It's not often you can trace the movements of a rifle, let alone a Christian Oerter rifle. But last week I stumbled across these receipts preserved at the PA state archives in Harrisburg:
These documents show that a "Bethlehem made Rifle inlaid with Silver Wire" was purchased by Paul Zantzinger to outfit his company after it had been ordered to deploy to New Jersey in July 1776. Zantinger bought this rifle from Benjamin Barr: that is, this is the
same rifle that Christian Oerter sent to Lancaster County in 1773 (see
Kentucky Rifle Bulletin 38, no. 1 [2011]: 1-6). The rifle probably doesn't survive--but luckily a letter, which accompanied the rifle, does. On its reverse the letter had a notation ("This voucher was to shew what B. Barr paid for his Rifle") that led me to speculate, a decade ago, that the rifle had been repossessed from Barr as part of the effort to disarm non-associators in Lancaster County. Turns out that it was purchased from him.
So this rifle was made in Christiansbrunn; sent in September 1773 to Lancaster County; purchased by Captain Paul Zantzinger in July 1776; and carried by an unknown soldier to war in New Jersey.
What happened next is anybody's guess!
