How Would a Gunsmith 250 years ago get all this knowledge of what was being built in other areas? Most people back then had never even been 50 miles from their home, depending on where you lived a trip to the county seat could take several days. A gunsmith might occasionally see a rifle from an adjourning county if someone passing through needed it repaired. Seeing a gun from a different colony would have been extremely rare. The idea that someone could walk into a gun shop in Lancaster and order a Tennesse rifle is ridiculous. How was the gunsmith going to even find out what a Tennessee rifle looked like? Reality is the people who lived around any Gunsmith shop probably had no idea that any other style of guns even existed.
Some people in those days travelled extensively. Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clark, Benedict Arnold, Michael Cresap, George Washington, Simon Girty, Christopher Gist, etc., come immediately to mind. A gunsmith would not need to travel that much to see a variety of guns, the guns would come to him. Guns were a valuable commodity and were extensively sold, traded, and transported. Some would end up hundreds of miles from their origin.
If a Tennessee gunmaker moved to PA, his knowledge of Tennessee rifle architecture would not evaporate into thin air. He would become adept at making the local styles, and continue to make and promote Tennessee rifles, since some customers would like to try something different. Same as now.
Consider this: an English or German gunsmith in the middle 1700’s gets tired of the dreary north European winters, or is fleeing creditors. Has heard there are business opportunities in America, and the taxes are much lower, and sunny weather is the norm in the south. So he books passage to Savanna, Georgia. A couple of years after his arrival, he is tired of the heat, humidity, snakes, and mosquito 10 months out of the year. And he begins to miss the crisp fall weather of his old homeland, but going back there is out of the question. Finds out central PA is not a bad place to live and work. Sells most of his tools, packs up what’s left of the smaller hand tools in a bag, and heads north by land traveling along the eastern side of the Appalachian mountains. Takes him two months to reach PA. Along the way, being an experienced gunsmith, he pays close attention to the guns people are carrying, seeing many examples of styles and types. Some he has seen in Europe or Georgia many times before, some are entirely new to him. But he remembers the details of what he saw.
When he sets up another shop in PA, he knows that he can build almost any style of gun a customer might want.
In real life there would have many variations on this story, but it illustrates my point.
It’s all about human nature.
Human nature.
Does not change.
