American Rifle - Alexander Rose [12]
Even as gunsmiths diffused outward from Lancaster, they jealously guarded their arcane knowledge of rifle-making. Until automation emerged in the first third of the nineteenth century, each and every piece of a rifle was manufactured in a gunsmith’s own minifactory—which made between fifteen and thirty guns each year—thereby excluding outsiders from the process and preventing nonapproved competitors from setting up shop. To further protect the secrets of the craft, the gun-smiths’ apprenticeship structure was by far the most onerous of any trade: teenagers served their masters for no fewer than eight years to imbibe the mysteries of engraving metal, casting brass, assembling complex firelocks, carving wood, forging metal parts, and rifling barrels.74
Over the course of the century, nevertheless, rifle-making progressively became less “German” and more “American” as gunsmiths married out of their traditional ethnic backgrounds or Anglicized their names.75 Henry Albright’s original name, for instance, had been Albrecht, and when Mr. and Mrs. Ferree’s descendants fanned out to Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, they married spouses with names like Steele, Griffith, Critchfield, Marlott, Powel, and Gardner.76 The distinctly non-German-sounding David and William Geddy advertised that they rifled gun barrels as early as August 8, 1751, in the Virginia Gazette.77
Apprenticeships too, once restricted to German youths, were eventually opened to Anglo-Americans—not always successfully. The drudgery of maintaining the forge fire, pumping the bellows, and polishing gun parts could grind anyone down. It evidently did one John McCan, a runaway apprentice whose master Christian Klein offered an eight-dollar reward in the September 16, 1795, issue of the Lancaster Journal. McCan, aged nineteen and five feet six inches tall, spoke “both English and German, but English best.” As late as 1795, remarkably, apprentices were expected to learn German for shopwork.78
An exception to the diffusion of rifle knowledge and ownership was the East Coast. At the outbreak of the Revolution there were rifle shops in Baltimore, Alexandria, Cumberland, Charlotte, and Augusta—but not a single one east of the Hudson River.79 If one earnestly desired a rifle, one could find one, but only by diligently scouring a newspaper’s classified pages for a rare announcement that a couple were in stock. This ad, from the New York Journal and General Advertiser of March 16, 1775, no doubt caused some palpitations among the city’s rifle cognoscenti: “Gilbert Forbes, Gun Maker. At the sign of the Sportsman in the Broad Way, opposite Hull’s Tavern in New York. Makes and sells all sorts of guns, in the neatest and best manner; on the lowest terms; has for sale, silver and brass mounted pistols; rifle barrel guns, double swivel and double-roller gun locks; 50 ready made new bayonet guns, on all one size and pattern” (emphasis added).80Indeed, the few rifle fans (perhaps they had spent some time on the frontier) in New York and Connecticut were widely regarded as rather eccentric marksmanship fanatics.
If rifles weren’t popular among easterners, they found eager customers among the Indians. Those who believed Indians were too ignorant to appreciate the distinction between Kentucky rifles and cheap muskets were refuted by the Shawnees’ own vocabulary: muskets were called teaquah, but rifles were pemqua teaquah.81There was clearly something special about the firearms, which is why the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger noticed that the Delawares “use no other than rifle barrelled guns, having satisfied themselves that these are best at long range.”82
Remarkably, the first mention of Indians possessing rifles had been in 1736—relatively soon after Lancaster began booming—when Colonel Auguste Chouteau noted in his journal that the anti-French Chickasaws of northern Mississippi were