The curious backstory to this gun is that the family owned the gun for quite some time, since about 1823, or so I was told. During the Civil war, my family was a part of the militia in the Hammondsville area. The Confederates were headed for Pittsburgh and expected to try to escape down the Ohio River. The militia went to the mouth of the Yellow Creek and set up an earthwork of logs laid out into the water... guessing the Ohio, but it could have been the creek, as there is a large sandbar on the bank just down from the mouth of the creek. They set logs out into the water in a triangular shape with the point out into water. They filled the center with large rocks and dirt. The militia could then crawl out on top and see both ways on the river and watch for the enemy. By the way, the Confederates took another way home. This is right up by where the Ohio makes a curve coming out of PA and WVA and an ideal watch post. My grandfather's grandfather was a youngster and had this rifle. He was on watch, gun loaded and wrapped in 2 layers of oilcloth, and the nipple plugged with bear grease. He was probably early to late teens. My Grandad was Harvey Cogsill Noble, and born in 1888, it was his grandfather with the gun. In any case, the young fellow dropped the gun and it slid into the earthworks and deep into the rocks and could not be retrieved. They left it. The story was passed on to my grandad, and to my father Charles VanDyke Noble, who was born in 1916. When my dad was 8 or 9 or so, my grandad and dad went to go find the earthworks out of curiosity. They found the stones, the logs long since gone. My dad crawled out on the rocks and rooted around and found the gun. BTW, if that part of the story had not been true, they would not have known to look for the gun at all in that location. Both of them told me story when I was a lad. The gun stayed in the basement at the homestead because my grandma HATED guns. The family moved to Alliance Ohio onto Union street. The gun again stayed in the basement. My dad took me down into that spider hole to show me the gun, still wrapped in oilcloth. Dad went to the Pacific theater, was wounded at Okinawa a month after the main battle, and discharged. He moved to Youngstown. Grandma passed away in 1959, and grandad lost the house in '61. Dad brought grandpa home, and the gun and it hung on hooks on our mantle. The oil cloth kept it safe all those years. In 1965, dad noticed some rust forming on the gun, and decided it needed a better cleaning. We took it to the garage and disassembled it. The original ramrod was gone but dad had a friend who had one that almost fit but it was as bowed as a rocking chair runner and slightly oversize. We straightened it, sanded it, dropped it into the barrel... and the gun was still loaded. almost 100 years. We went to Girard Hardware for a nipple wrench, nothing fit, and the guy there showed us a visegrip, and that worked. The gunpowder was cleared out by car battery tester bulb.. looks like a turkey baster. The ball was so stuck that it would not move at all. Back to the hardware, and a pint of Liquid Wrench and we filled the barrel and waited. A few days later, the fluid started dripping out the flash hole. a screw welded onto a rod and the ball came very reluctantly out the barrel. A gunsmith checked and certified the gun safe to shoot, and we did, From the pitting and burning of the stock and the barrel, this gun has been fired many, many times before we did. Fantastic story, yes, but told to me by both my grandad and my dad separately. Dad died in '67 as a result of his WW2 wounds. No way to prove or disprove the family stories, I am the last one who would have heard them. Yes, it will be written down and kept with the gun. I have owned the gun since 1967, I was born in '51.
