Gentlemen, May 25, 2014
The post is an introduction of myself to you. My name is Chris de France, PLS. Health conditions have forced me into an early retirement. The last thirty four years, I have been a Land Surveyor in South Arkansas. At the age of twenty three, I married and started working for General Dynamics as an illustrator working with a Tool Design Group.
Flintlock long rifles have been an interest of mine since I was a youngster in Fairfax County, Virginia. Later moves, placed the family in New England, Texas and eventually in our old family home in Arkansas. Hunting and fishing is second nature to us in South Arkansas. The purchase of a Traditions Long Rifle percussion and a Colt Navy 1851 percussion, many years ago, has peaked my interest into the flintlock. I want to make my own gun.
My ALR profile indicates a start date of June a year ago, but I have been quietly reading all of your posts for the last four years. I believe the change from the Dell to the Mac Pro last June had some thing to do with my profile change. I want my first build, to be a Jim Chambers, New England Colonial Fowler/Militia. This, I hope to be within the next year.
This post is to introduce myself, but also to place some beautiful art of the gun in the mid 1700‘s on hunting in America and on “ Hunting, fowling, & shooting in American public gardens & grounds” from a blog by Barbara Wells Sarudy on Tuesday, June 4, 2013.
In early colonial America, gentlemen with a little time on their hands enjoyed plenty of hunting & fowling in season. Less wealthy professional hunters searched for skins to sell or trade. And even common farmers hunted to augment their family's food supply. As cities expanded at the end of the 18th-century, townsfolk, most of whom had moved to the city from the countryside, searched for nearby venues for hunting and shooting.
http://publicpleasuregarden.blogspot.com/2013/06/hunting-fowling-shooting-in-commercial.html These paintings are beautiful art of the time of the flintlock, in America with families enjoying hunting and shooting, and this displays hunting with the guns that we all delight in fabricating.
This is a very well done forum in a time that I would assume, we all would have loved to have lived in ourselves. Thank you, everyone. I really do enjoy the American Long Rifle.
