Rifle (Flintlock rifle)

Description

This flintlock rifle with its long barrel and ornamentally carved stock is an early example of the hybrid design that came to be known as the Kentucky rifle. The rifle’s distinctive features include low-relief carving and incised scrolls, a straight comb and straight butt plate, and a channel-set wooden patch box cover If the engraved date is to the time of manufacture rather than commemorative, it is possibly the earliest dated Kentucky rifle to survive. The barrel is engraved with the name of a Reading, Pennsylvania gunsmith, John Shreit/Schreidt who likely apprenticed in Philadelphia, and by 1758 moved north to establish his workshop in Reading. This rifle has been modified and repaired, but retains its mystique as a true exemplar of the design leading to the ornate rifles of America's young republic era. The Kentucky style long rifle is recognized by a lightweight, low caliber rifled barrel often with an artistically carved stock, a raking curved wrist and inward curved butt. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, the gun blended elements from southern Germanic and English firearms for a highly accurate longer range rifle. Pennsylvania gunsmiths, many of Germanic and Swiss origin, hybridized and popularized the rifle for hunters, later for use in warfare, and they were produced in several different states by the early 1800s.