Ken - I think it is a very strong likelihood that a lot of southern guns are mis-attributed (is that a word
). I think that it is really hard to tell where a lot of the early iron mounted guns (by early I mean here roughly 1790s-1820) were made exactly. And some of the early brass mounted pieces from the region beyond the mountains are really stunning - for example, the Thomas Simpson/ Mansker rifle and the Jacob Young rifles.
I think we also have to be aware of the other side of the coin on the possible attribution issue - i.e. plain iron mounted guns are usually assumed to be from the Tennessee or Virginia mountains, etc. but this is not always so. I've recently been trying to learn more about an Ohio gunsmith named Jerman Jordan - the first rifle I ever saw by him was an iron mounted flint fullstock and I was struck by that it really has no traits of what most people would think of as an Ohio rifle - the guard is very close to the Joseph Bogle rifle and we know that piece is most likely Tennesee made. Recently I've seen three more iron mounted flint fullstocks by him, two without buttplates - and at least one with a grease hole. Where did Jordan pick up the style? These were made in Ross County Ohio ca: 1815-30s probably - and I've seen no evidence that Jordan learned or worked in Tennesee or Virginia. He also made really fine inlaid and engraved brass mounted guns too. And Michael Briggs has posted some wonderful plain iron mounted pieces from North Carolina that were made a bit east of the mountains by gunsmiths who also worked in brass. So as someone pointed out above I think it is wrong to assume that the plainness of most of the iron mounted pieces necesssarily represents a limitation of the gunmaker's skills, especially in the early period when most of the gunsmiths in the area learned their trade somehwere else before moving in and many probably were adept at working in iron or brass.
Sort of converse to what one would assume from typical settlement patterns, once folks moved in and were settled in the Southern highlands in the late 1700s, many of the areas actually became increasingly isolated (that is, the settlement had passed by and there were not as many new influences moving in to some of these areas) in the early 19th century. I do believe (again, this is just my opinion) that the isolation did later lead to more plain, but more highly stylized work - i.e. the mounts on the later Appalachian rifles of the post 1820 era tend to have their own fully evolved unique style, whereas the earlier pieces tend to have triggerguards that appear to be more or less attempts to mimic the styles of the brass mounted pieces being made farther north and east, probably where the gunsmiths trained.
I also think there are a lot of southern guns that simply have not been published (or at least not widely published as a group in a format like RCA or Kindig) so people do not have the basis of a group of examples for study and comparison so the study of these pieces is not nearly as far along as the more well known styles from Pennsylvania, or other parts of the south. It is getting better - getting to see pieces like this one on the Virtual Museum are really eye-opening.
Guy
