Originally featured in Points West magazine in Summer 2010
Kentucky flintlock long rifle
This long rifle is generally known as a Kentucky flintlock rifle, but it was made in Pennsylvania—as was generally true of other rifles of its kind. Why then the Kentucky name? It just happened to be ideally suited for use in the dense forests of Kentucky, and its virtues were extolled in that state—both in use and in song—earlier than elsewhere. One might say with at least a fair degree of accuracy that these guns were adopted and brought to maturity in Kentucky.
The Kentucky rifle, with its smaller caliber, rifled barrel, and slender stock, proved to be a great improvement over the musket in range and accuracy. With it, hunters and military marksmen could hit their targets at greater distances than ever before. In the American Revolution, many British soldiers fell because of the mistaken assumption that they were out of range of the revolutionaries’ guns.
This rifle, made by the famous Nicholas Beyer of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, with its gleaming brass patch box, tiger stripe maple wood, and carved religious symbols, is from the so-called “Golden Age” of the Kentucky rifle.
Kentucky flintlock long rifle. Gift of Olin Corporation, Winchester Arms Collection. 1988.8.876
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