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FINE EARLY FLINTLOCK NEW YORK/NEW ENGLAND AMERICAN LONG FOWLER

Currency:USD Category:Antiques / Firearms & Armory Start Price:4,750.00 USD Estimated At:9,500.00 - 16,500.00 USD
FINE EARLY FLINTLOCK NEW YORK/NEW ENGLAND AMERICAN LONG FOWLER
NSN. This early fowler has a 60 ½ inch octagon to round .80 caliber barrel with English view and proof barrel marks. This typically British style fowler is the type made in the Colony of New York or in adjacent Colonies such as Massachusetts or Rhode Island where the consigner states it was found years ago. Long fowlers of this type are often lumped together with Hudson Valley fowlers and may have been made in the same region. This very same fowler is illustrated on page # 187 of Tom Grinslade’s book Flintlock Fowlers, the first guns made in America”. (Mr. Grinslade’s original tag number, BS #15, is still intact). The full stock is Cherry wood with a rich Mahogany color and is fully sculpted with a long hand rail, high comb, and a bulbous swelling at the rear ramrod entry ferrule not unlike a first model Brown Bess. The original flint lock follows a similar design to the British Brown Bess, but is made in a commercial style with no external or internal markings. The brass hardware is the mid-eighteenth century style including a butt plate with a “three step” tang, a “trifid” tipped trigger guard finial, a large triangular molded side plate and an ornate cast wrist escutcheon with a relief shell pattern at its head. The four ramrod guides hold a period made hickory ramrod. CONDITION: The overall condition of this fowler is a special feature of this mid-eighteenth century fowling piece of American manufacture.  When found most of these long fowlers have been broken, shortened and converted to percussion.  The trigger guard’s rear extension shows a very neat mend using four tiny pins.  There is evidence of a minor glued crack in the ramrod channel at the first ramrod pipe and some minor glued cracks at the muzzle. 4-49675 RG8