Schimmel Discussion Gone???

[t.caster]

I thought I saw a discussion started by EK earlier today about using the terms Schimmel and Barn gun. I started to read but got pulled away, now I can't find it! Where did it go. Did the fact checkers cancel it or move it???

[rich pierce]

No idea.

[Bob McBride]

I think my tongue in cheek bit about 'longrifles' being a modern term irritated him and he deleted it. The OP is the only one who would delete a thread without comment I think. He was looking for the first modern use of the term 'barn gun' and not another 'canoe gun' thread.

[rich pierce]

https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=63963.25 is another topic where discussion could take place.

[flinchrocket]

I understood he was looking for documentation on how far back the term "barn gun "had been used.

[Bob McBride]

I understood he was looking for documentation on how far back the term "barn gun "had been used.

How far back it was used in the modern era referring to a 'plain unadorned flintlock' I thought he said. There's no mention of a barn gun I could find before 1910, and it was a contemporary reference from that period. It was almost certainly not used in the period, though there were 'barn guns' per se, if anything they were just an old beat up gun of any description that was used for farming related stuff and kept in the barn.

[Daniel Coats]

Personal opinion is there were no rifles kept in the barn during their period of use. What would the need be other than the occasional cranky milk cow? More likely a place of storage from my own early memories and family stories.

Probably a modern term not unlike what Rock Island Auction has coined to sell their goods called " Frontier Issued."

[WadePatton]

Perhaps a gun or two has been found in barns?  I do quit agree that few shooters would leave a gun in a barn intentionally, but there might be dozens of scenarios where a gun could have been forgotten or lost in a barn or shed.

[Bob McBride]

Personal opinion is there were no rifles kept in the barn during their period of use. What would the need be other than the occasional cranky milk cow? More likely a place of storage from my own early memories and family stories.

Probably a modern term not unlike what Rock Island Auction has coined to sell their goods called " Frontier Issued."

There are references to ‘barn guns’ from the 1900 era and guns being kept in barns from 1850. When a term is used in a period, it is a good indication it was likely generally understood. Anything done rurally in 1900 was likely done in 1800. Folks spent lots of time in barns in those days. I would think it would be a certain type of barn that would be more likely to have an old ‘extra’ gun left in it for day to day access. IMO.

Also remember there was little difference, in those days, between one’s house and their barn as far as one being better than the other for the welfare of the gun itself.

[BOB HILL]

Probably the term used in the early days for a very simple plain utilitarian gun would have been a common rifle or gun. Mr. John Braxton shared this with me many years ago.
I don’t recall where he found this, but it was a period reference.
Bob

[Dale Halterman]

I found an old shotgun in my uncle Clyde's barn when I was a kid. He said it had been standing in that corner as long as he could remember and I could have it if I wanted.

He said he figured that a previous owner of the farm kept it there in case a predator got after his livestock while he was working outside. My father suggested that it may have also been used to slaughter hogs.

I do agree that no one would leave a decent gun in their barn.

Dale H

[Bob McBride]

I found an old shotgun in my uncle Clyde's barn when I was a kid. He said it had been standing in that corner as long as he could remember and I could have it if I wanted.

He said he figured that a previous owner of the farm kept it there in case a predator got after his livestock while he was working outside. My father suggested that it may have also been used to slaughter hogs.

I do agree that no one would leave a decent gun in their barn.

Dale H

I could find lots of uses for an old smoothbore in the barn. Shooting pigeons in the loft with a handful of dirt, shooting cowbirds or starlings off the feed, shooting coons or snakes in the stalls. One of my favorite things to do to this day is go out to a dairy farm with my shotgun. The farmers love me killing the birds that eat and @#$%/!! in the feed. It’s a great time.  Interesting thing is when I go to a dairy farm it keeps the starlings, pigeons, and doves away for about a week. I wonder if that was part of the routine back in the day.

[rich pierce]

Having grown up in a barn, that’s where I kept my single shot rifle. My father in law kept a deer rifle in the barn or the pickup truck. 1950s-60s, upstate NY.

[T.C.Albert]

There was a gun in the machine shed where I grew up as well. Handy for what ever but mostly ever used on the field rats that raided the corn crib. Indiscriminately blasting off a gun in the barn, especially during milking would have been pretty amusing but after the cow got done kicking the @#$%/!! out of my dad I am sure he would have hunted me down and given me the same treatment.
Tim A. 

[Bob McBride]

Hey TC, yea, I’m not sure I’d shoot off inside a dairy barn while Pop is milking either but gunfire actually draws them to me when they are in the barn pens. When dairy cows are in the barn in feeding shutes or are line fed from outside I can shoot birds within 10’ of them and they never even look up.

[S D Bright]

Personal opinion is there were no rifles kept in the barn during their period of use. What would the need be other than the occasional cranky milk cow? More likely a place of storage from my own early memories and family stories.

Probably a modern term not unlike what Rock Island Auction has coined to sell their goods called " Frontier Issued."

There are references to ‘barn guns’ from the 1900 era and guns being kept in barns from 1850. When a term is used in a period, it is a good indication it was likely generally understood. Anything done rurally in 1900 was likely done in 1800. Folks spent lots of time in barns in those days. I would think it would be a certain type of barn that would be more likely to have an old ‘extra’ gun left in it for day to day access. IMO.

Also remember there was little difference, in those days, between one’s house and their barn as far as one being better than the other for the welfare of the gun itself.

I appreciate the use of a primary source here.  It seems like too many times, discussion of longrifle history devolves to "this is my best guess," instead of trying to find out what period builders and shooters actually wrote.

[Daniel Coats]

Fascinating topic!

Has anyone found a primary source for the architecture or lack of butt plate etc on a barn rifle? Excepting the gun itself of course. 
The writing we do today will also become a primary source in the future. I find this all the time in genealogy research where a best guess becomes documented as fact over time. 

[Daniel Coats]

One more quick story.

My dad 1909-1962 showed me the barn on the ranch where he grew up. At one time the ranch was owned by the local game warden who confiscated guns from the Ute Indians on hunting trips in the 1895-1915 time frame. Many of the guns were muzzleloaders and what happened to them is startling. He said while he was growing up the iron was salvaged for farm repairs and making spurs for cowboy boots! Of course all of them were long gone by the time I was there.

[Cades Cove Fiddler]

  ... interesting topic ,... I might add that when I was a boy, we had a few modern rifles, shotguns and a pistol in the house,.. when I became interested in muzzle-loading guns , a neighbor family had an old Kentucky Rifle, brass fittings and all , that the neighbor boy and I would play with,..... Dad told me that when his Father lost the farm in the Great Depression, they moved from Knox to Bradley County in East Tennessee in a two-horse wagon,... couldn't carry all their belongings, so left some things behind, including two old hog-rifles in the old smoke house,... nobody used anything like that anymore,... regards,... Cades Cove Fiddler...

[Bob Roller]

I had never heard of the "barn gun" before I came into this forum,
unadorned Tennessee/Southern Mtn.rifle and the very highly refined English long range and
sporting rifles define my ideas about muzzle loading rifles.Going over to farce,my Leonard
Meadows Southern walnut stocked and iron trimmed rifle was made from a walnut barn rafter
that was over 100 years old in 1965 when the rifle was made.Barn gun??
Bob Roller

[Mike Brooks]

When I moved into Davenport in '96 there was  a single shot .22 in the barn. I left it there and used it to kill coon, possums, rabbits, fox etc. My wife often will lean it against a handy tree while gardening to kill those pesky wabbits. Sometimes it would stand there for days. It now resides leaning in the corner by the back door. It was rusty when I found it and it's rusty now, but the bore is nice. I have killed more varmints and eats with that gun  than any other gun I have owned. Super accurate.
 So, it's obvious to me there have always been cheap guns in most barns in the USA. What they were called I don't know....maybe "gun"?

[Daniel Coats]

When I moved into Davenport in '96 there was  a single shot .22 in the barn. I left it there and used it to kill coon, possums, rabbits, fox etc. My wife often will lean it against a handy tree while gardening to kill those pesky wabbits. Sometimes it would stand there for days. It now resides leaning in the corner by the back door. It was rusty when I found it and it's rusty now, but the bore is nice. I have killed more varmints and eats with that gun  than any other gun I have owned. Super accurate.
 So, it's obvious to me there have always been cheap guns in most barns in the USA. What they were called I don't know....maybe "gun"?

Sorry Mike I just have to ask, does that .22 have a butt plate? LOL!

[flinchrocket]

It's his "CANOE GUN".

[Bob McBride]

I think we get hung up on the minutia sometimes. An old gun kept in a barn would never be called a barn gun except in the specific context of a farmer that kept a gun in the barn. If you could eavesdrop over the history of that farm you might hear

 “I’ll take daddy’s new gun cause I’m the oldest!”

“I don’t want to use that stupid old barn gun, it’s got no front sight on it”

“Well, it a gun ain’t it? You can stay home if you want!”

‘Barn gun’ today is little more than a label on a file full of pictures of rusty old farmer’s guns.

[Stoner creek]

Correction; Canoe-Barn Gun