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Pistols made for the Royal Mail coach are now on display in the heritage room. Courtesy | Catherine Maxwell
The beauty of the Heritage Room will now be matched by its brawn: a set of flintlock pistols and muskets dating back to the Revolutionary War.
Clinton Miller donated the weapons in the summer of 2020, shortly before his death, according to Lori Curtis, Hillsdale College archivist. Miller was an antiques collector and appraiser who belonged to multiple historical and weaponry-related organizations.
“There are 12 smoothbore, flintlock long guns dating from 1726 to 1779,” Curtis said. “There are 12 flintlock pistols, dating from 1738 to 1837. The collection also includes two bayonets, a sword, a cutlass, a holster for a pistol, and a powder horn.”
Curtis has been researching the different types of firearms and their origins as part of the display.
“It’s been great fun to learn how you tell what year a particular firearm was made, and who made it and where they were,” she said.
According to Curtis, blacksmiths created the parts for each weapon separately and then assembled them. Many blacksmiths would scratch their initials and the date into their pieces as a way to identify them. This led Curtis to investigate one musket in particular.
“I had this lovely firearm,” Curtis said. “I thought, it definitely looked like a 1727 lock, matched all the criteria, and the stock looked like 1730. This all made sense up to that point.”
She realized something was wrong, however, when she examined the locksmith’s engraving.
“The locksmith’s name and date said ‘Farmer 1743,’” she said, “Why would he be signing this lock 20 years after the other pieces?”
Curtis contacted an expert of Colonial Williamsburg. He suggested that the original name had been sanded off and a different name engraved.
Curtis successfully took the gun apart to examine the pieces, the only way to identify the real locksmith, she said.
“I could see faint initials that were etched in and they didn’t look like J. F. for Joseph Farmer,” she said.
Instead, the initials were E. J. for Edward Jordan, a known locksmith in the 1730s.
“We solved that mystery, but we still don’t know why somebody tried to change that,” she said.
The collection also includes two pistols from the 1830s which were made for the Royal Mail coaches to fight off highwaymen. The barrel on one of the pistols from 1836 says ‘For His Majesty’s Mail Coaches” and the other made the following year says “For her Majesty’s Mail Coaches.”
“In 1837, Victoria became queen, so they made new pistols,” Curtis said.
Curtis said all of the weapons are of British origin.
“They are predominantly British military. Almost all of them are 18th-century British military firearms,” she said. There are also a few from the early 19th century.
Curtis said that Miller had wanted to put the weapons in the Heritage Room. The pistols are currently on display, and Curtis hopes to add the muskets within a week.
Charles Yost, assistant professor of medieval history, recently brought his American Heritage students to see and handle the collection.
“I think it’s very important that when students are studying history, they don’t think that they’re studying minds that exist in a vacuum,” Yost said. “It can help ground it in reality if you go and look at the stuff itself.”
John Worachek, a student in Yost’s American Heritage class, said being able to see and hold the weapons deepened his appreciation of the course.
“Reading about and seeing pictures of those artifacts can only do so much for the student of history, but feeling, hearing, and smelling them brings us closer to understanding our own heritage than any book can,” Worachek said.
Curtis and Yost both shared their excitement for students to see the collection.
“Thinking about the American Revolution as a conflict of ideas is fine on a certain level,” Yost said. “But there’s something about picking up and holding the weapons that were quite likely used in this conflict that drives that home and underlines the seriousness of the struggle.”
Worachek agreed.
“Being able to hold a weapon that may have been used by or against my ancestors deepens my respect for their willingness to take up arms and fight for a cause they truly believed in,” he said.
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