Having studied and researched this rifle for some years, some additional comments may be helpful:
The rifle is signed "BHC" both on the lock and under the barrel. I don't know of a qualified Tennessee collector who has doubted the attribution to Berryman H. Compton, who worked in Giles County, Tennessee. We don't know for sure, of course, since he did not sign his full name in clear script in multiple places on the rifle. Nor did "BHC" indicate on the rifle where he had made the rifle. It has been generally attributed as a Tennessee rifle at least since it was pictured in the KRA "Kentucky Rifles & Pistols" book in 1976 where it was identified as "Tennessee".
Berryman H. Compton was born in South Carolina and I think there was an influence from that direction. My view is that the place where Compton worked in Tennessee was near the head of the Natchez Trace and that he had a different clientele (and therefore had the freedom to make a different rifle) than those Tennessee makers who worked further east or up in the mountains. Incidentally, the late Sonny Nevell told me the rifle turned up in New Orleans years ago, which gives some credence in my mind to the Natchez Trace influence. As a matter of information, not all rifles made in Tennessee are iron mounted, walnut stocked mountain rifles. (I personally like those very much, as well, and find many of them to have great architectural interest),
We do not know that Alexander Compton, who trained in Maryland, was Berryman's father. I had suggested that as a working thesis to my friend Jerry Noble, but to my knowledge that connection has not been established as fact.
The rifle has not been broken through the wrist, although there is a stain line on one side of the wrist which must have misled one commentator who was looking at the pictures but perhaps had not observed the rifle. There is a break at the toe, as was correctly observed. "If they only could talk"!
