Guns in walls

[A.Merrill]

    Why did people put guns in the walls when they built their homes? I know of four that has been found while tearing down old houses.    AL

[Mike R]

Do you live north or south of the Mason-Dixon?   In the south some hid their guns from confiscation by the conquoring Union Army and vindictive Reconstuction governments.

[nord]

I can't answer but I can add...

I own a F&I map horn owned by one Ebenezer Seeley. It would appear that he was too old to serve in the Revolution but his sons did. After the war they moved up the Chemung valley with one brother settling in the Elmira area and the other in the Lawerenceville, PA area. Whether Ebenezer ever made it here I don't know, but I believe not.

In any case I happened on a Seeley family member and shared with him about the horn. He, in turn, told me what he knew of the family history and that the original homestead is standing today and still owned by the family. He further stated that family tradition maintains that somewhere hidden in a wall of the home lies the rifle used in the Revolution. Possibly Ebenezer's rifle or possibly something a bit later.

So many additions and changes to the home. Walls moved, closets or  covered over, and I believe a fireplace totally hidden if I recall correctly. Imagine (if it exists) having that gun within inches of you for years on end without knowing it's there.

[Fullstock longrifle]

I've heard several stories through the years of old guns being found hidden in the walls of an old house.  The best one was about a Patterson Colt that was packed in grease and wrapped in a rag.  Of course nobody had actually seen the Patterson, but they had heard about it.  I always chalked it up to being an urban myth.  I would be interested in hearing stories from people who have actually made such a discovery.

Frank

[Sequatchie Rifle]

My Father was involved in moving an old log house in Warren County, Tennessee in the early 1970's.  When they began disasembling it the found a Confederate Dispatch Pouch contain letters/reports and a Colt Pocket Model still loaded.  Our neighbor growing up found an old "muzzleloader" in his grandparents attic that was still loaded.

[Levy]

A number of years ago I had the opportunity to clean an 1860 Model Colt that was found in the walls of the St. Francis Inn in St. Augustine, FL.  It was still loaded and in the original holster.  it was completely seized up and had been coated many times with laquer by the finder.  I was able to free everything up and get it back into operating condition, but not firing condition.  It is now on display in the Museum of Florida History.  The State bought it.  A friend of mine was digging around in a collapsed barn and found a musket that was driven into the ground muzzle first by the collapse.  Half of all the firearms that have been brought into our Conservation lab have been loaded (including shipwreck cannons).  One cannon was loaded with a ball and a barshot.

James Levy

[woodsrunner]

James Levy has to have one of the most interesting jobs a firearms fancier could have! I always get a big "charge" out of going by and seeing him at the Lab!

When I was a kid growing up, my Grandfather who reared me had an old 1863 Springfield Musket converted to a trap door that he kept hidden under the floor boards in the attic. It was a rifle that his Father, a former battery captain in the Confederate Army, had taken from a Union soldier guarding a polling place in Barbour County, (Eufaula) Alabama during the Great Election Riot of 1872. My Grandfather considered it stolen US government property, and was afraid that he would get into trouble if it were ever found out....even as late as the 1960's! Unfortunately he died while I was out on the North Atlantic riding one of those long pointy things painted haze gray in the "Union Navy" and the old trap door disappeared before I could get home 

[projeeper]

back in 1962 my parents bought a house with a big coal furnace while helping my dad remove it at the age of 7 in the rafters he found 2 longrifles both were flint with the flints still in the hammers!
 what became of them?
 recently a friend of mine bought an old farmhouse in mecer county pa and found a trapdoor springfield and an engraved metal powder carrier in the cellar.oh it still had powder in it.
 years ago in the woods behind my dads camp in kelletville pa there was an old rifle in a fork of a tree that the tree had grown around and was about 15 feet up if it,s still there maybe i,ll take my grandson for a look see.

[Shreckmeister]

Maybe they were like me and had to hide them so they wouldn't have to
explain buying them to their wives.   More seriously, I think most were
hidden to prevent theft while the owner was away from premises, perhaps
used in a murder.  In other words there are probably a thousand reasons.
    My uncle bought an old farmhouse in Gastown PA.  Tucked in the rafters
were over 50 letters from a civil war soldier to his mother.  He let a "historian"  take them to look at and the magically disappeared.

[Tom Moore]

My aunt bought a house in San Diego and found an 1851 Foot Officers Sword in the attic. Sent it to my father and I still have it. He found a 1/2 full bottle of rum in the attic of our old house. I'm not sure which he liked better!!

[lexington1]

I bought an 1876 Winchester from an older gentleman who said that he had found it in a mine shaft here in the mountains in Montana in the 30's.  When I bought it, he had made it into a lamp by screwing the buttstock to a base and running a cord through the barrel with a lamp at the end 

[T*O*F]

The design of many of those old houses was such that the walls were accessible from the attic.  Guns could be lowered down into the walls from above and often had a cord attached to retrieve them.

Guys around here used to search old abandoned farm houses and such with metal detectors looking for "hits" within the walls and then recover the artifacts within.

[Al Lapp]

Quite a few years ago a fellow was tearing down a building in old china town and found a Colt Frontier six shooter (44 black powder model) wrapped in an oily rag on a beam in the basement. My friend got it. I should have bought it when I had the chance, but bought a U.S. colt s.a.a. built in 1875 (early). Couldn't afford them both at the time. That old colt had over 90 % finish. It went somewhere in the States.   Al

[keweenaw]

I put away a pair of binoculars for safe keeping when I was going to be away from home for some time.  Took years for me to find them - after I had bought a new pair to replace them.

[Dennis Glazener]

John Singleton Mosby was born in a home just up the road from where I now live. Several years ago the house was open for Garden Home week. A descendant was a docent there and told my wife and I that the home had been dissembled in order to move it to its present site. When this was done a full Union uniform was found between the floor boards of the first and second floor. It was assumed by the family to have been one that he wore on spy missions to the north.
Dennis

[realtorone]

The Colt Patterson posting caught my eye.Two partners Steve and ? have a Civil War Museum in Bardstown Ky.They had a Patterson,Rapped in grease and in a rag found in a log cabin wall.A gunsmith,whom some of you may know Lloyd Gammon,now deceased,who used to have the booth in the sheep shed next to Jim Johnson at Friendship had it "restoring it" when I saw it,and was told the story.
I also bought a 1836 waters converted with a drum,from a picker that was found in a house being renovated on Florida Street in Mobile Al. so it does happen
Hope a lot of others come to light

[mr. no gold]

And speaking of San Diego-a lady bought an early craftsman style house in the community of El Cajon 20 years ago. The house had a second floor and a sealed attic. When she finally entered the attic she found a large collection of antique guns which had been sealed up and left. I heard about the find too late as the collection had been taken up to Oregon and sold.
On another occasion a house was being demolished for freeway improvements in the town of Escondido and in a basement the workmen encountered a false wall. When they removed it they found a mint 1912 motorcycle; the owner, a young fellow, had placed it there to protect it until he came back from WWI. Unfortunately he was killed and the bike was forgotten until the freeway construction. Since the house had been purchased by the state, they owned the bike. Today it is exhibited in an automotive museum, still gloriously like new! There are a number of other finds that I have heard of, but these are probably the best that I know.
Dick

[WElliott]

There is a silver-mounted flintlock pistol in the museum of the Hermitage mansion on Nashville, Tennessee, which was found behind wall boards during renovation work on the house.  Interestingly, the pistol was clearly the work of master gunsmith Wiley G. Higgins of Georgia.  General (President) Andrew Jackson, who owned the Hermitage, was involved in campaigns against the Creek Indians in Georgia and the principal treaty with the Creeks was signed at Indian Springs, Georgia, in 1825- the period when the pistol was made.  Guess who was then a gunsmith in Indian Springs?  The journey of that pistol from Wiley Higgins' workshop to the inside of a wall at Andy Jackson's home would be interesting to know.

Wayne

[WElliott]

And, to follow up on what another commentator said above, journals, diaries and other sources record that lots of valuable items (including firearms) were hidden behind walls, under floorboards, under chicken coops, in the woods, and everywhere else imaginable during the invasion of the South in the 1860s. It is reasonable to assume that many were never recovered from their hiding place.

[j. pease]

I was building my first percussion gun as a teenager in the 1960's when my aunt asked if I would like an old gun that was found in the rafters of one of my uncles relatives from Posey County Indiana. I said sure and soon was given a first year production Henry rifle with the original soldiers name and unit engravered on the frame. I did not know what I had and was given several offers for the gun. I decided to keep it and still have the gun. Some of the first troops issued the Henry were from southern Indiana.

[Fullstock longrifle]

Wow J.pease, now that's a great story!   

[JCKelly]

My old recollection is, that in Pennsylvania at least, when building a new house, an old gun would be placed in the wall to protect the house. In Pennsylvania that would be from unspecified evil.

[Collector]

Things are found in the walls of old homes, quite frequently; most notably, childrens clothing and childrens shoes in homes dating back to the C.17th and C18th and on occasion, firearms.   A few that I can remember, off hand:

An old abandoned one story wood structure on a heavily wooded/swampy piece of land that we used to hunt rabbits on.   Local lore told of a unsolved murder happening at the house in the days before the CW.  Property owners went to tear it down and a local gun collector was there and found a beautiful (and loaded and capped-except for one barrel) pepperbox pistol inside one of the walls.   

Another one was a early colonial home on the North Shore of Long Island, which during updating, a musket with  Brown Bess architecture and a Dutch hallmarked brass/bronze barrel was found, along with a large antlered hafted knife and a War of 1812 Officers Commission, inside one of the interior walls, all in beautifully preserved condition.  I discussed this one with Earl Lanning who was tracking down people who may have come in contact with brass/bronze barreled longarms, at the time. 

And lastly my middle brother was helping my father do an interior inspection of our churches steeple (C.1854) and while climbing the ladder, high up and in front of my father, found a beautiful 1861 Springfield musket and a Springfield training rifle, with a wooden barrel. 

Just a note, in these older homes, walls were not built to any modern standards, as we know of them today.  Floor boards were usually continuous and the studs of interior wall were just toe nailed directly into the flooring, irregularly, sometimes as much as 3 feet apart, but the stud was also a full dimensional 2"X2" or as big as 3"X3".  Also, my 1854 row home in GA, has 4 foot spacing between the non-load bearing walls, so there was plenty of room to put things.  In fact, some years back, a couple was converting two adjoining row home for a Bed and Breakfast and in the course of making a passageway to join the interiors of the two properties (National Historic District) and tearing out an interior wall, found the mummified, fully clothed and outfitted remains of a Union soldier, between the walls.  The remains and artifacts were taken by GBI and after examination, given to a museum for disposition.  I imagine (speculate) the soldier had committed some offense upon a local and just didn't show up for the next roll-call.  Vigilanty justice?  Murder?  Self defense?  An accident?  Who knows.   But what we do know, somebody didn't want him found and he wasn't for about 100 years.   

I have a few more, but I'm already boring you.  These old homes/building have never ceased to surprise me for nigh on 55 years.   What's even more surprising, is that things are still being found today, pretty much for just a simple lack of curiosity over the years.       

[Ohiogunr]

Years ago in G&A or Shooting Times, I remember reading about a person who bought a farm house in Oklahoma I believe. The house's previous owners had died and the buyer got it lock stock and barrel. While cleaning out old trunks in the attic he came across an old Colt SAA. It was silver plated but mostly the plating had flaked off so he painted it black and nailed it to a piece of old barn siding and hung it on the wall. A few years later a friend noticed the gun and told him that if he would send 25 dollars and the serial number to Colt they would send him a letter of documentation showing who it was sent to originally as well as other specifics of it. He sent in the number and received a letter of congratulations from Colt, along with photo copies of the original order letter. Seems the gun he found was one of a set originally ordered by hand written letter by William B. Masterson (Bat!) Last I heard of this gun it sold at auction for several hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's the kind of bat I'd like to find in my attic!

[Whitedog]

Back in 1984, I worked with a 60 year old man who was known as "Trapper". He got the name when he used to trap for a living. We were doing some construction work for a company we worked for while discussing old guns and such. Trapper told me about a gun that he found hidden inside an outhouse of an old run down place he'd came upon while he was out snooping around in 1963 one day. He brought it in the next day for me to look at  It was a Pennsylvania Long Rifle with Henry Leman stamped on top of the barrel.  Trapper told me that he'd been thinking for twenty years that he should have the old broken stock that was missing about 17" of forearm thrown out and some new wood put on the barrel, lock and furniture so that he'd have an old gun to hang on his wall. The remains of the stock, although dried and colorless, was in pretty good shape except for a broken wrist that'd been repaired long ago with a copper band and the missing forarm wood, forend cap and upper thimble. The barrel was held onto the stock with a long piece of dried out surgical tubing wrapped around and around. The tang had been torn through one side from the tang screw hole outward, the trigger guard was twisted, The front sight blade was torn off the base leaving a little silver left to show what it'd been made of and the ramrod was missing. He gave the gun to me and said to keep it. I not only did, I had the missing wood replaced on the stock along with the missing forend cap and thimble. I carefully straightened out the trigger guard and  had another front sight blade put on the base. I carefully repaired the breech plug tang with a weld and it looks like it was never torn. I sure am glad that ol Trapper never replaced the original stock!