I have been down this road. Been there, done this....
The truth is you are going about it backwards. One could assume that there has to be an earlier "origin" of a type that existed in 1800-1810. The truth is maybe not.
Lets look at some 20th Century artifacts. Say automobiles. Lets start with two Chevrolets, a 1959 and a 1949. We assume there has to be some kind of transition from the 49 to the 59. All we have to go by are some mixed parts, a Buick fender we think is from 1953 and a Plymouth bumper we think is from 1955. We also have some vague stories about servicing these cars or trips taken in them.
Do you think what we come up with will look anything like a 1955 Chevy?
Just because some guy builds a contraption he calls a 1955 Chevy in 2021; a thing with a 49 front, a '59 roof and 59 tail fins with the cat eye taillights, is this really a '55 Chevy? No it's not. What it is a fantasy. It's fantasy built with not enough info to be a true representative.
In a sense, it's futile.
There's market for this 2021 49/59 thing. It's driven by 2021 economics. I want there to be...this type of gun because it's cheap or cheaper than one of those so called "fancy" guns.
What we need to do is research and go by what we have, what actually exists instead of looking for the "missing link".
If you really want a historical gun, the answer is to study historical guns...really study them, the makers and the regions.
What you will find is actually more fascinating than what somebody makes up.
Here's some clues for study....
Start with Trade Guns...
Start with the German/Moravian immigrants
Study the early 1st generation builders
Study the migration routes...Great Wagon Road
Study the deerskin trade...
Study the class structure of the period
Study the guilds and standard of craftsmanship.
Study the industry of England...English trade rifles and how they copied American rifles and thus American rifles copied them.
Study Colonial Industry
Key in on a particular areas of interest...say the second or third generation builders of
This is pretty obvious but study existing guns.
What you will find is all this stuff interconnects like a spider web.
The thing is there are "plainer" rifles all throughout the period but they are not necessarily what you assume they are.
Here's a key fact...The rifle was a Middle Class arm. It was an essential tool like a tractor or truck today. In other words they were not cheap as lives/livelihood depended on them.
I find the frontier gunsmiths of Pa, Virginia. The second Generation "farmer gunsmiths of Tennessee, NC, and SC are fascinating. The Bulls, The Beans, The Russels, Thomas Simpson,..there's many, many more. The The Cumberland School, Overthemountainmen, Watauga, You'll find these guys have links to the Lauks, the Becks, Dickert and the PA styles and makers....
It's an adventure....
Start with the books,
Go to shows,
Wallace Gusler who has studied this all his life when asked, " What is the most accurate history of the Pennsylvania/Kentucky Rifle?" his reply was " There is none."
Using cars as a comparison, instead of multiple years, one could simply look at different models from the same year.
For instance a 1956 Ford Crown Victoria and a 1956 Ford Customline. The difference in price (basically) is the embellishments, so the same could be true of early guns.
