You discuss issuing rifles and the impression is they were issued in the same way and purpose as muskets. They had very different strengths and weaknesses and few rifles would be able to mount bayonets. You mentioned the marking of guns on the wrist plates, a practice used for muskets that typically had wrist plates but that was not often the case for rifles. As a line or battalion infantryman, a rifle would have been a disadvantage unless it was use an issued rifle or nothing. Of course that might have been the case at the time. However, I wonder if rifles collected were issued indiscriminately or were they put aside for special rifle units. A special rifle like Oerter's may also have ended up with a "special" person in some unit.
There were special rifle companies and battalions from several counties, including Lancaster. The data about the Pennsylvania militia is so scattered and incomplete that even the best source,
The Pennsylvania Line, is not helpful about most things. The few sources that mention Zantzinger's company describe it as part of the Flying Camp but it most definitely was not: it went to Perth Amboy until the Flying Camp was formed or arrived and then Z's
militia company returned to Lancaster. Anyway, I assume Zantzinger's company
was a rifle company, since he purchased so many rifles for his men, though there is so little documentary evidence that nothing I've found states that.
I believe the rifles stayed with the companies whose captains had purchased the rifles, at least at this moment (summer 1776). They were not gathered centrally. Rifles being repaired in Lancaster, say, were identified by the captain or colonel who was responsible for them (so, Zantzinger paid a gunsmith to repair guns he purchased, which were returned to him after they were repaired). Later other weapons were sent to a "central" repair facility (Allentown, say) and were distributed differently.
I hope that makes sense & that I am understanding your point.
Finally, a 4 pound 15 shilling rifle probably was not a "barn gun" particularly at a time when 50 pounds could support a family for a year. It probably had a patch box and some simple decoration.
Right, I never called the £4.15.0 rifles "barn guns"--just common rifles. Receipts survive for hundreds and hundreds of rifle purchases: they are nearly all valued at £4.15.0. So, I don't know what to conclude from that other than the rifles that common folk had and that were seized by local officials were valued at £4.15.0. My main point is that the Oerter Baer rifle was valued at nearly double. Note that Zantzinger buys two rifles from Baer: one is the one Oerter made (£8.0.0), the other valued at £4.15.0.
I suppose it's worth mentioning this possibility: the "going value" for a rifle was £4.15.0, maybe no matter what it looked like. The only reason that Baer could insist on £8.0.0 for the Oerter rifle is because he had that letter that Oerter wrote, proving its value. (The letter, along with the rifle, was taken from Baer as proof.) Most purchasers of rifles, whatever they may have cost, would not have had receipts. Some of them might have received the £4.15.0 even though the rifle they had cost them less.
All that said: the captains appraising these rifles did make some distinctions among them. But £4.15.0 is easily and overwhelmingly the average cost.
