The Donner Party Heads West... (1840's Flintlock Rifle)

On May 12th 1846, a group of nine wagons carrying the Reed and Donner families left Independence Missouri on their journey west. Along the way the size of the group swelled as they joined up with other settlers heading to California for new life. They decided to take a recently scouted path named “Hastings Cutoff”, which promised a more direct route than the main trail. Unfortunately, this trail had not been properly cleared for wagons and was exceedingly treacherous. It also required them to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert, causing a number of oxen to become crazed from thirst and break free from the yokes.
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Things escalated further when a physical altercation between James Reed and another turned deadly. After Reed stopped the man from beating one of his oxen, the man turned the whip on Reed (and possibly his wife). Reed retaliated by stabbing him to death. This resulted in him being banished from the group, and forced to ride on ahead and alone leaving his family behind

While James Reed reached California in late October, he became increasingly concerned about his family with each passing day. His concern grew even greater when winter finally set in. He and others eventually wrangled up support for relief expeditions back along the trail. What they discovered horrified the rescuers and has immortalized the “Donner Party” in history. The settlers, trapped in their winter camp, had run out of food to include the oxen teams. They then resorted to eating ox-hide, eventually to include the hide that served as the roofs for their cabins. Eventually, a number of the trapped survivors even resorted to cannibalism, leading to some truly lurid stories from both survivors and the rescuers. Of the 87 people who had entered the mountains, only 48 survived the winter until rescue.
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As befitting settlers moving west through dangerous and untamed territory, the Donner-Reed party carried a number of firearms. They almost certainly included a number of flintlock rifles similar to the one pictured in order to aid the in both defense and hunting. This particular rifle was made during the early 1840’s by the Conestoga Rifle Works of Lancaster, PA. This company was owned by the famous gunmaker Henry Leman, and turned out cheaper factory produced variants of his extremely well-regarded weapons.
The rifle is styled after the classic Pennsylvania long rifle and roughly follows the Lehigh Valley school design. In lieu of traditional twisting rifling, it instead features straight rifling down the length of the barrel. While this doesn’t provide as much stability as normal rifling, it does increase accuracy somewhat, while also allowing the effective use of shot pellets. As a gun designed to be economical, it needed to serve whatever use its owner put it to. While high end rifles were made from beautifully figured wood, factory produced guns got similar aesthetics through artificially striping the wood, which still achieve a beautiful end result (IMO at least).
So, while this is not a handcrafted specimen of immense value, it IS a true Pennsylvania long rifle and representative of those that served working class families on the homestead or on trails heading west.