late use of muzzleloaders

[leviathan]

Can anyone tell me how late into the 20th century were muzzleloaders used in the southern Appalachians? I have heard stories about many of these mountain people refusing to give up on the old ways and guns and still used them well into the early 1900s to earlt 1940's. Any help will be appreciated.

[iloco]

I have one that was used in the 1930's.  The rifle was a flinlock that has been converted to percussion.
 It was a fullstock but barrel has been cut back and it now is a halfstock.
My grandfather owned the rifle.  He traded it in the 40's to a neighbor for a fox hound.   I bought it from my neighbors son after his passing.
 Its a 30 caliber with the bore being way off center.  Now its a wall hanger that I am proud of because I know the history of the gun.   I do not know the maker of the old rifle.

[Bob Roller]

Can anyone tell me how late into the 20th century were muzzleloaders used in the southern Appalachians? I have heard stories about many of these mountain people refusing to give up on the old ways and guns and still used them well into the early 1900s to earlt 1940's. Any help will be appreciated.

Get a copy of Walter Cline's book "The Muzzle Loading Rifle,then and now".I know he was an active adult in the 1920's and 30's and he speaks of Tennessee bear hunts with L.G."Daddy"Moore inthat time frame. Cline Died in 1940.According to E.M.Farris he had a brain tumor and shot himself with a muzzle loader.
The muzzle loader never did die out entirely but like other things,it fell out of favor.

Bob Roller

[tuffy]

You can also buy the Foxfire 5 book and it has a section on muzzleloaders in Appalachia. I highly recommend the entire series if you are interested in Southern Appalachia. You can find the book at Amazon.com or at this link:
 http://www.foxfire.org/foxfire5.aspx

                 CW

[Hungry Horse]

 My grandad and his brothers hunted with muzzleloaders in Missouri, before, and during, the first world war. Grandpa said they didn't own a cartridge rifle at the time. Just two muzzleloaders, one squirrel caliber, and one larger for deer.

      Hungry Horse

[leviathan]

Thanks for all the help guys. It really helps. any more info will be greatly appreciated!

[Majorjoel]

I just read Walter Clines book a couple of weeks ago. It was quite a surprise and a shock about how Mr. Cline died. The book made it sound like he accidently shot himself in the heart while loading his cap lock muzzle loader at home before going out shooting with his friends. He was home alone when this occurred except for a maid who found him.  I had a hard time believing the story that has been told.

[Bob Roller]

I just read Walter Clines book a couple of weeks ago. It was quite a surprise and a shock about how Mr. Cline died. The book made it sound like he accidently shot himself in the heart while loading his cap lock muzzle loader at home before going out shooting with his friends. He was home alone when this occurred except for a maid who found him.  I had a hard time believing the story that has been told.

Majorjoel,
E.M.(Red)Farris knew Walter Cline and they were long time friends. He told me that shortly before his death,Cline stopped in Portsmouth,Ohio to visit and as long as he was talking he was OK.If he wasn't talking he got bad headaches from the brain tumor that afflicted him.
Cline's death was no accident.Farris told me about it and I remember our conversation like it was this morning.In the late 1930's and on into the 40's,little was known about cancer and treatment was guesswork at best.I had an aunt that died from what was probably colorectal cancer in 1943 and not knowing a thing about it her doctors told her " We'll keep an eye on it".I think back then they didn't know if the word was spelled with a "C"or a "K".
 Bob Roller

[WElliott]

The tradition continued fully until WWI. And, in a sense, never died out because the tradition continues today among the descendants of those old timers. In the 1970s, I learned to make Southern mountain rifles (with mediocre results, because of my lack of ability) from an older man who had learned from his uncle, who was a gunsmith who had worked making muzzleloaders in north Georgia during the early 20th century.

[BOB HILL]

I once cleaned up an old half stock  20 ga. fowler for a friend from Maine.I asked him where he had got the gun and he told he had met a young boy in the woods in Maine many years ago hunting with it . He asked who  his father was and either traded a new gun or the price of a new gun for it. I don't recall which.       Bob

[Mike R]

In the 1950s I spent some time in both the Tenn and Ark "mountains" and found some folks still using the old family "hog rifles" and squirrel rifles, but many had switched to cartridge guns by then.  You'd see a fellow on the road toting a longrifle in the back woods, but another place you'd spot one with a single shot mail order shotgun--alot of the old timers bought single shot cartridge shotguns as their main hunting gun because they were "cheap" and alot faster to load and reload than the single shot MLers they grew up with.  On the other hand they required access to cartridges [stores].  The better off folks who hunted big game [which had disappeared in wide areas of the south by the early 1900s] had Winchester lever guns, but their neighbor might go along after deer or bear with his MLer.  In Arkansas, where my ancerstors settled in the 1800s, most 20th century hunters went after small game as the deer and bear were scarce.  The modern shotgun and .22 were king by the 1920s except in the most backwoods places.  My family's MLers have all disappeared and my Granddaddy left me a 12 gauge auto shotgun he acquired in the early 1900s {Rem Mod 11}. But on trips into the 1950s Ozarks we'd still see longrifles in use.  I spent a summer helping out a minister at Pittman Center in the Great Smokies in about 1959 and remember at least one hillman on the trail with a longrifle in hand.  Yet an old widow lady in the way backwoods we helped out was using a modern .22 to kill squirrels for dinner--and a crack shot she was!  I suspect her moonshining son bought it for her.

[Curt J]

The use of ML rifles hung on in a lot of places besides the Appalachians. There were quite a few still in use in rural areas in Southern Illinois.  Gunmaker Henry Goedeke, in Olney, Illinois, didn't open his shop until 1873, and his rifles are not uncommon. When I started writing my book, there were two of Henry's sons still living, both in their 90's. They told me about watching their father rifle barrels and build rifles, up until around 1905.

Chunk gun matches went on in the Illinois/Indiana Wabash Valley for decades after 1900, and never completely died out. 

I have a rifle made by G. Krug, Mt. Carmel, Illinois, that was carried into Northern Wisconsin by a family named Blamberg, who used the rifle to put venison on the table, up into the 1930's.

[kentucky bucky]

Using ML rifles and shotguns in the early 1900s was usually an economic choice rather than a hobby like we know it. I knew of one man that was born in 1918 in West Virginia who never shot a cartridge gun until he went in the service right before WW2. His grandfathers both used ML "squirrel rifles" until their deaths in the 1930s or so. The use of these guns were solely to put meat on the table. They only ate what they could raise or shoot. At the time they couldn't have afforded to buy ammo if they had a more modern rifle. They could buy a pound of powder and shot, or melt down some old lead plumbing pipes really cheap. He told me that they would even dig out a roundball if they had shot it into a tree to save the lead. This same fellow's father did all his farming with mules and horses and died in the 50s without ever owning a motorized vehicle.

[T*O*F]

Not sure of the exact dates, but the Hudson Bay Company continued to sell their trade guns in percussion until well into the 20th century and they were widely in use in Canada by the indigenous peoples and others who made their life in the wilderness.

[wormey]

Somewhere, I don`t recall exactly where now, I have read of deputy sheriffs in westen North Carolina who were still carrying cap and ball pistols in the early twentieth century.  Old habits die hard and these people in some cases were old civil war vetrans and continued to use what they were familiar with and use what had served them well in the war.  Sounds kind of familiar to me and us old army guys who still think the colt 1911 is the best pistol ever made.  Also metallic cartridges were expensive, but you could always find powder and caps.  Wormey

[mikeyfirelock]

I have a half stock squirrel rifle which my father acquired in the early 1950's from a local hotel owner. He accepted it in payment from someone who was moving "up north" from Kentucky in the depression.   It was evidently something that was not only valued but also used by this fellow. Dad showed it to a local man that had moved up from kentucky, and this man told him that he had worked for the gunsmith that made it in Kentucky as a teenager.  This would have had to have been in the early 1900's or possibly in the 1890's if the man was about 70 or so.  I have often wondered about the date it would have been made, and I think early 1900's would not be out of line if dads description of the man as old meant 60 to 70 years old.
Mike Mullins

[JCKelly]

Arthur Hurd, Hadley, Michigan see Muzzle Blasts April 2012, was making & shooting muzzle loaders for target practice in the early 1940's. See Muzzle Blasts April 2012.

A Michigan collector has a neat half-stock made by Oscar Lindberg, of Charles Lindberg's Gun Shop, Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is complete with the original bill to Dr. W.H. Barnum for $50, dated August 1943. Dr. Barnum died before he ever could shoot the rifle.

1943 is the latest dated muzzle loading rifle of which I am aware, made by a man who actually made rifles for a living, and didn't make muzzle loaders just for the sentiment.

Walter Cline &c gave you Southern gentlemen good press. Still, some of us Yankees held on to older rifles. In the mid 1960's Grandfather told me an antique dealer had come looking to buy his (percussion) rifle. The dealer'd heard that Grandfather won a lot of turkeys with it some years back. I do have this rifle. Grampa never shot a breechloader until he was 18.

[Hungry Horse]

Wormey jogged my memory. I helped get a donation to the county museum consisting of several Colt cap and ball revolvers, a few years ago. They had all belonged to one family, except one. That revolver was given to the family after the owner discovered the family had a small collection. It seemed the older lady had gotten it from her father who carried it while serving as a County Sheriff in Northern California. This was during the depression, and ammunition for cartridge guns was hard to get, and expensive. The gun is an 1861 Colt Navy, with a shortened barrel, and what appears to be 1851 Colt Navy grip frame and grips. This guns action is as smooth as glass, and even though it has virtually no original finish left on it, functions flawlessly. To be quite honest if I had no knowledge of the history of this gun, I would guess it had been owned by an outlaw, or gunfighter.

                   Hungry Horse

[PPatch]

...if I had no knowledge of the history of this gun, I would guess it had been owned by an outlaw, or gunfighter.

                   Hungry Horse

Back in those days there wasn't often much distinction between them and law enforcement. 

I can readily see how a sheriff would keep his pistol the equal of anyone he might have a runin with.

dp

[Mark Elliott]

Check out this link; http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/regional_review/vol6-1-2f.htm

This was published by the NPS in 1941.   It represented a life time of work of the author and should be considered relatively current.   The dress of the folks in the photos appears to me to be from the 1930s.   I think it is a must read for builders of Southern rifles.   

This and other references indicates that the construction of longrifles never ended in the Southern Appalachians.   The re-discovery and recreation of the American longrifle outside the Appalachians started in the 1920's with the Colonial Revival.   

[Mike Brooks]

I still shoot muzzleloaders on occasion.

[Old Bob]

My Papaw on my Dad's side told me about using a muzzleloader in the '20s and '30s on squirrels  and whatever else needed killing before he died in 1975. He used a .38 Long Colt cartridge for a powder measure. My Papaw on my Mom's side left behind a handmade percussion lock from a rifle he used to have. He died when I was five and before I knew to ask him about it. It was another 10 years before I got into blackpowder. Mamaw told me he traded the rest of the rifle for a .22. I still have the lock.

[Shreckmeister]

This rifle made in 1882 and given to the boy holding it in this photo on the day this photo was taken in 1892 was used continuously into the 1970s to hunt deer in western PA even though it is only 36 caliber.  The rifle has passed through and stayed with the family of the original owner up to present day.