Category: War
The first musket “from the Schindel farm in Hagerstown.”
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| Source: all photos related to this gun are by the author. |
A seller had a somewhat disreputable, beat up old musket for sale at a very low price at a large antique arms show. (Yes, there are such things!). It was a conglomeration of various parts and pieces from long before the Civil War. But, the seller’s tag read:
Someone making up a story would be much more likely to attach the name of a famous battle location, and rebel stuff usually gets higher prices, so this had a ring of truth unlike so many old stories.
The old saying is “Buy the gun, not the story.” It was NOT a “German shotgun.” This is what the gun whispered to me:\
It was made from salvaged Revolutionary War musket parts, probably circa 1790-1812. Poor quality, it would have been used as a general purpose gun in the early days, and was marginally able to meet the requirements of the Militia Act of 1792 which required every man to have a musket for militia duty.
- French Model 1763 (+/-) “Charleville” musket lock marked “Maubeuge Manuf. Rle.”
- Barrel may be from the same type, but cut down to about 36”.
- Stock is probably American maple, having almost the form of a rifle stock.
- Trigger guard and lower ramrod pipe are from a British Brown Bess and possibly the buttplate.
This is very close to some arms made by Rufus Perkins in Bridgewater, Massachusetts circa 1808-1812, including some Indian trade guns. At some point the stock was painted red, now worn thin, common on guns intended for trade with the Indians, but Bubba may have painted it to match his barn.
This gun may have been carried by New England militiamen to the mid-Atlantic states during the War of 1812. Or maybe the owner migrated and took it with him. Eventually it was converted to percussion, probably circa 1830-1850 and a few such guns were still used to a limited extent by militia units raised during the Civil War.
Later it was altered to a half-stock for hunting or hog butchering, perhaps before, or after the Civil War. It was certainly plausible that it was in the Hagerstown, MD area in 1862.
“The Schindel farm” location was undoubtedly one of several owed by members of that family about 6 miles southeast of Hagerstown, or about 8 miles northeast of the Antietam battlefield, according to old property maps and census records.
My guess is that this story has some truth to it, and that either the soldier was a militia man who had this gun, or deserted his unit and found this gun on a farm and used it to disable himself as his unit headed towards the battle. Or, maybe he was a draft dodger who mutilated himself “by accident” several months before the battle of Antietam. We will never know, but war is not always gallantry in battle with mild flesh wounds. PTSD was every bit as real then as today.
Second musket- “The Cool Creek musket.”
In researching Antietam farms, I stumbled across a delightful blog by a Washington, DC interior designer and his husband who discovered a [once] nice brick federal farmhouse circa 1823 with 7 acres right on Antietam creek, between Hagerstown and Sharpsburg. They proceeded to purchase and considerably upgrade the house to be really beautiful. When nearly complete, they invited the family of some former owners over to see the results, and were surprised with a delightful gift.
“Grateful for allowing them to tour the house and grounds, they brought us an extraordinary gift. A German rifle made for the Napoleonic war around 1815 was found in the ground near the smoke house. At the dawn of the Civil War, the south found itself with a lack of weapons, most factories being in the north. European countries sold their old weaponry to the Confederate government where they subsequently fashioned them to weapons for their soldiers.
The “Cool Hollow Musket” as it is called was one of these such weapons. Most likely left by a Confederate soldier that either stayed near the house or was treated there. Whatever the actual story is we will never know, but this wonderful treasure was an amazing gift that has come home.
What we have come to realize is that our historic home, just like so many others is more than just the built environment. These structures encompass centuries of family life, both happy times and sad, war and peace. In this bloggers humble opinion, these are the most important aspects of owning an old house, we are keepers of the past, saving it for the future.” Source (Quote and image)
This musket is indeed a German (actually proto-German Prussian) model 1809 flintlock converted to percussion and widely used by both sides in the Civil War. This one had both the barrel and stock shortened, likely done after leaving military service, but still useful as a “farm gun.” I highly recommend the story of their preservation and restoration work, but it is only available on the Wayback Machine, which tends to be cranky and you need to be persistent and creative in finding all the installments. You can start here.
Now, it is an amazing coincidence that by 1861, the “Cool Hollow House” was amalgamated with other properties into a 500 acre estate “owned by David and Magdalene Schindel.” Mr. Schindel was a prominent businessmen in and around Hagerstown, MD. Mrs. Schindel, the daughter of the builder, Benjamin Emmertt.” Armies moved across this land twice, both in the September 1862 advance to Antietam, and again around July 9, 1863 after Gettysburg as union forced followed the retreating Confederates. Yes, this is in the region of Schindel farms mentioned previously. Source
Undoubtedly many other old guns have been found adjacent to battlefields, or the line or march to or from a scene of combat. “I wish it could talk.” Or, maybe there are scenes best left unseen, such as these dead at the Dunker Church at Antietam, only a tiny number of the 23,000 killed wounded or captured that day. Source:
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Iran’s air defenses could be seen lighting up the night sky over Tehran on Saturday. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/Reuters
By the time Israel’s advanced F-35 jet fighters swooped in to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and military leadership, a lower-tech threat had already crossed the border and was in position to clear the way.
Israel had spent months smuggling in parts for hundreds of quadcopter drones rigged with explosives—in suitcases, trucks and shipping containers—as well as munitions that could be fired from unmanned platforms, people familiar with the operation said.
Small teams armed with the equipment set up near Iran’s air-defense emplacements and missile launch sites, the people said. When Israel’s attack began, some of the teams took out air defenses, while others hit missile launchers as they rolled out of their shelters and set up to fire, one of the people said.
The operation helps explain the limited nature of Iran’s response thus far to Israel’s attacks. It also offers further evidence of how off-the-shelf technology is changing the battlefield and creating dangerous new security challenges for governments.
The exploit came just weeks after Ukraine deployed similar tactics, using drones smuggled into Russia in the roofs of shipping containers to attack dozens of warplanes used by Moscow to attack Ukrainian cities. The intelligence operations showed how attackers are using creativity and low-cost drones to get past sophisticated air-defense systems to destroy valuable targets in ways that are hard to stop.
The operation by Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, was aimed at taking out threats to Israeli warplanes and knocking out missiles before they could be fired at cities. The teams on the ground hit dozens of missiles before they could be launched in the early hours of the attack, one of the people said. Israel’s air force also focused heavily on air defense and missiles in the first days of the campaign.
An excavator removed debris from a Tehran residential building on Friday following strikes by Israel. Photo: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
Iran ultimately fired around 200 missiles at Israel in four salvos Friday and overnight into Saturday, leaving three dead and property damaged around Tel Aviv. Israel had expected a much more severe response, said Sima Shine, a former senior intelligence officer in the Mossad and now head of the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank in Tel Aviv.
Iran, however, has vast resources it could muster for more severe attacks.
“We expected much more,” Shine said. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t have much more today or tomorrow.”
The attacks on Iranian air defenses were more decisive, helping Israel quickly establish dominance in the air, she said. Israel’s air force has also aggressively targeted those defenses.
Israeli military spokesperson Effie Defrin said Saturday that Israel overnight had attacked targets in Tehran with 70 fighter planes that spent more than two hours in the Iranian capital’s airspace.
Missiles fired by Iran into Israel this weekend damaged a residential neighborhood in Tel Aviv and killed at least three people. Photo: Abir Sultan/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
“This is the deepest distance that we have operated so far in Iran,” Defrin said. “We created aerial freedom of action.”
An advisory from Iran’s intelligence services circulating Saturday in some of the country’s newspapers, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked publication Tasnim, told people to be on watch for Israeli use of pickups and cargo trucks to launch drones.
Israel has deeply integrated ambitious intelligence operations into its warfighting. It kicked off a two-month campaign against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah last fall with an operation that caused thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies carried by its ranks to suddenly explode.
An image taken from video shows smoke in the aftermath of an Israeli strike in the western Iranian province of Kermanshah. Photo: UGC/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The country has also shown that its agents have deeply infiltrated Iran. Last summer, Israel killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh by sneaking a bomb into his heavily guarded room at a Revolutionary Guard guesthouse and detonating it when Haniyeh attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president.
In the current campaign, the Mossad’s operations inside Iran have included hunting for leadership targets in Tehran, one of the people familiar with the operations said.
Drones have been a regular feature of Israel’s operations in Iran. In 2022, it used explosive-laden quadcopters to strike an Iranian drone-production site in the western city of Kermanshah. A year later, it used drones to target an ammunition factory in Isfahan.
The spy agency began preparing for the current drone operation years ago, the people said. It knew where Iran kept missiles to be ready for launch but needed to be in a position to attack them given the country’s size and distance from Israel.
Mossad brought the quadcopters in through commercial channels using often unwitting business partners. Agents on the ground would collect the munitions and distribute them to the teams. Israel trained the team leaders in third countries, and they in turn trained the teams.
A banner displays portraits of Iranian generals and nuclear scientists killed in recent strikes by Israel. Photo: Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The teams watched as Iran rolled out missiles, then hit them before they could be erected for launch, the person said. Mossad knew the trucks that move the missiles from storage to the launch site were a bottleneck for Iran, which had four times as many missiles as trucks.
The teams took out dozens of trucks, one of the people said. They were still operating on the ground deep into Friday.
The operations—and making them public—have an important ancillary effect, said Shine, the former head of the Mossad’s Iran desk.
“No one in Iran in the high echelons can be sure he isn’t known to Israeli intelligence and won’t be the target,” she said. “It’s not just the damage caused but the nervousness it brings.”