Re: Williamsburg Southern American Long Rifle – A Missing Link?

[Sherrell]

Greetings.  I’m a newbie here.

I would like to draw your attention to a fascinating rifle in the collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Museum.
They call it a “Southern American Long Rifle”, and date it from 1770-1780.
It is object 2004-5 and can be seen here:
https://emuseum.colonialwilliamsburg.org/objects/70012/southern-american-long-rifle

I’m a rank novice, but to my eyes, the gun presents some features that came to be known as defining features of Tennessee Long Rifles.  Buit it does so much earlier than those features are generally accepted to have emerged:
a long, swamped octagonal barrel; long graceful walnut full stock; a cheek rest very similar to that I’ve seen on many Tennessee Rifles.  It only has a single trigger, and the trigger guard is brass rather than iron.  But the shape of the trigger guard looks similar to many Tennessee Rifles I’ve seen. 

I just fascinated by the gun and interested in the opinions of the experts here.  Could this gun represent a transitional “missing link” class of guns that bridge directly from Colonial-era rifles to the Tennessee Rifle and similar Southern Mountain Rifles?

I’m eager to hear your observations and thoughts!

Cheers.

[rich pierce]

[rich pierce]

It has features not seen on most later Appalachian rifles and lacks features seen on many later rifles.  No buttplate, no forged iron furniture, and it has wonderful folk carving.  So, I see it more as a dead end, without descendants we can point to. It’s probably ind of many rifles from its timeframe that have not made it to today. In that sense, it’s in the “missing link” timeframe.

The Bogle rifle is often proposed to be in that missing link timeframe. However with its deeply curved buttplate it appears 1790s or later to my eye. The architecture of the gun above looks much earlier than the Bogle rifle to me. https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=11592.0

Wallace Gusler featured some early iron-mounted rifles in some Muzzle Blasts articles years ago, that I saved. PM me if interested.

.

[Tim Crosby]

 I wonder if the heal was shaped that way to start, cut down to make it fit with maybe be with a coat on or drug around by kids and worn down?
 Wallace Gusler is the person to ask, gusler1774@verizon.net

   Tim

[Mattox Forge]

It looks like the buttplate was lost and tbe wood cut down or worn down. I assume it had a sliding wooden patch box cover.

Could this rifle builder have influenced the design of this rifle?
https://historical.ha.com/itm/long-guns/muzzle-loading/unique-and-fine-1st-model-virginia-manufactured-flintlock-rifle-with-brass-rattlesnake-patch-box-previously-unknown/a/6188-40034.s

Mike

[Ky-Flinter]

When I enlarge the pictures of the butt, it sure looks like there is a thin butt plate there.  And there is a large pin or nail thru the toe of the butt stock.  To attach a plate?

Ron

[Mattox Forge]

Someone might have nailed a sheet of brass to the end, but I am very sure that the shape that currently exists on that stock is not how the gunsmith/stocker designed the butt. It was altered but accident, wear, or crude hacking at some point for sure.

Mike

[whetrock]

Yeah, the rounded shape is from wear or abuse. Not original design.

It doesn't seem to have had a side plate (at least from what I can tell in the grainy photos) and doesn't have a muzzle cap (and the balance in proportions seem to suggest that the muzzle wasn't cut back). So if it were built without a butt plate, that would be consistent. It's not uncommon to see heavy wear on the heel of rifles built without a butt plate. And as Tim commented earlier, during the decades before people realized these had value as antiques, they were sometimes given to kids to play with, and that contributed to their getting beat up even more.

The cavity is for a sliding wood box. The mortise for the latch is interesting, in that it seems to have a piece of metal embedded in the wood, presumably for latch spring catch to sit against. On rifles with a proper butt plate, it is not uncommon for that detail to be built into the butt plate itself. Sometimes the spring just sits against the brass. Sometimes the builder adds a bit of iron or steel to handle the wear. On this one, the bit of metal is foreword of where the edge of a butt plate would have been. But that doesn't by itself indicate that it had not butt plate.

If it once wore a brass butt plate, then there should be screw holes or nail holes in the butt. Whether or not they are still visible is a question. It would also be nice to see the comb, to see what if any remnant of a butt plate mortise is there. Of course, we can't see either of those areas in the photos currently available.

It would be nice to hear Wallace Gusler's view of it, as he may have seen it, or even owned it at some point. If he were to say the original had a butt plate, I wouldn't be surprised at all. But if he were to say that he thought it was originally built without a butt plate, I wouldn't be surprised at that either. Without photos or observations of someone who has handled it, it seems hard to say.

PS: I sent Wallace an email message.

[Tanselman]

Southern rifles seem to be a group of guns where everyone knows a little about them, but experts on them are usually limited to certain areas and not broad-based. There is often a lot of speculation on "different looking" southern guns based on what we know about northern guns... which often doesn't hold true for southern guns... especially when we realize with more rural or backwoods guns, styles changed more slowly and guns often look a bit earlier than they really are. This gun looks like it was a "poor boy" from the beginning, without butt plate, nose cap, and rear pipe. I've seen similar excessive wear on several rifles including a couple from Kentucky and western North Carolina, indicating a hard life [since it was considered a tool rather than show piece] with much more use/activity than many finer northern guns. I'd guess the carving was added later by the owner, perhaps after seeing a better carved gun and wanting to enhance his own gun beyond its basic "tool" identity.

One of my pet peeves on many dated/attributed rifles such as this one, is the failure of the attributer to explain WHY he attributed and dated it as he did. When I look at this rifle, I see significant butt drop for a gun dated as early as this one. I'd like to see the thickness of the butt, which also may not support such an early date... and the butt cavity looks pretty shallow in this gun suggesting a moderate butt width. The cheek seems to be hollowed, or concave [perhaps it's the lighting], and if so, may help locate the gun toward the Carolinas. 

I think at times when we see an unknown gun, we get a first impression of it and sometimes make it become what we wish it was, when we really don't know. The lock even raises a question in my mind. The two visible screw heads appear to have machine-cut, flat bottom slots, rather than chisel-cut "V" slots like on early guns. The cock's jaw screw looks new to me, and I would have expected a bit larger, more rounded [no "rooster neck"] cock if the gun were as early as claimed. The lock plate has uneven rusting, with areas of surface that remain relatively smooth... not sure how that could be, if the gun were really that old, and really saw enough rough backwoods service to wear the heel down that heavily.

Interesting gun, looks southern, but not well understood at this time, so becomes questionable when we begin to pigeon-hole it too tightly.

Shelby Gallien

 

[rich pierce]

It’s hard for me to imagine that much butt wear unless the gun was used as a drag brake on a  freight wagon. I agree the lock appears to have some parts replacement. Most do.

[Tanselman]

Here's a poor boy, actually a secondary Lexington rifle from Kentucky, with normal heel wear when only used as a brake on a buck board.

Shelby Gallien

[AZshot]

Greetings.  I’m a newbie here.

I would like to draw your attention to a fascinating rifle in the collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Museum.
They call it a “Southern American Long Rifle”, and date it from 1770-1780.
It is object 2004-5 and can be seen here:
https://emuseum.colonialwilliamsburg.org/objects/70012/southern-american-long-rifle

I’m a rank novice, but to my eyes, the gun presents some features that came to be known as defining features of Tennessee Long Rifles.  Buit it does so much earlier than those features are generally accepted to have emerged:
a long, swamped octagonal barrel; long graceful walnut full stock; a cheek rest very similar to that I’ve seen on many Tennessee Rifles.  It only has a single trigger, and the trigger guard is brass rather than iron.  But the shape of the trigger guard looks similar to many Tennessee Rifles I’ve seen. 

I just fascinated by the gun and interested in the opinions of the experts here.  Could this gun represent a transitional “missing link” class of guns that bridge directly from Colonial-era rifles to the Tennessee Rifle and similar Southern Mountain Rifles?

I’m eager to hear your observations and thoughts!

Cheers.

Sherrell, that rifle at the Williamsburg site is an interesting gun, but nothing like the rifles that came a generation later in the Appalachians.  I see few if any features that carried on down into the mountains of NC, or over into the route into the other side of the Appalachian range, in TN.  So no "missing link" to NC Appalachian School, or their closely related Eastern TN rifles, that I can see.  I could explain more, but I think you first need to spend some time in the books and studying the VA guns first, comparing them to Pennsalviania rifles, the mother land for most gunsmiths in America. 

A good book to get a feel for VA rifles is The Long Rifles of Virginia by Butler & Whisker.  There are quite a few VA experts on this forum, I'm not one.  But I do have at least 1 early VA rifle, which looks more like the one you are interested in than ANY of my NC or TN rifles. Or any of the many I have handled in person, or studied in a lot of books I own.

You need to understand that in NC alone, there were 9 "schools" of rifle types.  The Salem school were made by Moravians in central NC (the Piedmont), the Catawba Valley school some Germans but also English and further West.  The Appalachian School had a long period as people moved both down from the Great Wagon Road from Central VA, to the Yadkin Valley, then Westward, but ALSO moving down from the Wilderness Road from the Botecourt Co. area.  Each had a generation or two of gunsmiths who taught sons, then the sons taught THEIR sons.  There are true experts of the NC rifles, and even the Appalachian School rifles, that frequent this forum.  Most of the books you can buy about them are by members here. 
The details can be subtle at first, but after a while they become much more apparent to people who study these rifles.  You can start on the NC schools with several books, and this introduction video:

But - Williamsburg was a huge costal trading town and Colonial center for decades before settlers started moving into the Mountains of NC.  Yes, there were a couple that went to the Blue Ridge early on, but not the massive movements that came later during the Scotch-Irish migrations looking for unclaimed land in the mountains.  By that point, generations of Virginia gunsmiths had been making rifles in Williamsburg.  Other migrations down the Shenendoah Valley from PA brought other techniques of gunsmithing.  The Mountains of VA have very distinctive styles that can also be researched in books and talking to experts.  Some of who frequent this forum. 

The rifle you show from Williamsburg has no features of an Appalachian School or TN Mountain Rifle.  None.  Other than it has a barrel. 

[AZshot]

One more question - have you contacted the Colonial Williamsburg museum and asked them what they know about the rifle?  There are several other Virginia rifle experts besides Wallace Gustler, but he'd surely have expertise on this one just looking at it.  The muesum may already have that info written down which they can provide. 
You can also get that Long Rifles of Virginia book I mentioned, and look through the many pages of photos in it of late 1700s to early 1800s VA rifles. 

After the coastal colonial towns were filling up, ome of the later settlers moved west away from the coast, down the valleys of VA bringing gunsmithing skills with them.  Between Botetourt County and Wytheville there were several gunsmiths that made rifles, some with iron mounts.  Several known NC mountains gunsmiths learned their skills from their fathers there. 

[Sherrell]

AZ,

Thanks so very much for your detailed response and observations.

I have not contacted Williamsburg yet.  I just stumbled across the rifle this past Friday.  I was assuming someone here knew all about it.

One last question… Please tutor me: Why did the Colonial Williamsburg Museum choose to call it a “Southern” long rifle?

What about it makes it a “Southern” long rifle as opposed to say, a PA long rifle or any other “Non-Southern” region?

Thanks so much,

Sherrell

[AZshot]

AZ,

Thanks so very much for your detailed response and observations.

I have not contacted Williamsburg yet.  I just stumbled across the rifle this past Friday.  I was assuming someone here knew all about it.

One last question… Please tutor me: Why did the Colonial Williamsburg Museum choose to call it a “Southern” long rifle?

What about it makes it a “Southern” long rifle as opposed to say, a PA long rifle or any other “Non-Southern” region?

Thanks so much,

Sherrell

I don't know why they did that, but suspect it's because Virgina is considered part of the South. Why they think it's from Virginia I also don't know.  Could be by attribution, or because it's signed by a known maker, or they're just making an educated guess. 

[Eric Kettenburg]

It's a neat piece.  It's also something that could have been made pretty much anywhere by anyone quickly banging out something that goes... bang.

Could be southern.  Could be northern.  Could be anywhere, if you approach it with an open mind.  I don't see a single aspect of it that could be used as a feature or characteristic at which to point to say, 'Aha!'  But if you look hard enough and *want* to find connections when we look at these things, you are guaranteed to find a connection.  It's a very hard habit to set aside.

[Robert Wolfe]

But if you look hard enough and *want* to find connections when we look at these things, you are guaranteed to find a connection.  It's a very hard habit to set aside.

Wise words.

[whetrock]

The northern schools of gunsmithing are well researched and well documented, so people recognize them. Some people assume that anything that doesn't obviously fit in one of those schools must be southern, especially if it has a folk-art feel, as this rifle does. As Eric has said, it's not always a meaningful attribution. There were some schools of gunsmithing in the south, and they are slowly becoming better known.

[Sherrell]

Very interesting branch in the discussion. 
I’m definitely a rank novice in the developmental history and taxonomy of long rifles.  But I do know something about the dynamics of technology evolution in general.  We often assume that distinct technology evolutions occur in the mind of one person, at a moment in time, in one place, and then everything more recent descends directly from that “eureka” event.  While this is often true, it is not always true that only one person, at one moment in time has a unique idea and everyone else then adopts it.  The truth in some cases is that multiple people in different places had the same idea at nearly the same time.  Technology evolution is not always “linear” from a single point.  It really shouldn’t surprise us if multiple people, separated by great distances, but working in similar environments, develop similar solutions to their shared problems and challenges. The free market has a strong tendency to adopt and favor better solutions wherever and whenever they arrive on the scene. Once birthed, superior technical solutions tend to capture the market until swept off the stage by better solutions.  I’d be really surprised if long rifles are an exception to these dynamics.  Matters of “style” (form) that are disconnected from function are, of course, a very different matter – as are functional differences that respond to unique “environmental” factors in different areas.

We are very close to the point (perhaps already there) at which we will be able to provide AI engines photos of well documented long rifles.  The AI engines, with machine learning, will be able to classify unknown rifles into their most likely dates and “families” – possibly even identify their makers.  But that’s a topic for a different day. [SMILE]

Thank you all for sharing your knowledge with me.

Cheers

[AZshot]

Attributions are as good as the expertise of the giver. As much is based on the geneology and the history of gunmaker's familiy connections and origins as any features on a rifle.  They varied every time they built one.   I highly doubt using AI to "ID" a custom long rifle is going to give anything except laughable results. 

[Sherrell]

Well, AZ, that’s perhaps a comforting thought.  But we are already seeing developments that challenge that thinking. 

For instance, I read last year about a study that demonstrated that AI engines can be better at detecting cancer in certain CT and X-ray scans, than are radiologists who have been reading images for 40 years.  That was accomplished by “showing” the AI engine thousands of images of cancerous and non-cancerous scans.  The AI engines “learned” which image artifacts are associated with cancer.  If the human eye can detect it, and AI engine can detect it.  But beyond this, the AI engines apparently discovered image artifact “causal” relationships that the human eye/brain apparently aren’t picking up.  Once trained in this manner, the engines did a better job at differentiating between cancerous and non-cancerous scans than did the humans shown the same scan.

There is an accelerating AI and Machine Learning Revolution taking over many image processing, image recognition, and image classification fields in the military, scientific, and business arenas. Just “google” “AI Machine Learning Image Recognition”.  You may be amazed at what you find.  Our beloved long rifle interest area here will not be immune to these advancements.  Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if some graduate student somewhere is already working on a research project in this area.

Now to your point, if it ever happens, the trick will of course be the accuracy of the maker/date attributions of the photos that are used to train the AI engines.  Garbage In – Garbage Out still reigns.  But it is possible.  The only thing that might hold it back is the lack of a financial incentive for anyone to do it. But we are already at the point where if certain AI engines were show enough images of ACCURATELY ATTRIBUTED rifles from various regions and “schools”, the AI engines could almost certainly do a reasonably good job of classifying a new gun they are “shown”.  It’s certainly possible.  But I doubt we’ll see it soon because of the cost of developing the tool and the lack of a financial incentive for anyone to invest the time and dollars to do it.

Cheers and thanks again for wading in.

[rich pierce]

AI would be best suited to the Golden Age, late flint and percussion eras. That’s where there are signed guns and reasonable date guesstimates. You could train it to recognize a Lehigh or Christians Spring or Bucks County gun, I’d think. But the “school” model is particularly weak in many instances. In Lancaster, let’s try to match up Fainot versus Dickert versus Newcomer, for example. Which one dropped out of school? Which one graduated early? Which never went to school at all in Lancaster?  Could AI say, “nope, that’s York county, not Lancaster? The Newcomer tang carving might easily lump it in with Schroyer. I’m thinking “middle school” guns would be easier for AI to assign, just as they are for us. By that I mean carrying many marks of many guns attributed to that school.

I’m pretty sure JTR and others would leave an AI longrifle attribution tool in the dust.

[AZshot]

Rich, I concur. 

I use AI daily for my job.  I'm a former Systems Engineer and trained Stealth Fighter pilots...I come here NOT to worry about, use, or discuss AI.  Collecting and shooting antiques are my relief from a technological world. 
The OP would do well to read more books first, to learn about early rifles, instead of hypothesizing.

So I'm out of this discussion. 

[Sherrell]

I too use AI - rather intensively in my science and engineering consulting business. It is a tsunami headed our way.

For the near term, AI cannot be more accurate than the material it is trained on.  That is to say, error in attribution of guns in the photos in its knowledge base would be replicated in AI’s attribution decisions.  Discord, disagreement, and uncertainty among experts on attribution of the guns in AI's knowledge base would also be replicated in AI’s attribution decisions for new guns.  The more certain the attribution of the guns it is trained on, the more certain would be AI’s conclusions about a new gun it was asked to examine.  Garbage In – Garbage Out. Uncertainty In – Uncertainty Out. 

Anyway, all of this is just speculation at this point.  I agree with AZ that I don’t come here to discuss AI.  I’ve already learned during my first few days here that there’s no shortage of divergent opinions about the attribution of many guns.  AI isn’t going to change that.  Isn’t that part of the fun of it all?

Nuff about AI on this thread.

Thank everyone for weighing in…

Cheers.

[A Scanlan]

Many wise people with wise comments.  All I can say is that "absolutes" simply are rather rare on a gun like this (and many others).  I had a discussion last week with a noted authority on VA works.  The gun in question was said to have attributes of many SW VA makers and yet it defies being specifically identified as to when where or by whom.  Let it be a mystery.