KRA Bulletin | VOLUME 40 | NUMBER 3 | SPRING 2014

Rooted in the complex history of the Cumberland frontier, this Spring 2014 Bulletin examines the riflemen and gunmakers whose lives were shaped by a region long treated as a peripheral borderland. Central to the study is the work of gunsmith Jacob Young, explored through rifles made for prominent figures such as William Waid Woodfork, William Whitley, and Gasper Mansker.

Drawing from close analysis of surviving rifles, powder horns, engraved ornamentation, and period documentation, the Bulletin situates Cumberland gunmaking within its broader cultural, geographic, and political context during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In doing so, the research challenges rigid regional classifications and presents the Cumberland as a distinct frontier world whose makers and riflemen played an essential role in the evolution of the American longrifle.

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