Dechard and Kutter rifles

[spgordon]

One thing I thought interesting: Why with Dickert's name being spelled out on the barrel, would the educated officers, that mentioned "Deckard" rifles, not know the difference in Dickert and Deckard.

Hold on, though! As far as we know, no educated or uneducated eighteenth century officer ever used the term "Deckard" rifle!! The first instance the term shows up--as far as we know now--is that 1853 Annals of Tennessee, right?

I would be happy to be corrected by further evidence, but I think you'll find that the first time "Colonel John Sevier" said that the battle of King's Mountain was won by men carrying "short Deckard rifles" was in a book published in the early twentieth century. My sense is that your correspondent has repeated this information from this twentieth-century text as if it was an accurate quotation from an eighteenth-century individual.

There are no eighteenth-century sources that we know of so far that use the term Deckard rifle. (Correct me if I am wrong.) The one that Dr. Whisker referenced turned out, actually, to use the term "dickert rifle."

It is easy to imagine that the stories of "Dickert" rifles being used during the 1780s could have been transformed, when put into print 70 years later, into "Deckard" rifles.

Draper's footnote was only repeating information from earlier texts, including the ones from 1869 and 1853 cited above, both of which suggest that Dickert in Lancaster was the maker of the rifles. (And note that in the very first instance, 1853, who says it is a Lancaster maker, also says that he has the very rifle in his possession: presumably he was reading the barrel?) The 1860 Harper's account proposed an alternate story about a Carolina maker. All of those suggestions come 70 or 80 years after the events described.

I look forward to further developments of this thread!

[Dennis Glazener]

I would be happy to be corrected by further evidence, but I think you'll find that the first time "Colonel John Sevier" said that the battle of King's Mountain was won by men carrying "short Deckard rifles" was in a book published in the early twentieth century. My sense is that your correspondent has repeated this information from this twentieth-century text as if it was an accurate quotation from an eighteenth-century individual.

I suspect you are right, I did not catch it.
Dennis

[T*O*F]

(And note that in the very first instance, 1853, who says it is a Lancaster maker, also says that he has the very rifle in his possession: presumably he was reading the barrel?)

However, in spite of the date, we do know several things.
1.  Ramsey's father settled and fought with Sevier and the other OverMountain men.
2.  Ramsey personally knew and interviewed the men in his book.  Word of mouth-yes, but still first hand accounts.
3.  Ramsey and Draper were correspondents; and much of the information in Draper's writings he got from Ramsey.
4.  Even though Ramsey's book was published in 1853, the information was gathered much earlier.  I seem to recall there were personal reasons why it took him so long.

[spgordon]

Ramsey's 1853 footnote definitely sounds the most confident about the information it offers: "It was so called from Deckhard, the maker, in Lancaster. Pa.  One of them is now in the possession of the writer." Ramsey states, that is, that he has evidence in his hands--the rifle itself, presumably with its barrel signature--that indicates a Lancaster maker.

Here's Simms's alternate account from 1860: "The Deckard rifle was named, we believe, from a famous maker of that region [the Carolinas]; it was the weapon most in use among the mountaineers of the South during the period of the Revolution. It is, perhaps, not so generally known that, along the dividing ridges of the two Carolinas, there have been manufacturers of the rifle famous for the excellence of this weapon from a very early period."