Ornate Stag head on the end of patch box

[roamer]

Last week I had the fortune of being shown a family heirloom by a client in Bolivar Ohio. Half stock caplock with a stag head at the end of the the patchbox.Should clarify the end nearest the lock. Were stags heads common.
I apologise for not being able to take a picture

[nord]

Best to show a photo as seeing is better than the best description. That being said I suspect an oval or round patchbox.

Stag heads in this later era were common. Northern PA guns, NY in both the Southern Tier and to the north, and Midwest guns seem to have shared this trait as a commonality.

[roamer]

Sorry for the slow reply,down all week with the most persistent flu of my life .101 fever for 3 days.
Was unable to get picture. Would you have any info on possible build dates,if it helps any she definitely was built as a cap lock

[nord]

Stags seemed to have become popular here in southern NY just before the start of the Civil War. I suspect a general fad as by that time travel was easy and quick almost anywhere between the Atlantic and the Mississippi. The stag head and the round or oval patchbox seem to have had an affinity for one another as they're more often seen together than not. Both items being commercially available.

As to possible lateness of manufacture there's not a lot to share. Ned Roberts speaks of such rifles being in general use decades beyond the Civil War. I believe it fair to say that by somewhere around 1875 we could say that manufacture of such rifles had all but ended.

[Curt J]

I respectfully disagree, when it comes to "about 1875" being a cut-off date for the manufacture of such rifles. I recently bought a very nice fullstock percussion rifle, by an Indiana maker, dated 1889, and an Iowa-made percussion schuetzen dated 1881.  I was also with a friend recently, when he bought an iron-mounted Tennesse rifle dated 1886, at an auction. Henry Goedeke, gunmaker in Olney, Illinois, didn't open his shop until 1873, yet his rifles are fairly common.  He is said to have still made a few muzzle-loading rifles for local customers as late as 1903. The era of "local gunmaker" didn't  end overnight, it was a slow and gradual thing.

[nord]

Curt,

We agree! I said "all but ended." Certainly the manufacture of these rifles continued after 1875. We could even extend that date well into the 1960's if we included such primitive makers as Hacker Martin.

All I'm saying is that the numerous individual makers had mostly gone the way of the dinosaur by the time a decade after the Civil War. I didn't mean to imply that none existed.

Best,

B

[Dr. Tim-Boone]

Interesting...... what is the dividing line between Hacker martin and custom builders today???  Seems to me the line continues.

[oakridge]

Wow! All these late makers, all the way up to Hacker Martin, were using "stag head" patch boxes? Amazing. Must have been mighty popular.

[nord]

Gentlemen,

I would deeply appreciate it if nothing was implied past what I stated.

By including Hacker Martin in the long line of builders I was by no means implying his use of a stag head or even an oval patchbox. I was, however, making the implication that the makers of a century and more ago are most certainly connected to the artisans of today!

My intent was to stress the fact that those in want or need of a firearm in 1870 had a very real choice between a Winchester, a Colt, or some such along that line, or possibly a custom firearm made by an artisan. Generally the cookie cutter won the day and the artisan was forgotten for the most part.

One of the things Fred (Hurricane) and I have stressed is the very real connection between makers of old and those of today. I brought up Hacker Martin for a reason in that he was an anachronism in terms of time. A man living in a day of the technology of placing a man on the moon, yet a man living a life largely unchanged from a time a century before.

So... A contemporary maker of antique rifles or an antique maker of contemporary rifles.

Which? Or possibly both.

[roamer]

UPDATE   the gun was apparently made by a, S. DAVIS in Cardington OH for a M.M. GRAY. The lock was made in Lancaster ,Oh