rifled barrels in America

When did America really start seeing Rifled barrels? Now I know they were in Germany for quite a long time and could have ventured here but I assume sometime in the early 1800's they were here no?

I believe that Jacob Dickert (Lancaster PA area) and Adam Haymaker (Shenandoah area) were building with rifled barrels in the 1760's .

The early 1800's was smack in the middle of the Golden Age of rifle building - rifled barrels were well established and "common place" by then.

"THE VIRGINIA GAZETTE
August 8, 1751
DAVID and William Geddy Smith at Williamsburg , near the Church, having all Manner of Utensils requisite, carry on the Gun-smith's, Cutler's, and Founder's Trade, at whose Shop may be had the following Work, viz. Gun Work, such as Guns and Pistols Stocks, plain, or neatly varnished, Locks and Mountings, Barrels blued, bored, and rifled;"

Spence

Most barrels shipped here before the Revolution were rifled here and before the Revolution there were few barrels or locks made in America...

The Germans were rifling them by the mid-1500s...

As Spence has shown, it was before the American Revolution...

Well, you asked "when" so I am figuring you mean showing up in appreciable numbers. They pre-date the American Revolution and were around at the French and Indian Wars. The Henrys of Bolton, PA made a lot of rifled long guns and date back to the Colonial Indian Trade. If you are thinking the rifle didn't show up in large numbers until the early 1800's, you are a little late on the time line.

George said:

"THE VIRGINIA GAZETTE
August 8, 1751
DAVID and William Geddy Smith at Williamsburg , near the Church, having all Manner of Utensils requisite, carry on the Gun-smith's, Cutler's, and Founder's Trade, at whose Shop may be had the following Work, viz. Gun Work, such as Guns and Pistols Stocks, plain, or neatly varnished, Locks and Mountings, Barrels blued, bored, and rifled;"


Spence

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Blueing in 1751, did not know that.
Did not know blueing was that old.

Bluing and browning goes back to the days of Armor or even earlier.

Yes, there were Black Knights wearing what we would called blued armor.

From the 1730s an advertisment for a shoot being held in pennsylvania ofered as prize a 'snaphance'rifle. I wonder if snaphance was being used here for what we would call a snaphance, or if it was a genric term that may have been a scotish or english dog lock, a french or german flint lock?

where do you guys find old newspaper articles??

Though only a guess, the term "snaphance" was used, at times, to refer to what we'd call flintlock. Unless they were giving away a 40 year old gun, it's not likely to have been a original "snaphance", as we now know the term.

Carteret Kid said:

George said:

"THE VIRGINIA GAZETTE
August 8, 1751
DAVID and William Geddy Smith at Williamsburg , near the Church, having all Manner of Utensils requisite, carry on the Gun-smith's, Cutler's, and Founder's Trade, at whose Shop may be had the following Work, viz. Gun Work, such as Guns and Pistols Stocks, plain, or neatly varnished, Locks and Mountings, Barrels blued, bored, and rifled;"


Spence

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Blueing in 1751, did not know that.
Did not know blueing was that old.

Click to expand...

Bluing was early on done on gun barrels by heating in a bed of charcoal, by heating with a metal bar, or just by heating, not necessarily by the use of chemicals - just one reference:
From AN ESSAY ON SHOOTING, published in London in 1789:

"The last operation [in making the barrel] is that of colouring the barrel,...Formerly, the barrels were coloured by exposing them to a degree of heat which produced an elegant blue tinge, but as this effect arises from a degree of calcination. [oxidation] taking place upon the surface of the metal, the inside of the barrel always suffered by undergoing the same change. This, therefore, added to the painful sensation excited in the eye by looking along a barrel so coloured, has caused the practice of bluing to be disused for some time past. Instead of it barrels are now browned, as it is termed..."

i was thinking that could be the case. ofcorse they didn't throw away things very quick back then. I suspect if a used snaphance was re-added to a 'moderen gun' it would have been reworked. likewise old terms were kept around long after technolgy changed. even to day our ships 'set sail'.

I'm sure there were "hoarders" of a sort back then too. Arms & armor have been collected and prized as collections since the invention of the rock as a weapon.

P.S.; I read it in "Better Caves & Gardens"

DANG! Just threw out my sons rock collection when cleaning the garage! Had no idea it could have been sold as an ancient weapons cache! Money lost...

crockett said:

They pre-date the American Revolution and were around at the French and Indian Wars.

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I've seen some pretty warm discussions as to whether that is true, but I find enough references before and during the F&I war to make me believe it is. They seem to show up in the hands of a broad sample of the population, too, people of many types and situations. I think there is a general misunderstanding about this, and that rifles became common quite a bit earlier than many of us amateur historians believe.

This is one area where I've always felt the attributions of age assigned by collectors may be leading us astray. Saying rifles only showed up after the time of the oldest surviving one and ignoring citations in the writings of the time showing their existence before that seems a bit illogical, to me.

Spence

I understand the Germans started rifling barrels around 1520, not long after Columbus did his thing, and gifted German (and other?) immigrant gunsmiths probably started in America before the 1650's. This is just a guess, but I'm interested because one of my DNA ancestors from England was Clement Briggs who landed at Plymouth colony on the ship Fortune in 1621. The English established the much wealthier colony at Boston not long after, and had the money and inclination to hire/attract such talent. That would be a good subject to study.
Also the Spanish brought incredible 'smithing talent to the Southwest very early, teaching it to Native Americans. Possibilities? Thank you for the post! :thumbsup: :hatsoff: George Briggs

I have sen plenty of inventory records from 1740's central VA distinguishing rifles from smoothbored guns.

I think we may be forgetting that not only does a technology need to exist, but there has to be a demand, a "market" for it to flourish. I think we need to add to that the principle of "exposure" of the technology to other cultures.

In 1710 Palatine Germans were shipped from England (where they had lived as refugees) to "New America", and ended up scattered, with some in as odd a place as in the Carribean. More characteristic, a large group of Germans end up in New York, another in Pennsylvania, and a smaller group in the Carolinas.

Out of those people, the largest group was the New York group of about 3200 people. Large not only in number, but they settled very close to each other. The North Carolina group fomed the next largest "settlement" and numbered about 300. The PA Palatine Germans numbered very close to their New York relatives...but they dispersed and scattered into small communities upon arrival.

In less than ten years the German settlements along the Hudson and in New York City had reduced in number as members left for other parts of New York, as well as moving into New Jersey and into Pennsylvania.

So while you undoubtedly had German gunsmiths in the first half of the 18th century coming into the Colonies, you may not have had enough folks to support a demand for rifles..., well at least not in large numbers....

Consider then if there were so many Germans in New York and New Jersey, why is New York NOT equal to Pennsylvania in the production of rifles? It was Pennsylvania first, alone, that became the center of Colonial rifle making, followed by Virginia and Maryland. To be precise, it was Southern Pennsylvania, along the Maryland and Virginia borders that became the center for Colonial American rifle making.

Why?

First, note that the reputation for the Pennsylvania Longrifle begins right about the middle of the 18th century. About thirty to forty years after the Germans arrive...roughly one to two generations after the bulk of the first Germans land in the Colonies.

During this same time period as mentioned before, the German communities along the Hudson actually shrank in size as the Germans there began to disperse, while the Pennsylvania German communities, which started out as small, dispersed groups, flourished and grew.

Now surrounding these German settlements, are Englishmen. They have a very different hunting tradition in the British Isles than do the Germans. Rifles are an unknown technology, and big game hunting only exists in the Scottish Highlands, so the English settler of the 1600's doesn't really know about rifles, nor does he come into contact with them in the colonies, until the 1700's.

In the 1700's come the Germans with a rifle tradition of about two centuries, and the wilderness of the colonies holds big game just as the wild regions of Germany. The German answer to the presence of big game is the rifle. The Germans in New York are contained in a small area so they have only so much contact with the English, but the Pennsylvania Germans are stretched out from Philadelphia to Lancaster, to Hagerstown MD, down into Va to the town of Winchester, VA. It took a mere two decades to establish this 250 mile long chain of Germanic settlements. By the 1730's the German communities are flourishing, and they are surrounded by English communities.

The English in those adjoining communities are finally exposed to rifles, and have an excellent example as to why a rifle is a better answer to big game hunting than a fusil. It's not instantaneous... it takes between ten and twenty years for the idea to catch on... which puts the time frame of 1740 -1750 as the start of the rapid expansion of the use of the rifle in the American colonies, and why PA, followed by VA, and MD are the nexus.

If I'm correct... there were probably rifles made in the 1730's, but for a limited amount of customers, and most of those records were probably in German..., so may simply be waiting for discovery in some country archive and then needing translation.

Mostly hypothetical I'll admit, but the reason the Continental Congress authorized rifle regiments to be raised in PA, MD, and VA was not arbitrary...it's where the largest concentration of riflemen lived... and I submit the hypothesis above as to why the majority lived in those three colonies.

LD

There is a full description of charcoal blacking and bluing of barrels and lock parts in Espangarda Perfeyta, The Perfect Gun, Portuguese, published in 1718.

Spence

Thanks Dave for your reasoned and intelligent response. Of course the English loved smoothbores,( I still do!) and so I learn! By the way, my Mother was a Butts, whose people came from Grimsby. She was loyal to Her Majesty 'til she died in 1978, God rest her saintly soul. Call me Loyalist George. ff :wink: