the death of the commercial muzzleloader

[mattybock]

I was reading a bit of "Little House on the Prairie", and Ms. Wilder wrote of her father keeping a long rifle (we may never know what it looked like) over the chinked fireplace, hung on two green sticks jabbed into the log wall, and how he loaded it afresh each night with round ball and a cap. This was in 1870, and I'm wondering if it was an odd duck of the era.

The Wilders were dirt poor, so it stands to reason that they would use whatever gun they could afford. The gun therein may have been a very old re-locked gun, but we will never know. This makes me wonder about the realities of the entire American firearms industry at the time. (I have my FFL now, and only now do I realize how much of a grey area this part of the industry's history is.)

The mid 1870s into the current day are so well documented with definite models and calibers and blueprints. All very standardized. It also seems to be the case for the colonial era of the Americas until right about 1850, when my education of the whole industry is greyed out.
So here are some questions;

1 - if I were to walk into a hardware store during the year 1870, what would I see for sale? I'm guessing that the trade musket and generic composite cobbled muskets in caplock were the best selling, with single shot pistols being there as well, but with revolvers being very costly indeed. I know the US gov. wasn't selling convertible muskets as surplus just yet.

2 - were breechloaders common at all around 1870? Seems brass shot shells were to be has in 100 hull boxes, but whether anyone could afford them is a mystery to me. What time frame detailed the death of the commercial muzzleloader heyday? According to Sears catalogs ca.1890, muzzies are absent, or otherwise listed as true antiques. I know Colt, the goverment and most rifles were totally metallic feeding by 1875.

3 - where double barrels as common as the US farmer stereotype would lead us to believe? According to Sears, the generic Belgian double was the king of the trade ca.1890, but doubles may have been a luxury of the steam powered machinery of the time and not to be had only 20 year prior. I'm not sure at all.

4 - and finally; at what point in time did rifles come to par with smoothbore sales (I suspect around 1930, but this too is based on catalogue offerings)? I know this is a real wild card question, and we may never really know.

 

[robert reed]

Great questions, I am looking forward to reading the answers of some of our history experts. I can say that in southern Appalachia the muzzle loading rifle and shotgun were in common use well into the 20th century.

 

[nit wit]

I would imagine that .22 cal rifles replaced a lot of ml guns. They were relatively cheap as was ammo.
Nit Wit

 

[Poor Private]

I suspect you would find millions of surplus civil war long guns on the shelves. I have read lots of reports and documents of men bringing home their Springfeilds, and Enfields, and even side arms. Alot of the muskets were rebored to make shotguns out of them.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Catalogs of the 1880's to even 1900 included muzzle loading shotguns both double and single and either English or Belgian. Muzzle loading rifles seemed to drop off the advertisements much faster. Although Cartridge guns did not prove their accuracy worth until Creedmoor, Adobe walls and in some respects, Rourke ' s Drift.

 

[necchi]

"Little House on the Prairie",
and Ms. Wilder wrote of her father keeping a long rifle,
*, (we may never what it looked like)

* This was in 1870,

*, I'm wondering if it was an odd duck of the era

* The Wilders were dirt poor,

Well now, consider this was Walnut Grove, Minnesota in the specific area of, and just a few years after the Uprising of 1862.

1 - I know the US gov. wasn't selling convertible muskets as surplus just yet.

Your right, Truth is they where Giving them away. With Ball, powder and caps.

That area at that time was being settled rapidly, people where flocking in for the land grab from the now "pacified" Sioux of the area.
* I say that with no disrespect to the NA, it was another historical raping they got, tensions remained high for decades as whites settled the St.Peter river(Minnesota River)Valley Treaty Lands stolen from the NA.*
People where so wide spread and military so centralized it was easier to give surplus civil war muskets to poor un-armed civilian homesteaders for their own protection.

The most common surplus muskets were the Potsdam 3 band conversions, these were dated ruffly 1836-1839. Having been replaced with the Springfield rifled musket and later the breech loaders there where 10's of thousands of these in surplus. https://www.google.com/search?q=po...ed=0CAcQ_AUoAg#tbm=isch&q=potsdam+1839+musket
The Potsdam was indeed later sold as "sportserized" in catalogs in the early 1900's, with shortened stocks and barrels.
These muskets both original and the sportserized still show up locally for sale at gun shows and private parties(I have one).
Ya gotta trust me on this one,, my ancestors where in that area at that time, some participating in some of those battles, distant cousins are still there.
That area and those guns are just part of local history.

And there's a Rendezvous in Walnut Grove, on the banks of Plum Creek in July of each year. Very informal and does not necessarily cover the Laura Ingols Wilder era, just a typical "Skinner's camp" and fun shoot.

 

[longcruise]

I don't think they actually lived in Walnut Grove. The actual place had a different name if memory serves (not serving very well cause I can't recall the name.

I find the practice of loading with fresh ball and powder every night rather odd. Did he pull it or shoot it? Just does not seem likely.

The other thing that is odd is keeping it over the fireplace. Most pioneers who lived in dangerous circumstances kept the gun standing next to the door or hanging over the Door.

 

[Alden]

Poetic license, I'm sure. No one was reloading a gun daily. As for over the fireplace, I'm a little less skeptical of that for a flintlock at least...

I'm picturing a colonial building I do some events at -- it has an original lockable wrought-iron gun rack in what I'll call the bar room and it is over the fireplace.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Two important things to consider.
1. A catalog is an advertisement for something you want to sell and not an indication of what is sold, let alone sales numbers. Catalog adds can sometimes precede actual sales by years, or may not even be sold at all..

2. The late 1800s saw extremely rapid firearms development with hundreds of inventors competing against each other. Unable to find buyers for their designs and patents many went overseas and many from overseas came to America.

At the end of the day I think people bought what they could afford based on what was available at the time and location when they purchased it.

P.S. I forgot to add the fact that post civil war industrialization allowed for faster and cheaper production.

 

[necchi]

I don't think they actually lived in Walnut Grove. The actual place had a different name if memory serves (not serving very well cause I can't recall the name.

I think your right,, the family actually moved many times because her father was somewhat of a failure at just about everything he tried, specifically farming.
Her writings are "Historical Fiction" and the book uses Walnut Grove,, the community celebrates "Laura Ingalls Wilder Days" in a park and there's a museum there. http://www.walnutgrove.org/museum.htm
We all enjoyed the series when it was on,, :wink:

 

[Bob J]

My grandfather was born in 1898 and grew up in West Tennessee (near Selmer and Fruitland). Although he hunted with a .22 single shot rifle, he said the general store carried blackpowder and shot for the men who hunted with percussion shotguns. So this would have been 1906 - 1912 era.

 

[Elnathan]

They were still making cheap muzzleloading rifles at the time - half-stocks without a rib and a single thimble soldered to the barrel. Hickok killed one person with one of these rifles right at the beginning of his career, I believe.

It has been close to twenty years since I last had my grubby little paws on this book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/087081483...UTF8&colid=10OERFA3SD0O1&coliid=I1GETSPEKR4LD

but I believe it illustrates at least the Hickok rifle and maybe one or two others. There were also a ton of mil-surp guns dumped on the market after the Civil War, as others have noted.

 

[mattybock]

I would think so, especially for farm use on rats, snakes and such, but when it comes to hunting, such as for deer, the 22 isn't nearly as good as some other options, even if those options weren't up to the technological snuff of the coming times.
This leads me to think that caplock trade muskets, which were sold by mail order in Canada as late as 1913, were still the best selling gun in the US in 1870 simply by virtue of economics and the metallic ammo for converted guns being hard to come by on the frontier.


But one other problem remains, were double barrel caplock shotguns sold on par with the trade musket?

 

[longcruise]

I think your right,, the family actually moved many times because her father was somewhat of a failure at just about everything he tried, specifically farming.
Her writings are "Historical Fiction" and the book uses Walnut Grove

Yes, this topic sent me to the Wikipedia bio of Laura. It's way more interesting than the fiction. I see there is also an autobiography available that she wrote in the early '30's.

All in all, it lead me to believe that there may not have been any basis in actual fact at all for her statement about the rifle over the fireplace and the daily load refreshing.

Matty, one reference that will fill in some of the holes from 1850 up to 1900 is the Ned Roberts book titled The Muzzle Loading Cap Lock Rifle

 

[necchi]

But one other problem remains, were double barrel caplock shotguns sold on par with the trade musket?

How do double barrel shotguns and trade muskets apply to a topic about a fictional "rifle" that's post 1870?

Matty, the mid 1860's and forward was a time of huge changes in the firearms market and manufacture. Things changed very, very quickly around that time. The peak of the industrial age in the eastern USA, the end of the war, massive western movement,,
It's kind of why this forum is focused before that time,, Traditional,,
If you need to study the era of the 1870's maybe find a forum about that time period. :idunno:
Just sayin,,

By the way,, How's "the plan" working out? This is from over a year ago.

The first products of the soon to be ACME Gun co. will be had online in the summer.

 

[mattybock]

Well, this topic isn't actually about the fictional rifle, the Little House bit was a lead-in to the basic topic; common guns of poorer American in the year 1870, and the last commercial muzzleloaders before the tech advances of the 1870s made breechloaders possible for mass market sales.

ps - the plan is going great. So far all I really need is a shaper and a 6 ton press and then gun kits can be made (finally!). A series of big life events set things back far more than I was expecting. A big move, building a shop, building capital, etc. It's slow, but I'm getting there.

pps- digging through posts to find something that's a year old is kind of creey.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Shaper and 6 ton press? what are they for?
Do you have a website yet. What models are you planning to build?????

 

[mattybock]

Shaper and 6 ton press? what are they for?
Do you have a website yet. What models are you planning to build?????

They would be for cutting and shaping steel. Not really models, but kit guns.

 

[Larry Pletcher]

My wife's great great grandfather brought his 62 Springfield home to the farm after the war. He apparently used sand paper to scrub out the rifling, leaving him with a .58 smoothbore. I'd guess this would have been fairly common. Who knows how many Civil Wars arms ended up in the corner of a barn.

Regards,
Pletch

 

[coloradoclyde]

I came across this that may shed some light on post civil war gun production.




Remington Arms Company

Remington Arms is said to have had its beginning in 1816 when 23-year-old Eliphalet Remington II built his own flintlock rifle on his father's forge in Ilion Gulch, New York. By the 1840s, E. Remington & Sons was building breechloading carbines for the U.S. government. In 1850 Remington developed machines to drill close-tolerance holes in steel blanks to manufacture barrels for rifles and shotguns, and was producing handguns. During the Civil War, Remington factories produced 40,000 rifles for the Union Army. Remington subcontracted the manufacture of metallic cartridges during the Civil War, but in 1871 began to manufacture its own and made brass shotshells as early as 1874.

Because of war contracts and sales of firearms to other countries, Remington expanded its operations rapidly. Sales plummeted after the Civil War and Remington diversified into peacetime products - sewing machines, typewriters, agricultural machinery and sporting firearms. Remington began marketing double-barreled shotguns in 1873. Still, the company teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. In 1885, the cartridge works was lost in a fire. The following year Remington went into receivership managed by a board of trustees. In 1888, UMC and Winchester purchased the E. Remington & Sons Gun Company. It continued to operate independently and its name was shortened to the Remington Arms Company.