Thread: thoughts
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Old 03-19-2008, 04:03 PM
charles starks charles starks is offline
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Default Re: thoughts

Quote:
Actually this statement isn't entirely correct. The percussion system was invented about 1830 and came into use around the population centers, but took alot longer to reach outlying areas, many of the old timers of the era did not trust the new system. If you were leaving your family to fight a battle would you leave them defensless?


ohh i would agree with you as the flintlock is still in use today .
however that doesn’t change that caps started here in the US in 1820 " US paten date ". Europe 1810-12 "french and english paten dates "depending on what documentation you want to believe .
My statement wasn’t meant to say that all folks used percussion rifles within that time frame.
My personal opinion is they did not and in fact they never were as wide spread as we are lead to believe ..
but for their quick spred in population areas .

However that doesn’t change the facts that many of the fur trade listing show thousands of caps being brought to the fur trade rendezvous in the 1830 and well past 1840 which by the way isnt the actual end of the fur trade , just the last major gathering by the fur companies .

Now within reason we simply have to accept that those caps were brought for a reason even though the documentation of rifles using them is somewhat lose /small .


Hence the percussion era normally is accepted to be in this country 1820 -about 1880 thus covering the rise of this system and its decline .
This doesn’t mean it did not last longer or that it did not start earlier . Only that it was the main so called hay-day of that system
We can say the same thing about the so called golden age of the long rifle or the golden age of the SXS
IE a general statement and a general time frame.

however that doesnt change the documentation in diaries and dispatches describing adult males showing up for enlistment or musters with no weapon

i also must agree that one must be careful . however what we must be careful with is our books , especially the really good older ones . Most of these were printed in a time of limited resources for study . Thus the writers often relied on museum documentation for their documentation .
Which is another source we must be careful of as often times items are describe , listed and cataloged completely wrong.

In todays age of internet resources , access to congressional libraries , church catalogs of actual writings
+ 100’s of thousands of other resources all on electronic data bases with 100sands being added each day , we often find that what we believed true , is dated .
For instance , just recently the 1853 edition of Bishop Frederic Baraga's dictionary has been cataloged and added to electronic resources.
Now many of the writings concerning a few of the eastern Americian Indian languages
Is found lacking . Not because the resource has not always been there but because access to it for documentation has been limited .

Thus to tie this back into the subject here . As we learn more and find more such resources , I have to wonder w hat will come in the future . How many of these old engravings that we are discussing may in fact be documented wrong or the suporting documentation was so light that it should be suspect , I guess only time will tell
But no mater , I still love the old books . Especially ones like you posted , they have a class all their own that doesn’t seem to be able to be repeated today
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