Author Topic: John Newcomer  (Read 19779 times)

Offline Jim Kibler

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4283
    • Personal Website
Re: John Newcomer
« Reply #25 on: February 11, 2011, 02:59:46 AM »
Jim Chambers has a kit which is reported to be based on the newcomer gun in the DeWitt Bailey museum.  That gun in the museum was a mind bender to me. alll of the guns I had seen before were 10-12 lb pieces of timber and this rifle is grqaacceful and really!!! slender. I think one of the prettiest I have seen in terms of architecture.
http://www.flintlocks.com/rifles03.htm

Do you mean the Dewitt Wallace Gallery in Williamsburg?

Offline Dr. Tim-Boone

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *
  • Posts: 6534
  • I Like this hat!!
Re: John Newcomer
« Reply #26 on: February 11, 2011, 04:53:12 PM »
Jim Chambers has a kit which is reported to be based on the newcomer gun in the DeWitt Bailey museum.  That gun in the museum was a mind bender to me. alll of the guns I had seen before were 10-12 lb pieces of timber and this rifle is grqaacceful and really!!! slender. I think one of the prettiest I have seen in terms of architecture.
http://www.flintlocks.com/rifles03.htm

Do you mean the Dewitt Wallace Gallery in Williamsburg?

Yeah.... I do.... but I am just gettin old .....and thats double tuff when you are naturally slow.........


Loco, I know what you mean... I have to build my take on this rifle someday...it just keeps coming back
« Last Edit: February 11, 2011, 04:56:14 PM by DrTimBoone »
De Oppresso Liber
Marietta, GA

Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others. – William Allen White

Learning is not compulsory...........neither is survival! - W. Edwards Deming

Bob Smalser

  • Guest
Re: John Newcomer
« Reply #27 on: February 14, 2011, 06:13:53 AM »
I always found it interesting that "pacifist" Moravian Andreas Albrecht's Lion and Lamb rifle, made in a Moravian compound, was made to mount a bayonet.



There are no subtleties about a bayonet, eh?
« Last Edit: March 07, 2024, 06:12:31 AM by rich pierce »

Offline Karl Kunkel

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 958
Re: John Newcomer
« Reply #28 on: February 14, 2011, 06:29:50 AM »
I'm sure others more knowledgeable will reply, but I don't think the "Lion & Lamb" rifle was originally made to mount the bayonet.  I think the forestock was cut back to accomodate mounting a bayonet.  The forward ramrod pipe was also apparently changed out to permit use of an iron military type ram rod.
Kunk

Offline spgordon

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1283
Re: John Newcomer
« Reply #29 on: February 14, 2011, 08:11:13 PM »
Yes, the text (on the page previous to the one Bob pictured) notes that "this rifle was shortened, both barrel and stock, so that it could accommodate a British...bayonet and and iron military-style ramrod" (p. 56).

My own opinion is that, were this bayonet original to the rifle, that would be good evidence to dispute its attribution to Albrecht or any Moravian maker in the 1760s or 1770s.

Scott
Check out: The Lost Village of Christian's Spring
https://christiansbrunn.web.lehigh.edu/
And: The Earliest Moravian Work in the Mid-Atlantic: A Guide
https://www.moravianhistory.org/product-page/moravian-activity-in-the-mid-atlantic-guidebook

Offline Stan

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 594
    • stanhollenbaughgunsmith.com
Re: John Newcomer
« Reply #30 on: February 14, 2011, 09:42:30 PM »
The Moravians were building muskets for the military during the Rev. war!

Offline spgordon

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1283
Re: John Newcomer
« Reply #31 on: February 14, 2011, 10:29:46 PM »
Certainly there was some repairing of muskets going on at Christian's Spring, as Bob Lienemann's introduction to the Moravian Gunmaking book makes clear, and work done explicitly for neighboring County Committees (which had to be preparing/repairing guns for troops going to war). And, in Lancaster, some Moravian gunsmiths agreed to make muskets instead of rifles.

But it is important to keep the circumstances as complicated as they actually were: the Moravian church in Bethlehem, which closely governed Nazareth and Christian's Spring, insisted on a position of non-involvement, forbade church members from serving in militias or taking Pennsylvania's Test Act or serving in public office, and (at times) said that even paying for substitutes for militia service was inappropriate. The church rebuked individuals like William Henry for his public service (at the same time that the church benefited from his lack of obedience when, in public office, Henry used his influence to protect the church). The church's position--refusing to entangle itself in the dispute between Britain and America--nearly led to the loss of all its property in Pennsylvania. The church's petitions to the PA legislature, begging for help, never mentioned gunsmithing services on behalf of the Revolutionary cause.

All of this is to say that, while to us it must seem like their gunsmith work involved them in the Revolutionary cause, to them it must have looked differently. It is one thing for individual gunsmiths in Lancaster to make muskets: the Lancaster congregation had many "disobedient" Moravians such as Henry. But Christian's Spring, a gunshop "run" by the church, is another matter. Perhaps they rationalized that "fixing" muskets ("parts / accessories for 57 muskets" listed in the May 1777 inventory) differed from undertaking a military contract (or making rifles with bayonets)? Or else how would they have explained to themselves what to us looks like "involvement" or "entanglement," like the "taking of sides," which in all other public and private utterances they strictly avoided?

Scott
« Last Edit: February 14, 2011, 10:33:07 PM by spgordon »
Check out: The Lost Village of Christian's Spring
https://christiansbrunn.web.lehigh.edu/
And: The Earliest Moravian Work in the Mid-Atlantic: A Guide
https://www.moravianhistory.org/product-page/moravian-activity-in-the-mid-atlantic-guidebook