1792 US musket?

[David R. Pennington]

Been reading Hildreth’s Pioneer History and he references how poorly armed the settlers were and at the settlement at Marrietta they received from Pittsburg 30 old muskets in poor repair (1790) and in 1792 they received two boxes with 25 muskets in each, “new United States muskets with bayonets”.
Wonder what these were? Were they contract guns or armory productions?

[Elnathan]

First US armory muskets were the 1795 Springfields, so unless the date is wrong they could not have been new-made US armory muskets. I don't know all that much about martial arms, but I don't think I've ever heard of contract muskets from the early 1790s either, and since the US still had a bunch of 1763 and 1766 French muskets on hand at the time I can't imagine why they would be buying contract muskets. I could be wrong, of course. It is also possible that they might have been contracted by the State of Pennsylvania rather than the Federal government, which is more plausible.

If this isn't a 1st person account contained within what looks like a secondary work, I suspect that either Hildreth got the date wrong or (more likely) misunderstood and wrongly elaborated on a reference to 50 stands of older Revolutionary War vintage muskets in good condition.

[johngross]

Get Issue No. 3, 1999 of Man At Arms Magazine. Starting on page 33 is an article titled "The U.S. Contract Rifle - Pattern of 1792", by Frank A. Tait. The article begins with...

"An outstanding issue in the field of American military arms research is the identification of the Contract Rifle of 1792. This was the first military arm expressly made for the new United States Army. Just under 3,500 rifles in all were made in two procurements of 1792 and 1794."

Also a chapter in American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume 2, by George Moller has information on the 1792.

John Gross

[Longknife]

Been reading Hildreth’s Pioneer History and he references how poorly armed the settlers were and at the settlement at Marrietta they received from Pittsburg 30 old muskets in poor repair (1790) and in 1792 they received two boxes with 25 muskets in each, “new United States muskets with bayonets”.
Wonder what these were? Were they contract guns or armory productions?

QUOTE,,, "new United States muskets WITH BAYONETS"..... The 1792 and 1794 contract rifles were not fitted with bayonets,,,,, Ed

[Seth Isaacson]

Seems unlikely but that doesn't mean it isn't true though. Why would the government be selling brand new muskets to settlers before the military even had sufficient stores of the new arms? I know in later periods the government sold surplus arms. Perhaps they purchased "new" (as in new to them or relatively unused) muskets from the government that were Charleville muskets or Brown Bess muskets from the Revolution stockpiles. The French supplied a lot of Model 1763/66 muskets to the U.S. during the war. There were no regulation muskets pre-1795 that I've ever seen or heard of, and the Model 1795 is essentially an American made Charleville 1766, so that would likely be the basic design of any musket that pre-dated the 1795 if manufactured for the government under contract.

[David R. Pennington]

Hildreth says these were “new from the factory”, and they were issued to militia who could not supply their own arms, but had to sign for them and return them when called for.

[Seth Isaacson]

I looked the passage up over lunch hoping to find something helpful to figuring the mystery out. No such luck. He does indeed say "United States muskets, with bayonets, new from the factory."

If his year is correct, I can only assume he is trying to indicate they are American made muskets rather than imported guns. You see that in fur trade ledgers sometimes where they list "U.S./American" vs "English" rifles and fusils. Various states had contracts with gunmakers to produce arms for their militias. Depending on the state militia laws it was generally the individual's and/or local community/state's responsibility to arm their militiamen. It was not the federal government. Whitney, for example, had contracts with New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had contracts with various gunmakers both in Pennsylvania and England, and Virginia had muskets from the Virginia Manufactory. Standardized muskets all seem to start after the introduction of the 1795 at Springfield, but there are loads of "New England Militia Muskets" (usually basic .69 caliber musket with pinned fastened barrels) posted online, some might be from 1792 or earlier, but they are usually listed as 1800-1830s.

[Elnathan]

I've been doing some research, and apparently there was a very obscure contract order of around 7000 muskets made in 1794 by the Federal government. That appears to be the earliest American musket orders since the Committee of Safety muskets during the Revolution. Earliest PA Contract I can find is from 1798, so I'm really at a loss to see how anyone could have received newly-made US muskets in 1792. The book in question was written in 1848, so I really think that the most likely explanation for the mystery is that Hildreth simply misinterpreted a reference to good condition M1763/66 Charlesvilles as newly-made American muskets. Would not be at all surprised if the original source said something like "new US muskets with bayonets," meaning that they were good condition Charlesvilles stamped "US" to indicate government ownership, and Hildreth added the "from the factory" from his own imagination.

Another little tidbit I discovered is that apparently the US imported some muskets from Europe in the late 1790s, including, English, Dutch and Hanoverian pieces, so some of those "Revolutionary War Era" muskets illustrated in Neumann, etc., may be later, or at least may not have been in the country until later.

[Seth Isaacson]

http://americansocietyofarmscollectors.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Virginia-militia-long-arms-B034_Flanagan.pdf

The first attempt to obtain arms for the Virginia militia after the Revolutionary War was in 1785. . .These 3,400 French made muskets were part of the previously mentions 9,600 muskets in storage at Point of Forks Arsenal in 1792. The rest of the 9,600 muskets probably consisted of miscellaneous arms remaining from the Revolutionary War.

http://americansocietyofarmscollectors.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Pennsylvania-contract-muskets-1797-arms-procurment-act-B091_Stewart_Reid.pdf
This article does note Pennsylvania getting muskets from federal stores and also notes there was bore standardization in the U.S. Militia Act of 1792, which may explain calling the muskets in 1792 "United States Muskets" if they conformed to those patterns, and indicates issuance to militias on the frontier. Obviously I was wrong when I said before that the federal government was not helping arm local militias. My understanding was based on reading of the codes and about the state contract muskets.:

The Pennsylvania Legislature finding the laws previously enacted for regulation of the militia: “ . . . to require material alteration; in order to which
it has been thought more advisable to rewrite the whole system than to amend it by supplemental statutes . . . ” passed a new Militia Act April 11, 1793.
This act, 24 sections long with 35 articles of additional rules and regulations, provided guidance for organization and management of  the  militia  in  accordance  with  the  1792  U.S.  Uniform Militia Act. The class system for calling the militia to active service was retained. The act required each member to provide himself with a musket, firelock, or rifle with ammunition   and   equipment   as   required   by   the   U.S.   Act. Pennsylvania  had  previously  furnished  muskets  to  the  militia from State and Federal stores for a number of years and this change is an indication of the shortage of arms available from these sources. Interestingly, the most important provision  of  the  1792  U.S.  Uniform  Militia  Act,  the  standardization of bore size, was not addressed by the Pennsylvania legislation. Reporting to the U.S. Senate  in  December,   1793, Secretary  of  War  Henry  Knox  advised  the  United  States’ store  of  arms  was  seriously  depleted  and  stressed  the  need for additional arms and production facilities. His report listed a total of 31,000 serviceable muskets in Federal facilities and noted  more  than  12,000  muskets  had  been  issued  to  the army and individual states in just the previous four years. In addition  to  these  more  recent  issues,  substantial  numbers had previously been issued to the army and militias engaged
along the Western frontier , while others were made useless by years of deterioration in poor storage facilities. . .

Still no mention of new muskets manufactured in or prior to 1792 for the federal government in the U.S., but there was some standardization already at that point which pre-dates the Springfield Model 1795.

[Seth Isaacson]

One more comment I thought of also relating to terminology used in the fur trade: "new from the factory" may not mean an arms factory as we would assume today. "Factory" originally meant a point of international trade like a port city. Trading posts were called "factories" in the fur trade and were actually run by the government from 1796 to 1822 in an effort to protect tribes from dishonest traders, encourage positive ties between the tribes and the U.S., lessen their connections with British/Canadian traders, and thus avoid conflict between the U.S. and Native Americans. Places that manufactured goods were called "manufactories."

I'm looking into some Virginia contract muskets right now which is why I've been able to locate some of this.

You might look at the War Department Papers: 1784-1800 which are online.