Posted on 08/12/2015 10:02:23 AM PDT by Rio
I was thinking the same thing. They'll have to clean it up to determine it's real age. But my guess is that it belong to a French trapper.
-PJ
ID this catch! ;)
Chingachkuk— please pick up the white courtesy phone- we found your Kentucky long barrel- needs a little work.
Really. Fond du Lac.... way off the path of Lewis and Clark for that era weapon. But maybe not for a native who got it in trade from Francais traders or Couer des Bois.
I don’t know, the gun is cool, but I would rather have been the off-duty cop who reeled in $12 million worth of cocaine while he was fishing :)
Probably not a rifle: looks like a Trade Musket, the kind that used to made for the Indians as barter for furs.
Wisconsin Territory
Wisconsin Territory was created by an act of the United States Congress on April 20, 1836. By fall of that year, the best prairie groves of the counties surrounding Milwaukee were occupied by New England farmers.[14] The new territory initially included all of the present day states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, as well as parts of North and South Dakota. At the time the Congress called it the “Wiskonsin Territory”.[15]
The first territorial governor of Wisconsin was Henry Dodge. He and other territorial lawmakers were initially busied by organizing the territory’s government and selecting a capital city. The selection of a location to build a capitol caused a heated debate among the territorial politicians. At first, Governor Dodge selected Belmont, located in the heavily populated lead mining district, to be capital. Shortly after the new legislature convened there, however, it became obvious that Wisconsin’s first capitol was inadequate. Numerous other suggestions for the location of the capital were given representing nearly every city that existed in the territory at the time, and Governor Dodge left the decision up to the other lawmakers. The legislature accepted a proposal by James Duane Doty to build a new city named Madison on an isthmus between lakes Mendota and Monona and put the territory’s permanent capital there.[16] In 1837, while Madison was being built, the capitol was temporarily moved to Burlington. This city was transferred to Iowa Territory in 1838, along with all the lands of Wisconsin Territory west of the Mississippi River.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wisconsin
Yeah, it would have been mostly French trappers in the area at that time.
The owner likely fell thru the ice or dropped it out of a canoe......There could very well be the remnants of a body somewhere on the bottom of the lake.
Not worth anything.
In good shape they are not worth nearly what someone thinks they are.
I was thinking the same thing just by looking at that trigger guard alone. Hard to say for sure, though.
That barrel looks long even by musket standards.
Looks almost like it’s something an Arab would use so he didn’t shoot his camels brains out.
Possibly something used at a fort and not carried.
I’m only surprised it did not turn up in a weapons buyback program.
Give them time.
Some idiot will get a case of the vapors seeing that big long barrel and it will end up as scrap.
a buy back disposal ?
Just my guess but it looks like the remains of a `trade musket’ which were carried mostly by Indians.
No way! Lake Wobegon is a mythical... oh wait, never mind!
Just because the musket is about 200 years old does not mean that it was lost 200 years ago. Flintlocks are still being used today.
It could have been in practical use, easily up to 1900.
Heck, the story is nearly two years old.
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