UNION, SNYDER COUNTY PENNSYLVANIA Antique JOE LONG .52 FLINTLOCK LONG RIFLE Silver Star Inlaid with Carved Stock

Product Description

UNION, SNYDER COUNTY PENNSYLVANIA Antique JOE LONG .52 FLINTLOCK LONG RIFLE

Silver Star Inlaid with Carved Stock

Here we present an antique J. Long Full Stock Pennsylvania Flintlock Long Rifle, made circa the early-19^th Century. Joseph “Joe” Long was born in 1799 in New Berlin, Union County, Pennsylvania. His father was Joseph Long (Sr.) and he was a veteran of the Revolutionary War who made a career as a shoemaker. Joseph (Jr.) married and had nine children, at least three of which worked as gunsmiths as well. Most of his rifles are in percussion as most of his career landed in that era, but some of his early work was in flintlock and this one survives without having been altered to percussion.

This rifle features a 38 ¼” octagonal barrel in .52 caliber with a full-length stock. The stock is striped maple with a large brass patchbox. Other hardware is also brass. There is a silver star inlaid into the left side of the stock into the cheek piece. “LONDON/WARRANTED” lock. Double set trigger. Incised scroll carving on the stock. “J. Long” signed barrel.

Pennsylvania and Kentucky rifles were the order of the day and were essential tools for providing meat for the table, pest control for the crops and livestock, and protection against beast and man for the homestead. Rifles in this caliber were used for taking small to medium sized game on the frontier to include squirrels and rabbits, and likely deer and elk too! Frontiersmen, homesteaders, pioneers, trappers and traders would have used a rifle like this for all of the above.

The American Long Rifle, more commonly, but less correctly, known as the ‘Kentucky rifle’, was described by Captain John G. W. Dillin in the dedication to his seminal 1924 book, The Kentucky Rifle:

“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 overall condition is very good. Original finish. The action is functional. The bore is untouched but clearly well-rifled. The stock has great grain and remains solid.

Own the original! This is a legitimate antique and not a reproduction.

Barrel is 38-1/4 inches.

Caliber: .52 Flintlock

Overall condition as seen in photos.

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$5500
#230019