such as were procured during the French and Indian War, or may just be a musket-sized Germanic lock of common quality.  The barrel is round, about 12 ga, and has a wedding band transition.  The stock has little to no comb where it meets the wrist and is unadorbed with carving or decoration.  A plain brass thumb-piece of sheet brass is present.  Notably the guard is of cast brass but lacks the normal long “tail”; the rear extension is shorter than the front one and may have come from a Dutch fowler or musket.  The disparate parts assembled in a plain maple stock may identify the gun as a “parts gun” constructed partly of re-cycled parts from old guns.  I can easily picture a Revolutionary War Schoharie settler mustering up for militia duty with this in hand, and passing it down to sons and grandsons who probably hunted small game and deer with it until cartridge shotguns became the norm in the 1880's or even later in the back hills surrounding the valley.  In the bottom photo here, the muzzle of this gun is the lower one.  It looks abruptly shortened to qualify the musket for bayonet use.

[ottawa]

thats the first convert ive seen with the pan still on they wernt cutting corners making that one into  a  cap gun

[Mike Brooks]

OK, here's my take on it and I may be full of BS...not often I admit that....
 It's Prussian and stocked in beech or birch, I lean toward birch and not stocked in colonial America, It's a Euro gun. The Buttplate and trigger guard match well in style. The trigger guard grip rail length is odd, but I have seen weirder things....

[rich pierce]

Cool hypothesis.  Would cheap Prussian muskets have been imported in some numbers and traded through Albany, etc?  Dumb question:  In the 18th century, Prussia as you're using it would not extend west into the Palatinate, right?  Just thinking about the German Palatines, many of whom settled into the Schoharie Valley.

[Mike Brooks]

Ol' Benny Franklin bought boat loads of surplus muskets for the revolution, but I'm not sure if there would have been any Prussian muskets in that deal. It could very well be that Liege was making muskets for the Prussians (maybe the reason for the el cheapo looks of this one) and this could have been at Liege when franklin was wheeling and dealing for muskets. I'm thinking this is more a military gun rather than a gun for civilian use of trade of any kind. All just speculation on my part, but this doesn't have a Colonial American "feel" to me.