Longrifles made in Pennsylvania?

[Artificer]

Smo,

I know where that sign is as it is my own "back yard." :wink:

17th century Iron Production in Virginia was primarily to provide Pig Iron to Great Britain under the policy of Colonial Mercantilism. The idea was the colonies supplied the raw materials and Britain did the manufacturing and sold the manufactured goods in Europe and back to us. Some of the Iron may have been used for local production of nails, kettles, andirons, firebacks, etc.

The Tubal Iron Works set up in the early 18th century did pretty much the same thing, though some Iron was also made into nails and other commercial use items and sold in Williamsburg and some sold in Norfolk for ship repair and other commercial uses. Governor Spotswood was highly involved in early 18th century Iron production. http://www.geni.com/people/Gov-Alexander-Spotswood/6000000000769909050

What may have been or probably was the largest scale Iron Works in 18th century Virginia was Hunter's Iron Works in Fredericksburg, VA set up in the 1740's and in full industrial production about 1750. Though in addition to pig iron for export, they made a great deal of kettles, pots, pans, plows and other items; there was no record of making gun barrels, locks or guns there until the AWI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter's_Ironworks

I lived in the Fredericksburg, VA area for most of the 3rd Quarter of the 20th century and attempted to track down at least gun barrel manufacturing in Virginia (East of the Mountains and in the Shennandoah Valley and Blue Ridge) prior to the AWI through those years. Bottom line, no such luck on anything other than a few barrels may or were made in very limited quantities in Virginia from time to time. It was cheaper to import barrels from England or the Germanic states than it was to make them here in the Colonies, for the most part, until we HAD to do it during the AWI.

I seem to recall boring mills being set up in Pennsylvania in the 1730's for making and boring gun barrels, though. Much or most of their production was probably for smooth bore barrels, though some rifle barrels were also made and rough bored. Rifle gunsmiths often purchased rough bored barrels and finish reamed and rifled them or even bought finished barrels and many of these came from the Germanic states.

Gus

 

[Artificer]

Sort of a P.S. to my post above.

Just because a gunsmith was trained to make at least one barrel during the 17th and 18th century to complete his apprenticeship, this did not mean they normally made gun barrels to any large degree in the Colonies in the Colonial Period. I know it is hard to wrap our modern minds around that fact.

We have a tendency to think that since Iron was available here, that barrel making may or was much more common here than it actually was. I know it sounds incredulous that importing gun barrels or buying at least rough bored barrels was more economical than making them here. However and besides the policy of mercantilism, the colonies just did not have the large scale, water driven mills that were common in Britain and on the Continent.

In the 17th and early 18th centuries, gun making was already being broken down into 23 separate trades in Britain and the Continent and just one of them was barrel making. These specialized sub trades highly reduced the cost of the finished components by making each sub trade more industrialized. Small gun shops in the Colonies just did not have the industrialization or the labor force to complete with that and that's whey so many of the barrels came from Britain or Europe until the AWI.

Gus

 

[dave_person]

Hi Gus,
As you say, most locks and barrels before the AWI were imported. The Moravian records for the gunshop at Christians Spring show that very clearly. Another important fact, is that much industrial production and manufacturing in the colonies was prohibited by the British government. The English colonies were seen as a source of raw materials for English businesses and then a market for their products. Indeed, the continental American colonies were deemed most important as a market for goods than a source of materials. The golden egg for resources were the sugar plantations on islands in the Caribbean.

dave

 

[Artificer]

Hi Dave,

VERY interesting about the records from the gun shop at Christian Springs. Do any of the accounts say where the barrels came from and maybe who they were purchased from?

Also, wasn't there sort of a Bachelor Housing in that community for unmarried men to learn/work a trade while they were single? I have wondered how many of them worked in the gun shop.

Gus

 

[hoochiepapa]

Many questions can be answered by reading "Moravian Gun Making of the American Revolution" from the KRA.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

I can trace my family back to the Angstadt family. The first here, George (1692 to 1762) opened a gun smith shop between New Jersusalem and Lobachsville, now in Berks County, in 1747. He immigrated from a small village, Gumbrechtshoffen, in Alsace-Lorraine, (now France) however, there are records listing someone by a very similar name as a gunsmith in Saxony before the record of his marriage in Alsace-Lorraine. he married Eva Catherina Scheaffer about 1720. For a short period Moll lived near New Jerusalem, before going to Allentown. As I understand it, there are no known examples of George's work. Early township tax records sometimes had inventories of taxable goods, but I never saw any tax records for him.

 

[dave_person]

Hi Zimmer,
What great information!! Thank you for sharing. What a beautiful name - Eva Catherina. I often wonder if many old country gunsmiths came to America, and if they could buy farmland, either gave up smithing or didn't start because owning a prosperous farm was more secure and generated greater wealth.

Hi Gus,
The sample of inventories and receipts shown in Bob Lienemann and Steve Hench's book on Moravian gun making indicate locks and barrels from England and locks from Germany. However, most inventories do not indicate origin. It is interesting to note that the Christian's Spring shop was referred to as a gun stocking shop. Yes, they housed boys and girls separately in dorms and at least a few of those boys were documented working at the gun stocking shop.

dave

 

[Artificer]

Hi Dave,

That was fascinating. I have run across the gunsmithing sub-trade of "Gun Stocker" many times, but that's a first for me to learn they called a period shop a "gun stocking shop."

Sort of surprised they bought English locks and barrels, except they would not have had to pay the tariff on English goods that had to be paid on German goods. Maybe those were for smooth bore guns?

Thank you!
Gus

 

[dave_person]

Hi Gus,
Actually both smoothbore and rifled. One inventory shows 15 English rifled barrels and 15 English locks for them.

dave

 

[Artificer]

Hi Dave,

Once again, so much for an all too common myth that the English did not make rifled barrels. Eh?

Thanks again,
Gus

 

[nchawkeye]

The original John Schreit rifle was made near Reading and is dated 1761, the earliest known American made longrifle.

That is the earliest known DATED American longrifle, not the earliest...

And what is the earliest? What "date" is it from? There is plenty of primary documentation of American Longrifles in the F&I War era but only one or two extant examples and their provenance is questionable. I'd be real curious to find out what the earliest one was.

Twisted_1in66:thumbsup:
Dan

The date of the earliest original is not and will not ever be known...As Shumway mentions in one of his books, what if an early gunsmith restocked a musket and rifled the barrel, is that the earliest???

We do know through excellent record keeping of the Moravians that they imported both locks and barrels from both England and the Germanic countries...Most of these barrels were not rifled, until the gunsmith over here did it...

Previous to the American Revolution there were very, very few locks or barrels made in the Colonies...

 

[Twisted_1in66]

England looked at the colonies as a supplier of raw materials and a ready market for the resulting manufactured items to be sold back to. They went so far as to outlaw working the iron into manufactured goods. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, but does mean they tried to stop it. That's one of the reasons why the rifles and guns of the time in America used brass furniture instead of iron. It was a "you send us the materials and we'll turn it into items to sell back to you" type of arrangement. The English locks used in fowlers and rifles were imported by the barrel load after they used the iron that the colonies provided to make them.

Twisted_1in66 :thumbsup:
Dan

 

[MC One Shot]

We do know through excellent record keeping of the Moravians that they imported both locks and barrels from both England and the Germanic countries...Most of these barrels were not rifled, until the gunsmith over here did it...

Are you suggesting that barrel blanks were shipped to the Colonies and that the bores were drilled and rifled here? Or that the barrels already had bores and just required the rifling here.

 

[dave_person]

Hi MC,
The records indicate both barrel blanks and completely rifled barrels were imported. The shop at Christian's Spring had rifling, boring, and reaming tools so I suspect they finished imported barrel blanks, probably made a few barrels completely on their own, and refreshed used barrels.

dave

 

[MC One Shot]

Thanks Dave

Pretty well what I suspected, a little bit of everything. I suspect that they were very resourceful and did what ever could to get goods out the door....

 

[dave_person]

Hi MC,
They were very adaptable and resourceful. In some of the inventories included by Bob Lienemann in his book on Moravian gun making, you can see how they started stocking up on barrels, wood, locks etc. during 1775 and 1776 anticipating the war.

dave

 

[vladdy7]

Hello,

I know this is an old thread but it came up on a search and I don't know where else to post, you might find this interesting.

I live in Lancaster, Pa. I'm a amateur historian, I enjoy learning about history which brings me here. I enjoy researching places, mostly in the woods, that have historical value, finding them and metal detecting the site. I was going through old maps of Lancaster county and found the name Mylin on a place that looked like a place where there was an old home site. It's in a wooded area, nothing really around it. The map I found said there was a house, I took a ride down last Monday and found the remains... there was an old house in this location. I found the remains of the chimney and 6 sets of 4 iron bars pounded into the ground vertically, it looks like they were used to hold some type of step in place - I believe this was the front door of the house. The following day I went back with my CTX 3030 detector. I parked, got out of my truck, walked directly to the iron bars which I assumed was the steps to the front door, turned on the detector and immediately pulled from the ground a 1809 US Half Cent about 6-7" down. The map shows 2 structures; 1 on the left side of the stream which I believe to be the house, 1 on the right side of the stream which they have as "Barn". Both are listed as "wood structure" which I believe to be true, no signs of bricks were found other than the chimney. I went back to the site Saturday for a thorough "hunt" and worked the barn side first. In all my days of MD'ing I've never seen that much iron as I saw at that location. Excessive Iron can be a problem in that it masks other non-ferrous objects, even on a $3k detector. As I had the "meat & potato" of my hunt ahead of me in the main house site, I moved on. The subsequent search of the site where the home was turned up no non-ferrous items, but there was plenty of iron in the ground typical with a colonial homesite.

History here states that Hans Mylin emigrated here from the Swiss/Bavaria region in 1710. My research shows this to be correct. However, I don't believe Hans was the gunsmith... I believe Hans 2 (I'll use these designations going forward, the Mylin's apparently liked the name "Martin" and every first born boy named their first born boy "Martin" which makes for a researching nightmare). And, I believe, the first Pennsylvania Long Rifle made by the Mylins was made by "#2" in the barn that I found. Upon getting home Saturday I emptied my collection bag and went through what I found and kept. Interestingly, one of the items was a lead ingot that was in the shape of a cannon ball, roughly 4" in diameter. It appeared to be quartered with 3/4 missing. I also found, and remember finding, a musket ball in the neighborhood of 50 cal. I had tons of hits in the of musket ball range but didn't dig anymore after the first.

I've read in this thread that the Pennsylvania Long Rifle was the same as their European counterparts of the time. I found this to be incorrect. In a book of early Lancaster history, it was noted that the design of the rifle was changed to accommodate the differences in geology between here and Europe. Early settlers supposedly lengthened the barrel making it considerably longer to "allow the black powder a longer burn" for longer shots and accuracy. it was also said that the caliber was reduced so that the ammunition would be lighter.

I've reached out to the local college that did the study of the Hans Mylin house in 2005. They found no evidence of gunsmithing on this property which can understand why. When Hans Mylin emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1710, he was given a large chunk of the William Penn 10,000 acres that was set aside for people to settle the area. I think Hans gave his first son, also a blacksmith, land where I found the house and that's where the gunsmith was located.

In summary, I do believe that this area had a few families that did gunsmithing but Hans Mylin was not the Mylin that was associated with the long rifle, it was his son.

 

[rich pierce]

Hello,

I know this is an old thread but it came up on a search and I don't know where else to post, you might find this interesting.

I live in Lancaster, Pa. I'm a amateur historian, I enjoy learning about history which brings me here. I enjoy researching places, mostly in the woods, that have historical value, finding them and metal detecting the site. I was going through old maps of Lancaster county and found the name Mylin on a place that looked like a place where there was an old home site. It's in a wooded area, nothing really around it. The map I found said there was a house, I took a ride down last Monday and found the remains... there was an old house in this location. I found the remains of the chimney and 6 sets of 4 iron bars pounded into the ground vertically, it looks like they were used to hold some type of step in place - I believe this was the front door of the house. The following day I went back with my CTX 3030 detector. I parked, got out of my truck, walked directly to the iron bars which I assumed was the steps to the front door, turned on the detector and immediately pulled from the ground a 1809 US Half Cent about 6-7" down. The map shows 2 structures; 1 on the left side of the stream which I believe to be the house, 1 on the right side of the stream which they have as "Barn". Both are listed as "wood structure" which I believe to be true, no signs of bricks were found other than the chimney. I went back to the site Saturday for a thorough "hunt" and worked the barn side first. In all my days of MD'ing I've never seen that much iron as I saw at that location. Excessive Iron can be a problem in that it masks other non-ferrous objects, even on a $3k detector. As I had the "meat & potato" of my hunt ahead of me in the main house site, I moved on. The subsequent search of the site where the home was turned up no non-ferrous items, but there was plenty of iron in the ground typical with a colonial homesite.

History here states that Hans Mylin emigrated here from the Swiss/Bavaria region in 1710. My research shows this to be correct. However, I don't believe Hans was the gunsmith... I believe Hans 2 (I'll use these designations going forward, the Mylin's apparently liked the name "Martin" and every first born boy named their first born boy "Martin" which makes for a researching nightmare). And, I believe, the first Pennsylvania Long Rifle made by the Mylins was made by "#2" in the barn that I found. Upon getting home Saturday I emptied my collection bag and went through what I found and kept. Interestingly, one of the items was a lead ingot that was in the shape of a cannon ball, roughly 4" in diameter. It appeared to be quartered with 3/4 missing. I also found, and remember finding, a musket ball in the neighborhood of 50 cal. I had tons of hits in the of musket ball range but didn't dig anymore after the first.

I've read in this thread that the Pennsylvania Long Rifle was the same as their European counterparts of the time. I found this to be incorrect. In a book of early Lancaster history, it was noted that the design of the rifle was changed to accommodate the differences in geology between here and Europe. Early settlers supposedly lengthened the barrel making it considerably longer to "allow the black powder a longer burn" for longer shots and accuracy. it was also said that the caliber was reduced so that the ammunition would be lighter.

I've reached out to the local college that did the study of the Hans Mylin house in 2005. They found no evidence of gunsmithing on this property which can understand why. When Hans Mylin emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1710, he was given a large chunk of the William Penn 10,000 acres that was set aside for people to settle the area. I think Hans gave his first son, also a blacksmith, land where I found the house and that's where the gunsmith was located.

In summary, I do believe that this area had a few families that did gunsmithing but Hans Mylin was not the Mylin that was associated with the long rifle, it was his son.

Current research has pretty much debunked the idea that Martin Mylin was a gunsmith. A European gun got faked waaaay back when, maybe 1930s, with M M and now there’s no going back for most folks. A section of the book The Lancaster Long Rifle at the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum is dedicated to putting the Martin Mylin myth to rest.

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
In addition to what Rich wrote, long barreled rifles and smooth bores were well known in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. The long tubes did allow poor slow burning powder to fully burn before the bullet or shot left the barrel. However, the Germans made a rifle powder often referred to "super fine double strength" beginning in the early 18th century and it was commonly used in their short barreled hunting rifles. In Bob Lienemann's second book on Moravian gun making, he includes letters from Caspar Wistar which included orders requesting the longer rifle barrels made in Germany because they were more popular in Penn colony than the shorter barrels. He specified barrels between 38 and 40" being preferred. His correspondence dates from the first decade of the 18th century.

dave

 

[Stophel]

The Moravians were not responsible for all early PA gunsmithing. Not by a long shot. They just kept good records. The largest percentage of Germans in PA came from der Pfalz, and neighboring regions in SW Germany and Switzerland. I see very clear connections between Bucks county guns (and Lehigh guns to a lesser extent) and guns made near Frankfurt-am-Main, and the influential Freund gunsmithing family in Fuerstenau. This, being the general area where so many Germans came from, it's not really surprising.

As was stated, Wolfgang and Nicholas Hachen came from Switzerland. Bern, if I remember correctly. Over the years, I have TRIED to find photographs of known 18th century Swiss rifles. It has been an exceedingly difficult task. Which still surprises me. Oh, I can find all kinds of Swiss rifles from 1850. Tons of them. We all know the familiar style... but 1750? Rotsa Ruck. I have scoured the internet and auction catalogs for years and I have scrounged up photos of known or suspected 18th century Swiss rifles that I could count on both hands with fingers left over. What I see in them are pretty plain guns. Little, if any, carving. Often with a bit of a fish belly shape to the stock, but not always. Somewhat comparable to some of the early Reading guns, if not in actual style, but in a sort of feel (I also see a distinct concavity around the lock panels, which isn't really seen much on German or American rifles.... except in Berks county). One feature common to ALL of the few Swiss rifles I have seen so far.... LONG barrels. 40-some-odd inches. ALL of them. They also seem rather heavy, and usually fitted for a bayonet, so likely canton militia arms. They also seemed to like to sometimes put a weird iron ball on the heel of the buttplate. Apparently to set the gun on the ground for loading. A holdover from cheek stock wheel lock rifles which will also have a ball or even a spike on the butt for this purpose.... this did not make it to America...