Kentucky Flintlock Rifle

Non-firing replica

The name Kentucky Rifle is largely a misnomer - they were primarily made in Pennsylvania, although Maryland and Virginia gunsmiths contributed a fair share. The Kentucky name came about as a result of the Battle of New Orleans, which was substantially won by these rifles, in the hands of two thousand frontiersmen from Kentucky. While the design was influenced by the German Jaeger rifles and the slender English and French fowling pieces of the early 18th Century, the Kentucky is uniquely American. This non-firing version shows the graceful lines for which the Kentucky became renowned.

The longrifle developed on the American frontier in the period beginning in the 1740s, and continued its development technically and artistically until it passed out of fashion in the mid to late 19th century. It is interesting to note, however, that strong pockets of longrifle use and manufacture continued in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina, well into the 20th century, as a practical and efficient firearm for these still quite rural segments of the nation. Longrifles could be made entirely by hand, in a frontier setting, which could not be said of modern breechloaders such as the Winchester.

Although experts argue the fine points of origin and lineage, it is accepted that the longrifle was the product of German gunsmiths who immigrated to new settlements in Pennsylvania and Virginia as early as the 1740s. Initially the weapon of choice on the frontier was the smooth bore musket or trade gun, built in the thousands in factories in England and France and shipped to the Colonies for purchase. But gradually a group of solitary frontiersmen, Indian fighters, and professional market hunters began using more and more rifles due to their longer effective range. While the smooth bore musket had an effective range of less than 100 yards, a good rifleman could hit a man size target out to three hundred yards or more. There was a price for this accuracy, however. The long rifle required a full minute to load, longer then a musket.

Among the earliest documented working rifle makers are Adam Haymaker who had a thriving trade in the northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and also the Moravian gunshops at both Christian Springs in Pennsylvania and also in the Salem area of central North Carolina. All three areas were busy and productive centers of rifle making by the 1750s. The Great Wagon Road was a bustling frontier thoroughfare, and traced this same route - from eastern Pennsylvania, down the Shenandoah Valley, and spilling into both the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and the Yadkin River (Salem) area of North Carolina. Rifle shops dotted this road and kept the frontier supplied with the tools of exploration and conquest of the frontier.

The settlers of western Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina soon gained a reputation for hardy independence and rifle marksmanship as a way of life, further reinforced by the performance of riflemen in the American Revolution as well as the War of 1812. In that war, the longrifle gained its more famous nickname the Kentucky Rifle, after a popular song "The Hunters of Kentucky", about Andrew Jackson and his victory at the Battle of New Orleans, where southern riflemen inflicted horrendous casualties to British invaders and suffered almost no losses themselves.

Just why the American rifle developed its characteristic long barrel is a matter of some conjecture. The German gunsmiths working in America would have been very familiar with German rifles, which seldom had barrels longer than 30 inches, and often had barrels much shorter. The main reason is the longer barrel gave the black powder — which burns slower than modern powders — more time to burn, increasing the muzzle velocity and hence the accuracy. (A rule of thumb used by some gunsmiths was to make the rifle no longer than the height of a customer's chin because of the necessity of seeing the muzzle while loading.) The longer barrel also allowed for finer sighting and thus greater accuracy. Although some speculation would have it that a longer gun was easier to load from horseback by resting the butt of the rifle on the ground, this was not a consideration, as the rifles were not exclusively used from horseback, and making rifles long enough to be loaded in this fashion would make them inconveniently long to be loaded while on foot. For whatever reason, by the 1750s it was common to see frontiersmen carrying a new and distinctive style of rifle that was used with great skill to provide tens of thousands of deer hides for the British leather industry.

These woodsmen were also exceptional trackers and Indian fighters, and played an important role in the French and Indian War which was in large part a guerilla war fought in many parts of the American back country. By the time of the American Revolution a strong tradition of riflery had been ingrained into the citizens of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, and all lands west into the Indian territories.

A shorter, carbine variant was the Hawken rifle or "plains rifle," popular among mountain men and North American fur trappers in the nineteenth century.