With the April 12, 1861, firing on Fort Sumter and the subsequent outbreak of hostilities that was the American Civil War, a concerted effort was made in cities, counties, and states on both sides to organize and arm the militia. Such activities had been going on since the late 1850s, particularly in the South, where the coming conflict was certainly no surprise. However, after April 12, 1861, attempts to organize military forces were redoubled. In northern states bordering states that had seceded, that effort often focused on establishing a significant force of “Home Guard” to protect the state, counties, and cities in the case of a Confederate invasion.
According to the 1860 Census, Philadelphia was the second largest city in the United States, with a population of more than 500,000 people; some 180,000 more people than in the ten largest southern cities combined! The Pennsylvania border with Virginia (later to be West Virginia), the strong southern sympathies in bordering Maryland, and the fact that slave holding Delaware was just across the river, combined to place Philadelphia in a potentially precarious position. Additionally, its manufacturing and economic power made Philadelphia an attractive target for a southern attack. These fears led to the City Council to propose a measure on April 18, 1861, to spend some $10,000 to arm and equip a local militia for the city’s defense.
George Moller notes that the bill also authorized creating a special committee to oversee the expenditures and create the organization that would become the city’s Home Guard. The next day, the council officially voted to approve the measure, appropriating five times as much money, some $50,000, “for the use of a Home Guard or any other company hereafter to be formed for defense of the city.” Very quickly thereafter, on April 20, Augustus Pleasanton was appointed colonel of the Home Guard by Mayor Alexander Henry and less than thirty days later, on May 16, 1861, the Pennsylvania state legislature codified the Philadelphia Home Guard. This act formally authorized creation of five regular infantry regiments, one light infantry regiment, one cavalry regiment, and two artillery regiments.
The next step was to arm the new Home Guard. The city soon received authorization to obtain up to 5,000 percussion muskets on loan from the Frankford Arsenal, with the understanding that the arms were subject to recall as needed by the Federal Government. Some 3,800 arms were temporarily issued from the arsenal for the Philadelphia Home Guard, but by October 1861, the Ordnance Department was already recalling the guns for the newly raised Union volunteer regiments, and by January 1862, they had all been returned.
These were not the only small arms that had been obtained by the Philadelphia Home Guard. As soon as the force had been officially authorized, established, and was funded, agents started to purchase arms. The buyers looked to long time Philadelphia based arms retailer Joseph C. Grubb & Company, as well as international arms dealer Herman Boker & Company. From sources such as Grubb and Boker, the city managed to purchase some 3,400 long arms. These included 600 Prussian muskets (mostly M1809 and M1839 “Potsdams,” some rifled), 500 Prussian M1849 German Federation naval muskets, 1,000 Enfield rifles with saber bayonets, and 1,300 “chambered breech muskets with Maynard primers.” It is generally believed that these last 1,300 guns were sold to the Home Guard by Grubb, likely along with other arms as well. All the purchases were inspected by longtime Philadelphia based gunmaker and retailer Andrew Wurfflein, who stamped his name near the breech of the guns that he inspected. The guns were also marked with a three-line ownership stamp: CITY / OF / PHILADA, with the lower line in an upward arc.
Among the 1,300 “chambered breech muskets with Maynard primers” were some interesting variants of the standard Remington-Maynard altered U.S. Model 1816 muskets. As the guns were apparently sourced from Grubb, it is not clear exactly how the company obtained them, or in what configuration they were originally obtained. A description of the standard Remington- Maynard altered guns and the unique Philadelphia guns is necessary to proceed with the story and then to analyze them.
The Philadelphia guns were later production U.S. Model 1816 muskets (mostly Type II and Type III guns; really officially designated as U.S. M1822 and M1828 muskets) altered to percussion using the chambered breech pieces and Maynard automatic priming locks supplied to Frankford Arsenal by E. Remington & Sons of Ilion, NY. The standard Frankford Arsenal Remington- Maynard alteration of the guns, cut approximately 1 inch off the rear of the barrel, threaded on the Remington made chambered breech, rifled the bore, added a long range U.S. M1855 pattern rear sight, a new, taller iron front sight blade, and installed the Remington manufactured Maynard automatic priming lock with a U.S. arsenal produced M1855 style hammer. The locks were marked by Remington at their tails, along with their date of manufacture, and the tangs of the breeches were dated as well.
The Philadelphia guns were dramatically different. Typically, the locks were unmarked, the Maynard magazine door was welded and/or pinned shut, a civilian sporting style percussion hammer was installed, and the top of the Maynard primer’s lock “hump” was ground down to allow the civilian hammer to clear the area and hit the percussion cone. Since the hammers used on the Frankford conversions were U.S. Arsenal and not contractor produced hammers, these were not likely available as surplus, thus the necessity to use readily available civilian pattern hammers. The guns were not rifled, received no long-range rear sights, and no new front sights either.
In most cases, the internal feed parts of the Maynard lock were never installed, and while the unique Maynard tumbler was used for many locks, the tumbler was never fitted with the feed arm or any other Maynard priming system parts. The work is clearly not up to arsenal specifications or quality, suggesting that the alterations were performed by Grubb or a contractor for Grubb. Although the section on these muskets in George Moller’s American Military Shoulder Arms Volume III is quite good, Moller makes no attempt to investigate or hypothesize about actual origin of these guns, beyond the fact that they were purchased from Grubb.
Analyzing a couple of known examples, as well as the example offered here, it is clear that these are not modified U.S. Remington-Maynard altered muskets, but rather U.S. M1816 pattern muskets that have been altered using some surplus parts from the Remington project, parts that were likely obtained from Frankford Arsenal and possibly directly from Remington. The chambered breech pieces appear to be standard delivery Remington breeches that are dated on the tang. These parts bear numeric mating marks that mate them to their barrels that are separate and different from any other mating marks that may appear on the muskets. The locks appear to use what may have been unfinished or possibly condemned Remington-Maynard locks that were then adapted for use in the Philadelphia guns. The lack of external markings, the lack of internal tape priming parts in most examples, as well as the lack of facility to attach these parts to the tumbler, suggests that many locks were assembled from available components on hand, which were in various stages of finish.
The guns typically bear assembly or production numbers that appear to be in addition to any original assembly marks, often with a number stamped on the barrel and a matching one written in pencil in the barrel channel of the stock. Buttplates are often devoid of “US” markings, and the stocks are often void of cartouches or percussion alteration rating marks. This suggests that Grubb may have obtained some (or all) of these guns from state inventories of flintlock muskets, where the guns had originally been purchased by a state and not the U.S. government. The guns were subsequently altered to percussion using a combination of surplus parts from Frankford Arsenal and Remington, then reassembled, inspected by Wurfflein, marked, and issued to the Philadelphia Home Guard.
The pictures accompanying this article show a very good complete example of a City of Philadelphia Home Guard M1816 percussion conversion musket. It is all original with the exception of an old, replaced ramrod and a replaced sling swivel. The gun has the expected CITY / OF / PHILADA mark on top of the chambered breech and is also marked with the A. WURFFLEIN inspection below on the left breech quadrant. As is typical of these guns, the lock is unmarked. The tang of the breech is dated 1856, a normal date for the Remington produced chambered breech. The gun is marked with the assembly number 8 on nearly every part, with the exception of the rear lock screw, marked 3, and the lock which has no assembly mark. The lack of an assembly mark on the lock suggests that the 8 is an original assembly mark from the gun’s flintlock manufacturer.
The top of the barrel is stamped with the number 143 behind the rear barrel band and the matching number is written in the stock’s barrel channel in pencil. This number is likely from the alteration process, serving as both a reassembly number and a way of tracking the number of guns converted. There are no visible cartouches on the stock, nor any indication that there ever were; there is no US on the buttplate and the usual plethora of small U.S. Ordnance Department sub-inspection marks are not present either, all indicative of a gun originally produced on contract for a state, not the Federal Government. The only other markings are a small F on the triggerguard and the number 4 stamped over another mark on the socket bayonet stud, clearly a mating mark for the bayonet that had been fit to the gun.
Tim Prince is a full-time dealer in fine & collectible military arms from the Colonial Period through WWII. He operates College Hill Arsenal, a web-based antique arms retail site. A long time collector & researcher, Tim has been a contributing author to two major book projects about Civil War era arms including The English Connection and a new book on southern retailer marked and Confederate used shotguns. Tim is also a featured Arms & Militaria appraiser on the PBS Series Antiques Roadshow.
Altered lock of the City of Philadelphia musket, showing the pinned and welded tape primer door with ground down “hump” and lack of markings. (All photos by Tim Prince)
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Breech view of the City of Philadelphia musket showing the ownership and inspection marks, Remington breech date, original assembly number “8” and alteration assembly number “143.”