When did pistol grip stocks first arise?

[SavageArcher]

I always thought pistol grip stocks on muzzleloading rifles were a late 19th century develepment mostly seen on some target and English sporters. However thumbing through an old gun book I saw a plains rifle from the late 1830's with a rounded pistol grip. Also remember seeing somewhere an English flinter with a pistol grip, it seemed to be a late 18th or very early 19th century deerstalker.

I'm wondering about pistol grips in pre 1860 rifles made in America. Thinking back to all the old gun magizines I've collected I'm sure I remember seeing some caplocks with pistol grips, rare but they existed.

Has anyone else done any research along this line? I'm curious to learn more about this and any guidence would be helpful.

 

Davy Crockett's 'pretty Betsy' presented to him by a political group in Philadelphia was a percussion rifle with pistol grip (and kinda ugly in my eyes). A picture of it is in Cline's book on MLing rifles and it used to be on display in Little Rock, but I don't know where it is now. I can look up the date in Crockett's 'autobiography', but it isn't handy now....it was well before he went to Texas ca. 1835. It appears to have been a rare design for that period.

 

[Stumpkiller]

Depends how you define "pistol grip". The early lever-trigger matchlocks evolved into wheellocks, into snaphauses, into early flintlocks. All had a metalic rail behind the lock that the fingers rested on. At some point the rail bottomed out into the stock and became the rudementary loop of the last flintlocks. This may have further evolved into the easier to create wood "hump" that is the more modern pistol grip style.