This photo of a vintage Bedford County percussion rifle is courtesy of the NRA Museums, nramuseum.org and is included here with permission.
This photo of a vintage Bedford County percussion rifle is courtesy of the NRA Museums, nramuseum.org and is included here with permission.
Somerset and Bedford counties adjoin one-another, as shown by this 1872 map. In the late 1700s, the area that is now Somerset County was part of Bedford County, as shown by the 1792 Reading Howell map of Pennsylvania.
This project started with studies of the Lepley and Troutman gunsmiths. Considering these influences, it is probably no surprise that Somerset and Bedford County rifles are my favorite Pennsylvania muzzleloaders, and the gunsmiths who made them are my favorite old time Pennsylvania gun makers. Before moving to Texas in 1979, I participated in the Pennsylvania flintlock deer season. Until I retired in December of 2020, I was an industrial designer. The primary focus of my career was rotary seals for oilfield applications.
L. Dietle
These codes are incorporated to the right of some of the links:
★ = The gunsmith worked in the flintlock era, or is known to have made flintlock rifles.
✓ = I have heard of or seen at least one firearm produced by this gunmaker.
? = I wonder if this individual really was a gunsmith, or really worked as a gunsmith within the present bounds of Bedford or Somerset county.
1920s: Antique Dealer Clarence "Judge" Davidson (1877-1962) began collecting Bedford County long rifles in the late 1920s.
1924: As far as I can tell, there are only two photographs of rifles made by gunsmiths who worked in the Bedford and Somerset county region in John G. W. Dillin's groundbreaking antique gun collecting book "The Kentucky Rifle", which was first published in 1924.
1930s: Calvin Hetrick (1890-1985) and R. Armstrong Farber (1913-2002) began collecting Bedford County rifles in the early 1930s. Calvin Hetrick organized and compiled records at the Bedford County Courthouse as part of the Historical Records Survey (HRS) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). This gave him the opportunity to document gunsmiths identified in early Bedford County tax records. (The HRS was part of the original 1935 WPA appropriation.)
1940: The book "American Gun Makers" by Arcadi Gluckman and L. D. Satterlee is the original published source of much of the fundamental date-related information pertaining to early Bedford and Somerset County gunsmiths. This remarkable book was first published in 1940 and was expanded in 1949 and 1953. In the forward to the 1953 edition, Gluckman acknowledged Calvin Hetrick's contributions to the first edition.
1947: Calvin Hetrick's list of Bedford County gunsmiths was published in the January 23, 1947 issue of the "Bedford Gazette" newspaper.
1953: Somerset County, Pennsylvania gun collector and historian (and my distant cousin) David J. Weimer (1897-1965) is one of the individuals Gluckman and Satterlee thanked for "indirect contributions" to the 1953 edition of "American Gun Makers".
1958: Calvin Hetrick and R. A. Farber are featured in the article "Collectors Have Prize Specimens" in the February 14, 1958 issue of the "Bedford County Press". Pictures that accompany the article show some of the antique Bedford County style longrifles in their collections.
1959: George Shumway included Calvin Hetrick's illustrated study of Bedford County rifles as a new chapter in the fourth edition of John G. W. Dillin's book "The Kentucky Rifle" in 1959. With this, and his previous contributions to "American Gun Makers", Calvin Hetrick played a key role in highlighting the unique attributes of the Bedford School of rifle making and documenting the history of its practitioners.
1960: Henry Kauffman's illustrated 1960 book "The Pennsylvania-Kentucky Rifle" repeats and builds on information from "American Gun Makers" and includes many pictures of antique Somerset and Bedford County long rifles. The July 12, 2002 obituary of Bedford County rifle collector R. Armstrong Farber in the Carlisle "Sentinel" indicates that he helped to write the content that book incorporated on Bedford County rifles. Kindig's massive illustrated 1960 book "Thoughts on the Kentucky Rifle in its Golden Age" includes descriptions of several rifles by gunsmiths who worked in Bedford County. I suspect that Dillin's, Kauffman's, and Kindig's books are at least part of the reason that muzzleloader rifles from Bedford County, Pennsylvania are sometimes illogically referred to as "Bedford County Kentucky rifles".
1962: H. Austin Cooper's 1962 book "Two Centuries of Brothersvalley Church of the Brethren 1762 - 1962" has a short treatise on Somerset County long rifle makers that was written by David J. Weimer.
1967: Beginning at least as early as 1967, from time-to-time the "Muzzle Blasts" magazine of the NMLRA has published articles about Bedford County gunsmiths.
1971-1982: Vaughn E. Whisker (1907-1992) published lists of Somerset County gunsmiths in 1971 and 1982 issues of the "Laurel Messenger". In 1973 George Shumway reprinted Calvin Hetrick's 1959 material as the booklet "The Bedford County Rifle and Its Makers" and added new material on the gun maker Peter White.
1983-2017: Vaughn E. and James B. Whisker published a 12-page booklet titled "Gunsmiths and Gunmakers of Bedford and Somerset Counties Pennsylvania 1770-1900" in 1983. They continued their research and published the book "Gunsmiths of Bedford, Somerset and Fulton Counties" in 1991. James B. Whisker and Larry W. Yantz then published a now-rare follow-up book titled "Gunsmiths of Bedford, Fulton, Huntington, & Somerset Counties" in 2001. James B. Whisker also published books titled "Gunsmiths of Bedford County, Pennsylvania" and "Gunsmiths of Somerset County, Pennsylvania" in 2017. Several individuals also wrote articles about specific gunmakers in the newsletter of the AOLRC, and similar publications.
The publications referenced above are the premier print resources about Bedford and Somerset County rifles, and the gunsmiths who made them. I hope to honor the authors and their research by adding what I can to the baseline of knowledge they established. This necessarily involves paraphrasing facts they published, just as their publications (like most history publications) paraphrase facts found in earlier writings.
