Gun Factory Inventory, 1779

[spgordon]

The tools, etc., of the "Pennsylvania Gun Factory"--run by Peter Dehaven--were inventoried on 18 January 1779. The contents were sold to James Pearson, Benjamin Rittenhouse, and Peter Dehaven on 18 and 19 January 1779.

These inventories offer a good picture of what a "Gun Factory" would have contained:










You can learn more about this gun factory from Wayne Heckert's article: “Rifles and Muskets on the Swatara: Clandestine Hummelstown Factory Armed the Revolution,” Kentucky Rifle Association Bulletin 34, no 1 (2007): 3–6.

These inventories are at the PA State Archives at Harrisburg, among the Records of Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary Governments, 1775-1790 (54 Reels): Reel 14, Images 941-946.

[Seth Isaacson]

Thanks for sharing so many fantastic documents lately.

[rich pierce]

Terrific.

[WESTbury]

Scott,

This is an outstanding document to see. It really gives an appreciation of one component of the logistics effort to keep an army armed and in the field.

Kent

[Eric Kettenburg]

Awesome work Professor!  I keep hoping that somewhere, someday, something like this for the Allentown factory will turn up, or even better, a payroll list. 

[Craig Wilcox]

Scott, I like that it gives the value of each article in pounds, shillings, and pence.  Hard to translate those prices into present-day costs, but one can easily see the differences in value between articles.
I believe a day's wage was often a shilling (12 pence) per day, to give a little perspective.

[spgordon]

I keep hoping that somewhere, someday, something like this for the Allentown factory will turn up, or even better, a payroll list.

I'll share some things regarding Allentown later--but (to eliminate the suspense) nothing that identifies who was employed there. I know that's the holy grail!

[smart dog]

Thanks Scott.  This stuff is fascinating.  Craig, when it comes to valuing currency at the time, it gets more confusing because a pound sterling was valued in PA differently than in MA or the other colonies.  It made inter-colony and later, interstate commerce a nightmare.  Stabilizing the value of currency was one of the important reasons the constitutional convention of 1787 decided to scrap the articles of confederation and write a charter for a new and more powerful Federal government.

dave

[spgordon]

I keep hoping that somewhere, someday, something like this for the Allentown factory will turn up, or even better, a payroll list.

It's just too bad that, apparently, John Tyler was an efficient manager & paid his workers--so none of them had to petition for unpaid wages or whatever. There are hundreds of such petitions among these papers, but nothing from anybody in Allentown. But I came across this the other day--a dispute about money--which indirectly reveals that Peter Kichline of Easton (1722-1789) handled some of the money used to pay for the muskets produced in Northampton County, perhaps those at Christiansbrunn.