Back in 2013 during an archaeology project I was volunteering on, we were finding musket balls from the first day of the American Revolution. I remember during a break talking to archaeologist Doug Scott. He had done live-fire studies of arms related to the Civil and Indian Wars, but he mentioned how it would be really interesting to study the exterior ballistics of Revolutionary War small arms. I happened to have a collection of contemporary custom-built reproductions of many flintlock fowling pieces, carbines, and muskets we could use for a study. In 2015 after the project was over, we set a date and spent three days shooting, metal detecting each fired ball, and recording all of the data. The next year we planned another and collected more data. All of this we published for historians and archaeologists to use.
In late 2019 while visiting the Jason Russell house in Arlington, Massachusetts and looking at the bullet holes from April 19, 1775 in the house, we decided a study was in order to verify if they were indeed bullet holes, and if we could find more. This led to a study of all of the remaining structures and objects that had bullet holes related to the first day of the Revolution. Then COVID hit and slowed things down a bit. We were still able to keep working on the project, but visits and live-fire studies were not in the cards. During that down time, we were able to do a lot of research and start to organize the information. We decided we needed to do another live-fire validation study and replicate some of the shots that we had recorded.
I was able to collect some of the materials we wanted to shoot and prepare for when we could get folks together and out to shoot. We had 18th century house sections built from original materials which dated to about the same time of some of the original structures. Since we recorded three indoor house shutters which had been shot in 1775, we also needed to find a shutter. One that had been reproduced in the late 19th or early 20th century was found and set aside. James Hayward of Acton had been shot through his powder horn on April 19, 1775, and we wanted to try and replicate that, if indeed we could hit the horn, so I found two plain antique horns cheap at shops and set them aside.
We were also able to get a grant from the American Society of Arms Collectors Foundation to help fund the live-fire study. Renting high-speed cameras costs money, as does getting a videographer and traveling to Massachusetts for the study.
The next step was finding a location to shoot and after reaching out to the Whitinsville Fish and Game Club in Douglas, Massachusetts, they agreed to let us hold the study there over a two-day period.
In my next article, I’ll talk about the live-fire study we had on two cold December days last year!
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