curator
45 Cal.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2004
- Messages
- 685
- Reaction score
- 126
My guess is that the gun was made from assorted parts sometime after the Civil War. Bannermans made thousands of guns from Civil War battlefield pickups as well as damaged Indian war guns and sold them wholesale to hardware stores across the US. The lock plate marking could indeed 1867 with a 1861 or 1855 hammer installed. The trigger guard appears to be from a Trapdoor carbine. I made a buying trip to Bannermans when they were still open for business in 1962. They had barrels, boxes and crates full of musket parts and hundreds of "made-up" guns with assorted parts. Their 1928 catalog shows drawings of various "chimeras" made from assorted U.S. musket parts. Bannermans was not the only company doing this with recycled musket parts. Several hardware store suppliers were contracting out the gunsmithing and selling cheap muzzle loaders to folks heading west.