We don't know who his master was, at this time. But his work certainly is strongly related to the Sheets of Shepherdstown, WV. Interestingly, John Abram Rennick's parents came from Germany, first settled in PA before the Rev. War, and sometime after the war moved to "Greenbriar," Virginia. There is a Greenbriar County in West Virginia today, with a small town named Renick, named for its early founder, William Renick, undoubtedly a relative of John Renick's father. So the family had ties to VA [today, WV].
It is my opinion that he had to have trained under one of the better Sheets gunsmiths, perhaps in Shepherdstown, WV, due to the very strong, almost identical engraved patterns on Renick's known patchbox and toe plate. A couple of other unsigned rifles have been "tentatively" identified as Renick rifles in KY, and one may well be by Renick [a restock of an earlier frontier KY rifle] due to its similar box engraving. We have good information on the Renicks [two sons were also gunsmiths] in KY and later in MO, but work still needs to be done on the earlier generation to better determine what influences were on the family, and where old ties were made. It is interesting that in Clark Co., KY where the Renicks first settled, there were several Sheets neighbors.
More information on the Renicks and other early Kentucky firearms is available at
www.kentuckygunmakers.comShelby Gallien
