halfdime
Silver Member
Last week I posted, among a few other items, an 1838 large cent from an old homestead in the neighborhood where I grew up. Before I started, another neighbor told me about the "musket" found on the property I was about to do. Today, I went over to do some more detecting and some of the surviving family was there. The father died just about a month ago; it was he who found the gun in question. One of the sons-in-law went to a shed and pulled it out to show me; I was duly impressed. I was a history major and don't know much about guns but I can appreciate the history of most artifacts. I was happy to see it, but I didn't do cartwheels; I figured the gun had to be at least a hundred years old, probably more, so I appreciated it from that perspective and thanked the host for showing it to me. He put it away and came back out a few minutes later and gave it to me! That was the furthest thing from my mind when I first saw it; I certainly didn't covet it or hold it tight to my chest. Evidently, the deceased had found it while digging for some project in his yard; there was an old homestead a few hundred feet away and we figure that anything "older" was associated with it. For example, the 1951 Washington quarter found there today wasn't. Is this today's find? No. Could have been, had it not been found already. I hope the pictures help with identification.
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