.44 Henry Bullet?

[Eastender]

Today I found the bullet on top about 2" inches below ground to add to my growing ballistics collection. A hair under .44 and weighing in at 23.34 grams.

 

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[gunsil]

Looks too long for a Henry. Looks a lot like a 45-70 but a little thin at less than .44, did you use a decent caliper to measure?? If measurement is correct perhaps .43 Spanish for a Remington rolling block of SpanAm war vintage.

 

[Eastender]

It's a little deformed but measures .43 at its greatest. This is it next to a 40-82 casing of which i have found several in the same neck of the woods. But it is larger than this casing. Might be interesting if it did belong to SpanAm War rifle as Teddy Roosevelt's rough Riders quarantined in this region after leaving Cuba. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Eastender]

length 1.1275"

 

[gunsil]

Francis Bannerman bought thousands of .43 rolling blocks captured during the war and sold thousands here in NY state from his store in NYC and his island arsenal in the Hudson river near Cold Spring, NY. Like most army surplus rifles many were used by hunters. More likely from Bannerman than Rosy's boys. Bannerman had so many he stripped the wood off of some and used them as rebar in cast concrete blocks for the breakwaters on his island. (my avatar photo has a few of them lying on the walkway.) There was a reprint made of one of Bannerman's catalogs from the 1920s and it is an excellent reference book for old weapons, if you ever find a copy it is worth owning. It will also make you cry when you see civil war Colt pistols sold for ten-twenty bucks back then. Bannerman was probably the world's largest army surplus store and he outfitted small foreign countries with weapons and uniforms, machine guns and cannons. He supplied the Panamanians fighting for independence from Columbia which led to us being able to build the Panama Canal.

 

[Eastender]

Interesting. But the distance between the quarantine site and where I found this bullet is 15 miles. By small craft, a short sail. Sometime soon I am going to hunt for nearby Rough Rider artifacts. Last year for good karma I bought two buttons which belonged to the US Cuban Occupation soldiers from a professional museum conservator. A metal detectorists would never find the cloth button in this mint condition.