Guns in 1752 PA

[DaveM]

When I came across this note I thought some of you may be interested. 

Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette reported on a birthday celebration for King George II of Great Britain in Reading PA on Nov. 10, 1752:  "The citizenry celebrated at noon by drinking to the health of the sovereign and firing 21 guns, on drinking his royal highness the Prince of Wales 19 guns, in memory of the pious founder the Honorable proprietors , their ladies and offspring 17 guns..all things were conducted with great decency and order."

It's interesting that these were ordinary citizens in peacetime, many fresh off the ship from Europe, and the town had the first homes built in 1751-1752 but they apparently had at least a few guns ( unless they had one poor guy reload 57 times ).  There were only about 135 adult males in the town as of this date.

I also thought it was interesting that King George II was German, born in Hanover Germany in 1683.

[Fullstock longrifle]

Interesting information Dave, thanks for posting.
Frank

[Chris Treichel]

Pennsylvania is actually one of the odd colonies out of the rest of them as it concerns militia acts.  Most states required all able bodied land owning men to own a firearm and a sidearm as well as a certain amount of powder, ball and carriage for such arms and it was against the law for that person to leave the state with that firearm or cause it to be sold outside of that state.  Anyone not able to provide for their own would be issued one... Anyone who showed up for militia turnout without their required equipment was fined. 

Pennsylvania, as it was founded by Quakers passed and repealed many militia acts starting in the 1600s.
1682
that every person who can bear arms from 16 to 60 years of age be always provided with a convenient proportion of powder and bullet for service for their Mutual Defence, upon a penalty for their neglect . . . . That the quantity of powder and shot . . . be at least one pound of powder and 2 pounds of bullet. And if the Inhabitants . . . shall not be found sufficiently provided with arms, His Royal Highness the Governor is willing to furnish them.

http://www.constitution.org/jw/acm_3-m.htm#N_4_


http://www.claytoncramer.com/primary/militia/PA1756MilitiaLaw.pdf

[Majorjoel]

Thanks for posting this very interesting info! Like Gun Control in reverse.........just what we need these days!

[Dennis Glazener]

Anyone not able to provide for their own would be issued one... Anyone who showed up for militia turnout without their required equipment was fined. 

I visited the Citie of Henricus (1611) and noticed a Doctor in Mount Malady Hospital ( http://www.henricus.org/aboutus/mount-malady.asp ) wearing a pistol around in the Hospital. I asked him about it and he said all male citizens were required to be armed at all times. I guess in case of Indian attack.
Dennis

[tom patton]

In the 17th and on into the 18th century the term "gun" usually referred to cannon rather than small arms although I have seen it used in referrence to muskets.  The terms "riffles and riffle guns" were also commonly found in referring to rifles.

Tom Patton

[spgordon]

In the 17th and on into the 18th century the term "gun" usually referred to cannon rather than small arms

I'd not encountered this claim before--the term gun not only could refer to cannon but that it usually did.

What is the evidence for this?

Scott

[Chris Treichel]

Ditto on the gun issue. Guns are light field pieces and go with the Infantry... Cannons go with the Artillery.

[fm tim]

Can not find good reference, but I believe early hand "Cannon" was called a Hand Gonne

[kentucky bucky]

We don't think about who one of their biggest threats was in the early colonist's mind. Alot of the defense thinking was not only against Native Tribes, but against Spain. At Jamestown and surrounding forts, they aimed their cannon out to the waterways in case of Spanish invasion. I wonder how long this mindset lasted?

[Chris Treichel]

That mindset lasted until we acquired Florida 1821 from the Spanish...

[tom patton]

Ditto on the gun issue. Guns are light field pieces and go with the Infantry... Cannons go with the Artillery.

Chris,If I might clarify my post on the term "gun",it was probably most widely used to refer to cannon found on warships,which were usually referred to by the number of their cannon ie; 44 guns on smaller warships such as frigates or 66 guns on a ship of the line.
Daniel Kliest was the resident gunsmith in Bethlehem,Pa. in the mid 1750's and there is a great deal of information available on the work he did on weapons and a variety of other articles needing his attention.He both repaired and stocked/restocked various firearms.Most of these weapons were apparently smooth bored and consisted of trade guns and militia muskets.A few of the weapons were apparently rifles and were identified as such.On August 11 1757 he charged 7 shillings and 6 pence for,
       " Cutting over a rifle,making a breech pin,mending the stock and the lock ...mending a gun lock....and cleaning the barrel,stocking a gun,making a breach plate,& repairing a rifle with 2 barrels and mending the locks."

There are several other references to "rifles" which were differentiated from "guns"the latter being most likely smooth bore weapons

See "MEMORIALS OF THE MORAVIAN CHURCH V1{1870}, edited by William C. Reichel
Tom Patton

[flintriflesmith]

I believe the reference to firing salutes 21 guns, 19 guns, etc. probably refered to what we would loosely call cannon. Philly was a sea port and there were lots of ship mounted guns available for the celebration.

Someone asked abou why Tom thought gun referred to mounted pieces and here are some typical quotes from the 17 to 19th centuries. They are from the Oxford English Dictionary to show how the word gun was used.

1692   Smith's Sea-mans Gram. ii. xviii. 128   Gunners do allow three Ounces of Powder for every hundred Weight of Metal in Iron Guns: and Four Ounces..in Brass Guns.
1712   W. Rogers Cruising Voy. 14   A Frigate built Ship of 22 Guns.
1841   M. Elphinstone Hist. India II. x. ii. 407   He mounted a battery of ten guns on a high and solid mound of earth.
1852   Tennyson Ode Wellington 97   He that gain'd a hundred fights, Nor ever lost an English gun.
1858   W. Greener Gunnery in 1858 60   The guns of the British nation may be divided into four classes—Park, or Field artillery, Siege guns, or battering train, garrison guns, and marine artillery.

Gary

[spgordon]

Well, sure, a gun could refer to a cannon--as in a "battery of ten guns" or the armaments fired in a 21-gun salute.

But this isn't what Tom asserted. He wrote: "In the 17th and on into the 18th century the term 'gun' usually referred to cannon rather than small arms."

That doesn't seem accurate at all to me. But if I'm wrong, I'd like to know it, and so asked for any evidence for this claim--again, not that the word gun was used to describe cannons (which nobody would quarrel with) but that, when the word gun was used in the 17th and 18th centuries, it "usually" meant cannons.

[tom patton]

I thought that I covered that question in my cite from the Moravian material but here's another source.Torsten Lenk's monumental work,"THE FLINTLOCK" remains a prime source for 17th and 18th century European flintlock firearms and French weapons in particular.As in England French rifled weapons were rare since these countries unlike the Germanic,Swiss and other central European cultures were not rifle oriented.I cannot recall ever seeing any terms in Lenk to denote small arms  other than "guns"There may be a few instances of such use but I don't recall one.

I agree with Gary's excellent post and appreciate his addition to this thread.

Now to change the thread somewhat, the Moravian material has has a wealth of material on everyday life and the material culture in mid 18th century Bethlem.It isn't limited to firearms. The accounts of the Moravians to their commissioners takes up 37 pages of what was made,sold eaten fed, and used.One entry ,however, has puzzled me no end.Daniel Kliest in August 1757 stocked a gun and the job included "making a brass attire" Maybe someone can enlighten me as to what constitutes a "brass attire" {P.338} on a what is surely a smoothbore gun or musket.I would really want to know.

[DaveM]

Tom, maybe brass attire meaning brass furniture?

[DaveM]

Gary, are you saying that the people in Reading used ships cannons for their celebration and not small arms?

[tom patton]

Tom, maybe brass attire meaning brass furniture?

No,Dave because in April 1757{P.299} Kliest charged one pound for stocking a rifle gun and one pound for new brass mountings

And in July of the same year he charged one shilling for making 2 new brass loops ,probably meaning rammer pipes.
Tom Patton 

[spgordon]

On August 11 1757 he charged 7 shillings and 6 pence for,
       " Cutting over a rifle,making a breech pin,mending the stock and the lock ...mending a gun lock....and cleaning the barrel,stocking a gun,making a breach plate,& repairing a rifle with 2 barrels and mending the locks."

There are several other references to "rifles" which were differentiated from "guns"the latter being most likely smooth bore weapons

Fair enough: "rifle" was (often) specified when the gun was something other than a smooth bore. But this is a far cry from the proposition that, when the word "gun" appears in an eighteenth-century record, it usually meant "cannon."

That said: I don't think we know that the scribes who recorded these accounts were consistent--that is, we cannot know that when they used "gun" they always meant a smooth bore, differentiated from a rifle. It's clear from those very records that "gun lock" referred to a lock on a rifle as often as it did to a lock on a "gun" (presumably a smooth bore), as in this entry: "cutting over a rifle, mending the gun lock..."  So that particular lock was on a "gun" that was, actually, a rifle.

Not sure what "attire" means in that Moravian record. Having spent the better part of the last few years reading original Moravian documents, I can only say that the transcriptions even of records originally written in English --whether published in their own Memorials or in the Pennsylvania Archives or elsewhere--can be inaccurate. It'd be interesting to see the original record to see if, perhaps, the transcription is a bit off and what was recorded as "attire" actually says something different.

[Eric Kettenburg]

Have no idea if it is relevant or not to the discussion of "attire", but I have seen three ca. 1760-1780 period smoothbores of PA origin with barrels that were covered on the top half with very thin brass - almost foil like - that was tinned or sweated on.  I imagine this was done as a corrosion inhibitor, and given that most of the brass was still present, it would seemingly have been effective.  Two of the barrels were very roughly forged underneath, possibly American make rather than imports, so

[LynnC]

I agree that the original post referring to guns meant cannon and that is the common way to refer to cannon.

Rifles are referred to as rifles, agreed.

If "gun" does not also commonly refer to the a shoulder fired weapon, what was the common term of the day?

The Indians were armed with (fill in the blank).  The settlers were armed with (fill in the blank).

Help me get my period terminology correct  

[spgordon]

If "gun" does not also commonly refer to the a shoulder fired weapon, what was the common term of the day?

Gun does commonly refer to a shoulder-fired weapon. So does rifle. So does arm. In the Moravians' accounts with the Commissioners that Tom Patton referred to, Bethlehem's gunsmith is repairing small arms--which he refers to as guns or rifles. (He is not repairing cannons.)

I would say that, if one sees "gun" in an eighteenth-century record, one cannot know whether it refers to a rifle or a musket, though it is more likely that it meant the latter than the former. If somebody writes that a group of men showed up with twenty guns, one cannot assume they were all muskets or smooth bore weapons; the writer (or speaker) may have just been using the term "gun" as a catch-all term for shoulder-fired weapons.

[Chris Treichel]

Interesting switch to the topic...

So looking through some period documents the term gun seems to used kind of here nor there.
I see firelock, rifle, musket, arms, guns, cannons, fowlers mentioned.


Virginia militia acts 1757 firelock, arms 1777 firelock, arms

March 1775
That every man be provided with a good rifle, if to be had, or otherwise with a common firelock, bayonet, and cartouch box, and also with a tomahawk, one pound of gunpowder, and four pounds of ball at least, fitted to the bore of his gun; that he be clothed in a hunting shirt, by way of uniform: and that all endeavour, as soon as possible, to become acquainted with the military exercise for infantry appointed to be used by his Majesty in the year 1764.

Pennsylvania 1700 in a law against Slaves holding arms mentions "guns and fowling pieces"

Virginia Gazette Oct 16 1775 These brave young Officers, at the head of their men, without the least cover or breast-work, on the open shore, stood a discharge of 4 pounders, and other cannon, from a large schooner commanded by Captain Squire himself, and from a sloop and two tenders, which played on them with all their guns, swivels, and muskets.