Awesome iron in the woods... Brown Bess?

[adventureswithjim]

I was out today diggin some of those iron overload signals to get them out of the way, and out pops this neat iron thing...my first thought is "knife." But cleaning up I see it's got holes, lots of holes...not a knife, then I turned just the right way and it dawned on me what I had...the plate on the side of a musket that held the hammer, frisson pan all the that good stuff. One quick search for "brown bess" and I had a startlingly close match. Mine's just not as pretty and missing all it's parts.

There were a number of Revolutionary War skirmishes in the area, I also dug plenty of musket balls of the right caliber at this spot...could this really be the side plate from a brown bess? Since everyone of the period had a firearm of some sort, hard to say if this was used in combat...but it's fun to ponder!

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A Handbook of Civil War Bullets and Cartridges - Grab it through Amazon!

[oldsalty19]

looks good

 

[mikusek]

Kewl find..... looks like it could be.

 

[wwwtimmcp]

probably not from a brown bess. there is no powder pan. this is just under where the flint hit the frizzen, it was loaded with a small charge of powder to fire the larger charge in the barrel there was a small diameter hole from the pan through the barrel to ignite it. it looks more to me that it is a percussion. these used a cap to fire the charge in the barrel 1838-1870 then modern cartridges took over. sorry but I'd rather tell you the truth, and it is still a great find.

 

[JmCraz8]

Definitely looks like it.