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Introduction
The images below are from the "Gun Material" section of the 1895 catalog of the Chicago-based firm known as Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & Co. This catalog section includes parts for both muzzle loading and breech loading firearms. Muzzleloader parts include locks, stock blanks, springs, hammers, tumblers, set trigger assemblies, nipples, drums, and ball extractors. I used images from these catalog pages to create the banner image at the top of my "Historic availability of store-bought gun parts" web page. The items in the 1891 Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & Co. catalog are about the same.
Some may wonder at the relevance of selling muzzleloader gun parts in 1895, which was well into the cartridge era of firearms technology. The answer is that some individuals continued to use, repair, and even build muzzle loading rifles well into the early 1900s. For example:
Bedford County, Pennsylvania gunsmith Dolphus Drake was still making muzzle loading rifles in the 1940s.
Somerset County, Pennsylvania gunsmith Charles Monroe Knupp continued his gunmaking activities into the 1930s.
Valentine Feltus Clouse of Bedford County, Pennsylvania continued working as a muzzleloader gunsmith well into the 1900s.
Page 9 of the 2001 book "Gunsmiths of Bedford, Fulton, Huntingdon, & Somerset Counties" mentions that Vaughn Whisker once visited William R. "Billy" Border's shop, which was in the borough of Bedford on Juliana Street, and there saw an excellent Bedford-style long rifle Billy had recently made. In view of the fact that Vaughn Whisker was born on January 20, 1907, Billy Border had clearly made that new long rifle in the 1900s.
Oral history passed down from grandfathers to grandsons indicates that gunsmithing activities occurred on the Southampton Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania Lepley farm into the early 1900s.
L. Dietle
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