Earliest dated rifle?

[Dphar]

IF you can get to the americanlongriflesorg site it has good information.

Dan

 

[Dphar]

One factor in dating and signing rifles could be the relationship between the Crown and the colonies. The colonies were seen as a source of raw materials for the motherland where they were converted to consumer goods with some sold back to the colonists. The king frowned on the idea of colonists manufacturing their own products. In that light, why would a Smith put his name and date on the illegal products.

Parts for firearms were imported and made into firearms. It was the import of raw materials, as your state, unworked brass for example. The British, for the most part, wanted finished articles shipped to the colonies, candlesticks rather than brass bars to cast into candlesticks.

Since iron was being mined in America the British did not like the Americans building mills to make sheet iron. Export the pigs to England and let THEM make the sheet and send it back. Things such as this were part of the reason Americans eventually rebelled. It stifled growth.

But there were gun shops all around the Colonies. It was simply impossible to have people living here without gunsmiths. Even the imported arms needed to be repaired. Locks and barrels were imported and built into rifles and guns. Some locks were made here but its was expensive compared to mass produced locks from Europe so imported locks were the norm for American ML arms. Barrel making was well established in PA by 1775.
Why the rifles/guns were not always signed I could not say. Many of these arms, by whatever means, ended up in the hands of the Natives. The sale of RIFLES to the natives was frowned upon by the Crown, if not outlawed after the F&I War. They were considered very dangerous given the way the Natives made war and they COST LESS TO SHOOT, this upset the traders. This is documented in the writings of the 1750s-60s. See "British Flintlock Military Rifles" by DeWitt Baily.

Perhaps, and this is supposition, having one's name on a rifle being used by the Natives (even though British made rifles were being traded and gifted to the natives) to kill people a few miles away or your neighbor and then found at the scene of the fight might have caused difficulties for the maker. I don't know. I don't know what the gov't official's policies were in any given colony at any given time. Some were signed some were not. During the Revolution I could see where signing a rifle used by the patriots could cause problems. The John Thomas Rifle #121 in RCA is an example. It has a 13 point star in the cheek piece that has "UNITED STATES: WE ARE ONE" engraved on it. I can see why this was unsigned. It could be a danger to the maker if it fell into British hands as it did.

This rifle was obviously severely damaged before or after its capture by the British. It was taken to England as a trophy. It was given to Prince George and extensively repaired and relocked by Durs Egg in 1803 to restore it for shooting.

The reason for this lack of makers names, like a great many things, is lost to time. But we also have to remember that we have a relatively small sample of original arms and even fewer of the early production guns. Many were simply thrown away, used by children as playthings until "used up" and/or went to scrap drives in WW-I and even WW-II.

So far as dating? Its not even common today.
Since there were people putting fraudulent signatures and dates on rifles in the past and perhaps even as I type one must view ANY old rifle critically. Some items like powder horns and tinware are so commonly faked, and powder horns since perhaps the 1870s with the "Centennial", its impossible to take at face value even horns that have been in some museum collection for a Century.
I personally know a man who put himself through college selling antique tinware he made himself and traveled from town to town selling to Antique stores. So when I see some reenactor gushing over a corn boiler or some other old item he has found and will have copied I always wonder... Paying a high price for an "original" horn? Would not dream of it.
So when we see an early signed and dated rifle we have to ask if the architecture matches the time. The rifle in Dillon's book cited in this thread is obviously grossly "off" in style for the date and maker given. But it was common in the early 20th C. and probably well back into the 19th c to date rifles 20-50 years too early. Today I think we tend to date rifles of unknown origin too late in some cases. But we have to remember that a rifle of 1770 could just as easily date to 1750 in style since on the overall scheme of things there probably was not much change in this period. AND the Colonies tended to run a decade to more behind Europe. This was still true in 1800 so far as state of the art firearms were concerned. This is really complex subject. Was the rifle made by such and such a maker based on features or was it stocked by an apprentice who was working in the mans shop and copied his style? Then we have the problem of recycled barrels that might or might not bear the name of the maker that stocked the barrel when it was new. Then we have barrels with brass plates set into them for the signature. Was this done to change the name?
The subject can be a "can of worms" is all the possibilities are thought out.

Dan

 

[longcruise]

Thanks, Dan. Great clarification and food for thought.

 

[Va.Manuf.06]

Very well said Dan, thanks.

 

[The Damned Yankee]

For anyone still interested in the John Schreit 1761 rifle, it is now on display at the Winterthur Museum in Winterthur, Delaware!