Rare Published Late 18th Century New England Brass Barreled Flintlock Rifle, ex-Flayderman

.50 caliber. 35" heavy brass pinned octagonal barrel. NSN. Brass barrel and furniture, full-length cherry stock. Single shot flintlock muzzleloading brass barreled rifle. Reconverted flint lock marked Ketland/& Co in two script lines under the pan. The gun is otherwise unmarked. Heavy brass barrel measures nominally 1.11" across the flats at the muzzle and 1.22" at the breech. Equipped with a fixed dovetailed notch rear sight and a dovetailed brass blade front sight. Full-length stock with a graceful semi-Roman nosed drop and a deeply fluted rail at the wrist. The style of the stock and butt suggest the Worcester-Sutton area of Massachusetts. Buttplate with pronounced swell at the upper rear and with a multi-step tang. Small simple triggerguard with graceful lines and a simple three leaf finial. Simple and somewhat crude flat rudimentary S-shaped two-screw side plate. Rifle has three brass ramrod thimbles and an entry pipe but no rod is present.

According to the Flayderman Catalog #111 (Item #1705) gun is featured in Merrill Lindsay's book The New England Gun For the First Two Hundred Years, with discussion on pages 119 and 120 as item #11. However, while #11 on pages 117 and 120 do discuss a brass rifle with a T. Ketland & Co. marked lock, it also mentions a silver escutcheon plate and silver inlay at the breech. Since the balance of the description is correct (barrel length, width, caliber, etc) I think this was merely an editing or layout error, as other silver inlaid guns are described in the same section. Lindsay dates the gun to circa 1780. The gun is attributed to the Flayderman Collection in the book. A copy of the Flayderman catalog and Merrill Lindsay's book are included with the rifle.

This lot is located in Cincinnati.

ex-Norm Flayderman Collection