“Made in Christians Spring: A Story of the American Revolution”: Video by Professor Scott Gordon
Originally shared in the American Longrifles Forum
Professor Scott Gordon has been preparing to deliver this information as part of a talk shared over the weekend. He goes on to say,
As prep for it (timing my talk to the slides), I recorded it all on a video. It's about 40 minutes, so it's much longer than the other talk I shared back in the spring about the puzzle of Christian Oerter's signatures.
The talk focuses on a 1773 rifle that Christian Oerter made for a wealthy Mennonite farmer in Lancaster County. But it ranges broadly beyond this, since it's really a very condensed version of a long article in the works about how Pennsylvania armed itself in 1775 and 1776 when efforts at making new arms failed and so patriot officials began taking arms from non-associators.
While Professor Gordon mentions that the talk wasn't focused on the muzzleloaders built at Chrisitan's Spring, they were primarily interested in the "Pacifism of the Moravian belief structure and the Church's willingness to supply weapons of war, I find the presentation extremely interesting and informative.
We hear about this town and its gunmakers all the time when looking at American History, the rifles are a topic of several KRA publications and are replicated often by modern builders. Many of us are familiar with the rifles, but not the history of the area they came from. Professor Gordon's work goes above and beyond to help us better understand the history behind these beloved longrifles.
I encourage you to listen and watch this presentation and visit the ALR forum in the link above to see the discussion happening around this video, it is incrediblyy informative!