The long rifle, also known as the Kentucky rifle, Pennsylvania rifle, or American long rifle, is a muzzle-loading firearm used for hunting and warfare. It was one of the first commonly-used rifles.[1] The American rifle was characterized by a very long barrel of relatively small caliber, uncommon in European rifles of the period.
The long rifle is an early example of a firearm using rifling (spiral grooves in the bore), which caused the projectile, commonly a round lead ball in the early firearm, to spin around the axis of its motion. This increased the stability of its trajectory and dramatically improved accuracy over contemporary smooth-bore muskets, which were cheaper and more common. Rifled firearms were first used in major combat in the American colonies in the eighteenth century during the French and Indian War, and later the American Revolution, with increasing use in the War of 1812, Texan Revolution, and American Civil War.
The main disadvantages of muzzle-loading rifles compared to muskets were higher cost, a slower reload time due to the use of a tighter-fitting lead ball, and greater susceptibility to fouling of the bore after prolonged use, which would ultimately prevent loading and make the weapon useless until cleaned. The invention of the Minié ball in 1847 resolved the technical disadvantages and allowed the rifle to replace the musket.[citation needed]
The long rifle was made popular by German gunsmiths who immigrated to America, bringing with them the technology of rifling from where it originated. The accuracy achieved by the long rifle made it an ideal tool for hunting wildlife for food.
Origins
From a flat bar of soft iron, hand forged into a gun barrel; laboriously bored and rifled with crude tools; fitted with a stock hewn from a maple tree in the neighboring forest; and supplied with a lock hammered to shape on the anvil; an unknown smith, in a shop long since silent, fashioned a rifle which changed the whole course of world history; made possible the settlement of a continent; and ultimately freed our country of foreign domination. Light in weight; graceful in line; economical in consumption of powder and lead; fatally precise; distinctly American; it sprang into immediate popularity; and for a hundred years was a model often slightly varied but never radically changed.
The long rifle was developed on the American frontier in southeastern Pennsylvania, in the early 1700s. It continued to be developed technically and artistically until it passed out of fashion in the 19th century. The long rifle was the product of German gunsmiths who immigrated to new settlements in southeastern Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, and later in Virginia and other territories, reproducing early Jäger rifles (meaning "hunter" and sometimes anglicized Jaeger), which were used for hunting in Germany in the 17th and early 18th century.[3] Tax records from these locales indicate the dates these gunsmiths were in business.[4] Strong pockets of long rifle use and manufacture continued in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and North Carolina well into the 20th century as a practical and efficient firearm for those rural segments of the nation. Long rifles could be made entirely by hand and hand-operated tooling, in a frontier setting.[5]
Initially, the long firearm of choice on the frontier was the smoothbore musket, or trade gun, built in factories in England and France and shipped to the colonies for purchase. Gradually, long rifles became more popular due to their longer effective range. While the smooth bore musket had an effective range of less than 100 yards, a rifleman could hit a man-sized target at a range of 200 yards or more. The price for this accuracy was that the long rifle took significantly longer to reload than the approximately 20 seconds of the musket.
In Pennsylvania, the earliest gunsmiths that can be documented are Robert Baker and the Martin Meylins, father and son.[6] Robert Baker formed a partnership with his son Caleb, and on August 15, 1719, erected a gun boring mill on Pequea Creek. In the tax records of Berks County, Pennsylvania, there were several gunsmiths plying their trade along the banks of the Wyomissing Creek.[4][7]
Martin Meylin's Gunshop was built in 1719, and it is here that the Mennonite gunsmiths of Swiss-German heritage crafted some of the earliest, and possibly the first, Pennsylvania Rifles.[8] No rifle signed by Martin Meylin has been found; although two have been attributed to him, one in the Lancaster Historical Society has been found to be a European musket of a later date, and one with a date of 1705 is a forgery, as the Meylins arrived in America in 1710. The Martin Meylin Gunshop still stands today in Willow Street, Pennsylvania, on Long Rifle Road. An archaeological dig performed in 2005 by Millersville University around the so-called Meylin gunshop found thousands of artifacts, but only for blacksmithing, with no evidence of gun-making.[9][10] The Lancaster County Historical Society has an original Pennsylvania Long Rifle thought to have been smithed by Meylin that was passed down within the family for seven generations, then donated to the society in the middle of the twentieth century. It was analyzed and the barrel removed during the Lancaster Long Rifle Exhibit at Landis Valley Farm Museum, Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 2005. The barrel was found to be European, and the stock dated from later than 1710-1750. The initials on the barrel, "MM", were found to have been added later than any other part of the gun, so it could not have been made by either Martin Meylin.[11]
Some historians[12] have written that the role of Martin Meylin as one of the earliest gunsmiths in Lancaster is not clear. The argument is that the will of Martin Meylin Sr. makes no mention of gunsmith items, while the will of Martin Meylin Jr. is replete with them, so that the reference to Meylin as a gunsmith is more properly placed on the son. In any case, no rifle has been found to be positively attributed to any Meylin.
There is documentation stating that the first high-quality long rifles were from a gunsmith named Jacob Dickert, who moved with his family from Germany to Berks County, Pennsylvania in 1740. The name 'Dickert Rifle' was considered a 'brand name' and the name 'Kentucky rifle' was not coined until much later in history (circa 1820s) and became the "nickname" of this rifle. This is primarily because Dickert made rifles for the Continental Army, and later had a contract dated 1792 to furnish rifles to the United States Army.[4] The rifle is sometimes referred to as the "Deckard / Deckhard" rifle, as descendants of Jacob Dickert used these variations, as shown by census documents, marriage, and death certificates. Nearly all descendants of Jacob Dickert go by the surname "Deckard", and mostly live in Indiana and Missouri.
Among documented working rifle makers are Adam Haymaker, who had a thriving trade in the northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the Moravian gunshops at Christian's Spring in Pennsylvania, John Frederick Klette of Stevensburg, Virginia,[6] and in the Salem area of North Carolina.[citation needed] All three areas were busy and productive centers of rifle making by the 1750s. Another prominent rifle maker was Isaac Haines of the Lancaster school, known for the elaborate Rococo woodcarving decorations on his rifles, who was taxed as a gunsmith in Lampeter Twp., Lancaster Co., from 1772 to 1792.[13] The Great Wagon Road was a bustling frontier thoroughfare, and rifle shops traced this same route, from eastern Pennsylvania, down the Shenandoah Valley,and spilling into both the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and the Yadkin River (Salem) area of North Carolina.
The settlers of western Virginia (Kentucky), Tennessee, and North Carolina soon gained a reputation for hardy independence and rifle marksmanship as a way of life, further reinforced by the performance of riflemen in the American Revolution, especially Morgan's Riflemen, who were pivotal in the Battles of Saratoga and Cowpens, as well as the War of 1812. In that war, the long rifle gained its nickname "Kentucky Rifle", after a popular song "The Hunters of Kentucky," about Andrew Jackson and his victory at the Battle of New Orleans.[citation needed] The long rifle also was used by the Texans in their War for Independence from Mexico.[14]
The reason for the long rifle's characteristic long barrel is a matter of adaptation to the new world by the German immigrant gunsmiths. The German gunsmiths working in America were very familiar with German rifles, which seldom had barrels longer than 30in., and were large-caliber rifles using large amounts of lead. Hunters in the vast and sparsely populated new world forests had to carry more of their supplies with them. The smaller caliber required less heavy lead per shot, reducing the weight they had to carry; the longer barrel gave the black powder more time to burn, increasing the muzzle velocity and accuracy. A rule of thumb used by some gunsmiths was to make the rifle no longer than the height of a customer's chin because of the necessity of seeing the muzzle while loading. The longer barrel also allowed finer sighting. By the 1750s it was common to see frontiersmen carrying the new and distinctive style of rifle.[5]
Evolution
Long rifles of various Pennsylvania and Massachusetts manufacturers displayed at the Huntington Museum of Art
In 1792 the US Army began to modify the long rifle, shortening the barrel length to 42inches in their 1792 contract rifle. The Lewis and Clark expedition carried an even shorter 33-36inch barrelled rifle, similar to the Harpers Ferry Model 1803 which began production six months after Lewis visited the arsenal. The Model 1803 resembles what became the 'plains rifle'.
The "plains rifle" or "Hawken rifle" was a shorter rifle more suitable for carrying on horseback. It was popular among mountain men and North American fur trappers in the 19th century. The Hawken brothers (Samuel and Jacob) were one of a number of famous gunsmiths active in St. Louis in the 1830s-1860s. Many renowned gunsmiths such as Horace (H.E.) Dimick and J. P. Gemmer produced powerful and portable "short" rifles for the Rocky Mountain fur trade, overland exploration, and the transcontinental immigrant trains. The plains rifle combined accuracy with portability in a more compact package than the extreme long guns from which it had evolved. The Hawken rifle evolved from the long rifle for use against larger, more dangerous game encountered in the American West. For firing heavier and larger diameter bullets with heavier powder loads, the barrel wall thickness was necessarily increased for strength, and the barrel of the Hawken was shortened to keep the weight manageable, making the rifle heavier and less slim than the long rifle. However, many plains rifles were bored around the smaller .40 calibre range for medium-game hunting.
Characteristics
Artistically, the long rifle is known for its graceful stock, often made of curly maple, and its ornate decoration, decorative inlays, and an integral, well-made patch box that was built into the stock.[15] The decorative arts of furniture making, painting, silver smithing, gunsmithing, etc. all took their style cues from the prevailing trends of the day, and as in most things the fashion was set in Paris. Baroque and later rococo motifs found their way into all the decorative arts, and can be seen in the acanthus leaf scroll work so common on 18th century furniture and silver.
Originally rather plain, by the 1770s every surface of the rifle could have applied artwork. An accomplished gunsmith had to be a skilled blacksmith, whitesmith, wood carver, brass and silver founder, engraver, and wood finisher. European shops at the time had significant specialization of the trades, leading to separate tradesmen building different parts of each rifle. The American frontier had no such luxury, and quite often a single gunmaker would make the entire rifle, a process almost unheard of in 18th-century trade practice. The flintlock action, with its spring mechanism, and single-action trigger, though, was often purchased in bulk from England by gunsmiths, and then fabricated with skill into an elaborate rifle. Early locks were imported, but domestic manufacturing of locks increased in America among the more skilled gunsmiths in later years.
To conserve lead on the frontier, smaller calibers were often preferred, ranging often from about .32 to .45 cal. As a rifle's bore increased with use due to wear and corrosion from firing black powder, it was not uncommon to see rifles re-bored and re-rifled to larger calibers to maintain accuracy. Many copies of historical long rifles are seen with a bore of around .50 caliber.
The long rifle is said by modern experts[who?] to have a range of 80 to 100 yards for the average user. An expert shooter can extend the median range of the long rifle to 200-300 yards.[16]
Although less commonly owned or seen on the frontier, the long rifle style was also used on flintlock pistols during the same era.[citation needed] These pistols were often matched in caliber to a long rifle owned by the same user, to enable firing a common-sized and common-patched round lead ball.[citation needed] With the same graceful stock lines and barrel style, and craftsmanship, they were noticeably slimmer and had a longer rifled barrel with better sights than had been seen on the earlier Colonial style flintlock pistols. Dueling pistol sets in the long rifle style were also made, sometimes in a cased set, for wealthy gentlemen.
Decline and rebirth
By the 20th century, there was little traditional long rifle making left except in isolated pockets in the Appalachian mountains.[17] Popular interest in shooting as a sport as well as the sesquicentennial of the United States' independence from Britain in 1925-33 spurred interest in the origins of the long rifle. This renewed interest was described in the 1924 book by Capt. John G.W. Dillin The Kentucky Rifle. Early 20th century pioneers of long rifle culture were Walter Cline, Horace Kephart, Ned Roberts, Red Farris, Hacker Martin, Bill Large, Jack Weichold, Ben Hawkins, D.C. Addicks, L.M. Wolf, Dave Taylor, Win Woods, and Alvin Wagner.[18]
Many men throughout the remainder of the 20th century worked to expand the knowledge of the long rifle and how to recreate it in the 18th and 19th century manner.[18] In 1965, Wallace Gusler, as the first master of the Gunsmith shop in Colonial Williamsburg, was the first to recreate a long rifle in modern times using 18th-century tools and techniques. The 1968 film "Gunsmith of Williamsburg" documented the production of his second, all handmade, long rifle.[19] By 2003, makers trained at the Gunsmith Shop in Colonial Williamsburg and others produced an all-handmade rifles.[20] In addition to his influence in his popular series of articles for Rifle Magazine[21] and his involvement with the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), John Bivins trained the recognized gunmakers Jim Chambers and Mark Silver.[22]
In 1996, the Contemporary Longrifle Association (CLA) was founded for people hand-making recreations of long rifles and associated arms and crafts of pre-1840 America.[23] Later, internet forums about building traditional muzzleloading arms grew to over 3,000 members by 2010.[24]
In popular culture
The 1955 western Kentucky Rifle gravitates around a trail wagon containing one hundred long rifles. The gun, which is actually the main star of that movie, is displayed under every angle and is even the object of lyric descriptive monologues by veteran actor Chill Wills.
On the show Antiques Roadshow an 1810 Kentucky rifle was appraised at $20,000.
Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Hugh Glass in the film The Revenant and uses a Bucks County long rifle built by modern American gunmaker Ron Luckenbill until it is stolen by Hugh's nemesis Fitzgerald.
The rifle makes an appearance in Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition as a technology unique to the United States' selection of Shipment Cards. Sending Long Rifles in the Commerce Age enhances the ranges at which Marines, State Militia, the game's representation of the United States Volunteers, and Minutemen both detect and attack enemy soldiers.
A firearm is any type of gun that uses an explosive charge and is designed to be readily carried and operated by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries.
A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting and higher stopping power, with a barrel that has a helical or spiralling pattern of grooves (rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with both hands and braced firmly against the shooter's shoulder via a buttstock for stability during shooting. Rifles have been used in warfare, law enforcement, hunting and target shooting sports.
In firearm designs, the term single-shot refers to guns that can hold only a single round of ammunition inside and thus must be reloaded manually after every shot. Compared to multi-shot repeating firearms ("repeaters"), single-shot designs have no moving parts other than the trigger, hammer/firing pin or frizzen, and therefore do not need a sizable receiver behind the barrel to accommodate a moving action, making them far less complex and more robust than revolvers or magazine/belt-fed firearms, but also with much slower rates of fire.
The percussion cap, percussion primer, or caplock, introduced in the early 1820s, is a type of single-use percussion ignition device for muzzle loader firearm locks enabling them to fire reliably in any weather condition. Its invention gave rise to the caplock mechanism or percussion lock system which used percussion caps struck by the hammer to set off the gunpowder charge in rifles and cap and ball firearms. Any firearm using a caplock mechanism is a percussion gun. Any long gun with a cap-lock mechanism and rifled barrel is a percussion rifle. Cap and ball describes cap-lock firearms discharging a single bore-diameter spherical bullet with each shot.
A muzzleloader is any firearm in which the user loads the projectile and the propellant charge into the muzzle end of the gun. This is distinct from the modern designs of breech-loading firearms, in which user loads the ammunition into the breech end of the barrel. The term "muzzleloader" applies to both rifled and smoothbore type muzzleloaders, and may also refer to the marksman who specializes in the shooting of such firearms. The firing methods, paraphernalia and mechanism further divide both categories as do caliber.
Flintlock is a general term for any firearm that uses a flint-striking ignition mechanism, the first of which appeared in Western Europe in the early 16th century. The term may also apply to a particular form of the mechanism itself, also known as the true flintlock, that was introduced in the early 17th century, and gradually replaced earlier firearm-ignition technologies, such as the matchlock, the wheellock, and the earlier flintlock mechanisms such as the snaplock and snaphaunce.
A breechloader is a firearm in which the user loads the ammunition from the breech end of the barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, in which the user loads the ammunition from the (muzzle) end of the barrel.
A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars.
A gun barrel is a crucial part of gun-type weapons such as small firearms, artillery pieces, and air guns. It is the straight shooting tube, usually made of rigid high-strength metal, through which a contained rapid expansion of high-pressure gas(es) is used to propel a projectile out of the front end (muzzle) at a high velocity. The hollow interior of the barrel is called the bore, and the diameter of the bore is called its caliber, usually measured in inches or millimetres.
A gunsmith is a person who repairs, modifies, designs, or builds guns. The occupation differs from an armorer, who usually replaces only worn parts in standard firearms. Gunsmiths do modifications and changes to a firearm that may require a very high level of craftsmanship, requiring the skills of a top-level machinist, a very skilled woodworker, and even an engineer. Gunsmiths perform factory-level repairs and renovations to restore well-used or deteriorated firearms to new condition. They may make alterations to adapt sporting guns to better fit the individual shooter that may require extensive modifications to the firearm's stocks and metal parts. Repairs and redesigns may require fabrication and fitting of unavailable parts and assemblies constructed by smiths themselves. Gunsmiths may also renew metal finishes or apply decorative carvings or engravings to guns. Many gun shops offer gunsmithing service on the premises.
The Baker rifle was a flintlock rifle used by the rifle regiments of the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. It was the first British-made rifle that the British armed forces issued as a standard weapon for all line companies in a regiment. The Pattern 1776 Infantry rifle had been issued on a limited basis of 10 per regiment to units serving in the American War of Independence.
Henry Deringer was an American gunsmith. He is best known for inventing and giving his name to the derringer pistol.
A rifled musket, rifle musket, or rifle-musket is a type of firearm made in the mid-19th century. Originally the term referred only to muskets that had been produced as a smoothbore weapon and later had their barrels replaced with rifled barrels. The term later included rifles that directly replaced, and were of the same design overall as, a particular model of smoothbore musket.
The M1819 Hall rifle was a single-shot breech-loading rifle designed by John Hancock Hall, patented on May 21, 1811, and adopted by the U.S. Army in 1819. It was preceded by the Harpers Ferry M1803. It used a pivoting chamber breech design and was made with either flintlock or percussion cap ignition systems. The years of production were from the 1820s to the 1840s at the Harpers Ferry Arsenal. This was the first breech-loading rifle to be adopted in large numbers by any nation's army, but not the first breech-loading military rifle – the Ferguson rifle was used briefly by the British Army in the American Revolutionary War. The Hall rifle remained overshadowed by common muskets and muzzleloading rifles which were still prevalent until the Civil War. The early flintlocks were mostly converted to percussion ignition.
A muzzle-loading rifle is a muzzle-loaded small arm that has a rifled barrel rather than a smoothbore, and is loaded from the muzzle of the barrel rather than the breech. Historically they were developed when rifled barrels were introduced by the 1740ies, which offered higher accuracy than the earlier smoothbores. The American longrifle evolved from the German "Jäger" rifle; a popularly recognizable form of the "muzzleloader" was the Kentucky Rifle. Although by definition they must be reloaded after each shot in a time-consuming fashion, they are still produced for hunting.
The Hawken rifle is a muzzle-loading rifle that was widely used on the prairies and in the Rocky Mountains of the United States during the early frontier days. Developed in the 1820s, it became synonymous with the "plains rifle", the buffalo gun, and a trade rifle for fur trappers, traders, clerks, and hunters. It was displaced after the American Civil War by breechloaders and lever action rifles.
The Minié rifle was an important infantry rifle of the mid-19th century. A version was adopted in 1849 following the invention of the Minié ball in 1847 by the French Army captain Claude-Étienne Minié of the Chasseurs d'Orléans and Henri-Gustave Delvigne. The bullet was designed to allow rapid muzzle loading of rifles and was an innovation that brought about the widespread use of the rifle as the main battlefield weapon for individual soldiers. The French adopted it following difficulties encountered by the French army in North Africa, where their muskets were overtaken in range by long-barreled weapons which were handcrafted by their Algerian opponents. The Minié rifle belonged to the category of rifled muskets.
A paper cartridge is one of various types of small arms ammunition used before the advent of the metallic cartridge. These cartridges consisted of a paper cylinder or cone containing the bullet, gunpowder, and in some cases, a primer or a lubricating and anti-fouling agent. Combustible cartridges are paper cartridges that use paper treated with oxidizers to allow them to burn completely upon ignition.
Martin Meylin was a gunsmith best known for inventing Daniel Boone's Gun, the "Kentucky Long Rifle".
The Harper's Ferry M1803 rifle was the first standard rifle, made by an American armory.
↑ Dillin, John (1967). The Kentucky Rifle. York, PA: George Shumway. pp.XI. ISBN0-87387-072-7.
↑ Samuel E. Dyke, The Pennsylvania Rifle (Lancaster: Sutter House), 1974. Joe Kindig, Thoughts on the Kentucky Rifle in its Golden Age (York, PA: Trimmer Printing), 1960. Neil L. York, "Pennsylvania Rifle: Revolutionary Weapon in a Conventional War?," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 3:103 (1979): 302-324.
1 2 3 Kendig Jr., Joe (2002). Thoughts on the Kentucky Rifle in its Golden Age-Second Edition. York, PA: George Shumway. ISBN0-87387-084-0.
1 2 Hindle, Brooke; Lubar, Steven (1986). Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revoluation 1790-1860. Washington, DC and London: The Smithsonian Institution. ISBN0-87474-540-3.
↑ Trussell, Timothy; Dworsky, Joel (7 June 2006). The Mylin Gun Shop Survey Project(PDF). Millersville University - Archaeology (Report). Archived(PDF) from the original on 20 November 2022. Retrieved 21 November 2022.
↑ Rupp, Daniel L. (1844). History of Lancaster County. Lancaster PA: Gilbert Hills Pub. Archived from the original on 2022-11-22. Retrieved 2022-11-22. Reprinted by Heritage Books, Bowie, Maryland, 1990.
1 2 Schiffer, Tom (August 2011). "The Origins and Development of Longrifle Culture, Part 1". Muzzle Blasts. 27 (12): 4–10.
↑ Wallace, Gusler (2003). Three Centuries of Tradition: The Renaissance of Custom Sporting Arms in America. Minneapolis, MN: The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. p.74. ISBN1-85759-289-1.
↑ Gusler, Wallace (2003). Three Centuries of Tradition:The Renaissance of Custom Sporting Arms in America. Minneapolis, MN: The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. p.72. ISBN1-85759-289-1.
↑ Silver, Mark (2003). Three Centuries of Tradition: The Renaissance of Custom Sporting Arms in America. Minneapolis, MN: The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. pp.74–127. ISBN1-85759-289-1.
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