The arms and accouterments belonging to the United States shall be stamped

Markings on Continental Army Muskets

Bob McDonald
Introduction
For many years, historical arms literature has interpreted American markings observed
on some 18th-century muskets, particularly of French manufacture, as attesting to
purchase by the Continental Congress and, most importantly, as verifying wartime
issuance to and usage by the Continental Army. The variety of such stamped marking
most frequently seen on surviving muskets is a US monogram typically found on the
tail of the lockplate and/or atop the barrel breech, in an upright, sideways or even
inverted position.
The second, and notably earlier, category of markings, seen on far fewer surviving
weapons, includes the stamping or branding of UNITED:STATES or, more often,
U.STATES into the musket stock. Stamped into the wood by a heated marking iron,
the full two-word brand is typically positioned either in two lines on the face of the butt
stock or in one line behind the trigger guard, while the abbreviated mark is seen in rear or
in front of the trigger guard or, less often, on the face of the butt stock.
Recently published documentation has notably advanced the interpretation of these two
categories of markings and, in particular, has clarified our understanding of their validity
and reliability as evidence of Continental Army usage of a given musket and, thereby, a
longarm class and model.1
The Deficiency Is Amazingly Great
It might logically be expected that the first category of arms marked as Continental
public property would have included those owned by Congress and in use by the army
prior to the arrival of the massive French arms shipments of 1777. Although
exceptionally difficult to identify among surviving period longarms, the nature of those
firelocks in use by the Continentals during the wars first two years can be inferred from
documentary sources. Some of these guns had been owned by the enlistees of 1775 and
1776, had been bought on behalf of Congress, and became public property at the time of
a mans discharge. A second common source of arms was purchase, or even rental, from
civilian owners. Lastly, of course, an ongoing but painfully small supply of muskets was
being manufactured by individual gunsmiths and small shops working under contract of
Congress, a colony/state, or a regional committee of safety.2
Even with all of these efforts ongoing, Gen. George Washington had found it
necessary to virtually go begging to the Massachusetts General Court, and to imply a
request that the colonys court system institute a program of public seizure of private
arms through forced sale:

Cambridge, February 10, 1776.

Gentn: Notwithstanding I have taken every method my Judgment could Suggest to procure a
sufficient number of Firelocks for the Soldiers of this Army, by applications to the Assemblies and
Conventions of these Governments, as well as by sending Officers out with Money to Purchase; I
am constrained by necessity to Inform you that the deficiency is amazingly great, and that there
are not nigh enough to Arm the Troops already here. I must therefore beg leave to Sollicit your
kind attention whether if your Honorable Court were to depute some of their Members to make
application to the different Towns, they might not procure a Considerable Quantity. I will most
chearfully furnish them with Money for the purpose or pay for them on their delivery here, as you
shall think most advisable. P S I have heard that there are several King's Muskets in the
Country; for every good one with a Bayonet, that have not been abused, I will give 12 Dollars,-and in proportion for other Guns fit for Service.3

Without a major supply expansion, little changed during the ensuing twelve months.
As a result of the armys continuing need to acquire weapons from virtually any source,
the array of firearms in use at the beginning of 1777 was surely broad and diverse. In
addition to an assortment of British, French, Dutch and German military muskets, and a
rather limited number of contracted committee of safety pieces, the armys weaponry
continued to include very substantial numbers of fowlers, commercial and trade muskets,
and essentially any variety of civilian longarm, many lacking the provision to mount a
bayonet.
In spite of accepting such a wide diversity of firearms, the armys operational
effectiveness continued to be severely challenged by arms shortages primarily created by
high damage rates, insufficient production capacity, and by fewer civilian owners being
willing to sell their guns. Less than six weeks prior to the arrival of the first of the longawaited shipments from France, General Washingtons expectations for the approaching
campaign season were not particularly optimistic, as expressed to Connecticut Gov.
Jonathan Trumbull:
Head Quarters, Morris Town, February 6, 1777.
As the Arrival of a Sufficient quantity of Small Arms from Europe in time to arm the Continental
Troops is a matter of great uncertainty, proper Steps should be immediately taken in your State to
Collect all that can be purchased from private People. The Custom of hiring them for the
Campaign is attended with many bad Consequences; the owners take little care of them and carry
them away or sell or change them when they please.4

It was in response to the chronic shortfall in arming the Continentals that the musket
marking program was initiated. With the goal of reducing an ongoing loss of public
property to theft by deserters, the Continental Congress, on February 24, 1777, resolved
that:
The arms and accouterments belonging to the United States shall be stamped with the words
United States; all arms already made to be stamped on such parts as will receive the
impressions, and those hereinafter to be manufactured to be stamped with the said words on
every part comprising the stand.5

This resolution was announced to the main army, then located at and near Morristown,
New Jersey, through General Washingtons orders of April 18. The stock branding
operation was begun almost immediately, as verified by Sergeant Jeremiah Greenman of
the 2nd Rhode Island Regiment recording among his diary entries for the following week:
we were ordered to town to have our guns stamped US.6
Garrisons and detachments at a distance from the main army were also quickly
involved in the process, as demonstrated by an April 12 letter from the Highlands
Department commander Maj. Gen. Alexander McDougall to General Washington that
stressed the branding of all arms and accouterments.
The loss of Public Arms thro the neglect of Officers and the wickedness of the Men, and the
plunder of Citizens, call for some expedient to designate them, in Order that they may be
discovered and taken. The want of this enabled many of the Men to carry off some of our best
Arms, under pretence of being their Own. To prevent these evils, there should be a Brand with
some device on it, expressive of the Public property, with which the Arms of the Continent should
be branded, and to this may be added, a Stamp capable of making an impression on a Stroke on
the barrel, and a number of these should be at every Post, to brand and Stamp all the Continental
Arms, a number might soon be made at Boston or Philadelphia. This being done, it would not be
easy for Villains to rob the Public. We could then seize the Arms wherever we find them. As I
understand we have had an arrival lately of many new Arms, some means should be devisd to
secure them for the Continent against plunderers 7

From available documentation, it appears that each command detached from the main
army was responsible for acquiring the marking irons needed to stamp the musket stocks.
It is not known what proportions of the irons were made by army blacksmiths and
armorers versus local civilian tradesmen, but one would expect at least the main army to
have been self-sufficient in this regard.
The Arrival of the French Arms
In addition to it seeing the commencement of the American marking program, 1777
was also the year of the greatest volume of arriving French arms. During the prior two
years, only about 10,000 muskets had been delivered for Continental use. Beginning in
mid-March, the eight shipments arriving in 1777 totaled more than 60,000 arms, with
Portsmouth, New Hampshire being the most popular port of entry. Most importantly,
more than 90% of these firelocks (with bayonets) would be delivered by mid-June, the
tremendous boost in quality and bore size uniformity being perfectly timed to enable
greatly enhanced firepower for both the Saratoga and Philadelphia campaigns. Thereafter,
during the next six years, about 50,000 more French weapons would be delivered, that
total being greatly skewed by two August 1781 shipments to Boston that alone yielded
more than 26,000 muskets.8
Although at times including both older and newer patterns, the very large majority of
these shipments (based on surviving stock-branded examples), contained muskets of the
model 1763 series, that is, the three highly similar patterns of 1763, 1766 and 1768.
Within that series, the notably sleeker-stocked and lighter 1768 modification appears to
have been the single most common pattern. Although these muskets are generically
referred to today by the name of the royal arsenal at Charleville, production of the two

other royal arsenals at Maubeuge and Ste. Etienne were well distributed among these
shipments, and it may be that the three sources were about equally represented among the
wartime shipments to America.9
It is uncertain precisely when arms from the mid-March shipment began to be
delivered to the main army at Morristown, but Sergeant Greenmans aforementioned
diary report of in-progress arms marking five weeks later is of importance to an
understanding of the literal rearmament of the Continental Army. Given the broad and
diverse array of longarms that the army had previously been compelled by necessity to
accept, it is singularly striking that only military muskets are thought to have been
branded. Most significantly, the overwhelmingly large majority of surviving stockbranded examples, perhaps 95%, are French muskets. Although it is certain that very
significant numbers of fowlers and other civilian arms were in use by the army during the
first quarter of 1777, no such weapon, to the writers knowledge, has ever been found to
bear either Continental stock branding or lock and/or barrel stamping; not one.10 That
major omission cannot be coincidence. It is strongly believed that General Washington
quickly learned of the March 17 delivery of nearly 12,000 muskets at Portsmouth and
therefore delayed the commencement of the marking project ordered by Congress in late
February until the arrival of the main armys allotment of the new French firelocks.
The Continental Stock Brandings, 1777
As previously mentioned, two major categories of marking irons were locally crafted
for the armys in-the-field branding program, one category yielding the
UNITED:STATES mark in one or two lines, while the other produced the more
common U.STATES mark. One proposed hypothesis is that only the
UNITED:STATES brand dates to 1777, while the abbreviated form was not in use until
the following year.11 That attribution, however, seems to be based on a single, and
perhaps ambiguous, documentary source.12 Most notably, the ratio of the two patterns as
seen on surviving muskets is quite strongly skewed to the U.STATES branding,
perhaps in the range of at least three or four to one. If only the UNITED:STATES
pattern was in use during the first eight months of the branding program, such a
differential among known examples would be not only odd but clearly counter-logical.
With 60,000 newly delivered French muskets available by June, it would be fully
expected that the bulk of the brandings needed for the force in the field could have been
completed long before years end13. It certainly seems more logical that the two major
branding patterns were in concurrent use during 1777, and that the notably less common
UNITED:STATES marking, based on its rarity among extant examples, may have
simply been associated with a regional command other than the main army.
Although only two basic patterns of brands were used, there is a substantial amount of
minor variance notable between examples of the same pattern type, primarily as to letter
formation but also as to size. Such deviation, of course, would surely be expected in light
of the handcrafting of multiple marking irons at multiple locations. In fact, repeated side
by side comparisons of existent brandings of the same general pattern nearly create the
perception that no two surviving examples precisely match. While certainly an
exaggeration, the latter comment clearly illustrates that these very first United States
martial firearms markings in no way exhibit the consistency and production quality

control evident in US martial arms of the following century. Being crafted by Continental
armorers literally working in the field, or through contract by blacksmiths available in
areas of troop occupation, the marking irons, in some instances, were rather crude, as
evidenced by their brandings on surviving muskets. Beyond evident production variances
in the irons, some of those specimen musket stock brandings also testify to varying
success of in-the-field application. It is certainly not uncommon to see evidence of a lack
of uniform pressure in the strike, one end of the impress having successively lighter or
weaker letters. On occasion, an ending letter will actually disappear, as in a resultant
brand of U:STATE. In other cases, it is clear that an attempt was made to correct a
weak marking; although some such attempts improved the overall result, there are quite a
few examples of obvious echoes of double-stamping, one or both ends of the branding
being slightly misaligned at the second stroke.
The Model 1771 French musket from the Charleville Arsenal shown in Figure 1
displays an exceptional example of the one-line UNITED:STATES branding.
Positioned along the lower edge of the left butt stock, the impression benefitted from the
relative flatness of this area of the stock, thereby avoiding the challenge of a more curved
surface. Given the quite uniform lettering, it also is evident that the branding iron used
for this impress was of high quality; there is quite minimal variation between the repeated
characters, i.e., the Ts, the Es and the Ss.

Figure 1 Continental Army one-line full-title branding applied to Model 1771 Charleville
musket, circa 1777

Several of the issues of variation can be noted in Figure 2. This circa 1777 two-line
full-title UNITED STATES branding of a Maubeuge Arsenal pattern of 1768 French
musket demonstrates the letter variations and slight crudeness of individually crafted
branding irons. Firstly, through its initial U and final S, this example demonstrates
the very common result of terminal letters being weakly or only partially struck due to

the challenge of a flat marking iron attempting to cope with an arched stock surface, as
presented by the top edge of the right butt stock, just in front of the butt plate. As to
lettering uniformity, the second T is slightly but noticeably different from the two
others, its crossbar apparently being slightly wider and having more pronounced serifs at
either end. The two Es visually differ on the basis of the top and center horizontals. As
to the top bars, the first E is notably shorter than that appearing below it in STATES.
In like manner, the first Es center bar appears notably less wide than that seen below,
becoming nearly stubby when compared with the E center bar in STATES. Also of
interest, it can be easily seen that the I exhibits the 18th century handwriting and
mechanical printing device of a center cross bar, this characteristic being seen in a
significant proportion, but not all, of the full-title Continental stock brandings.14

Figure 2 Continental Army two-line full-title branding applied to 1768 pattern Maubeuge
musket, circa 1777

An example of the more common U.STATES branding motif is shown in Figure 3.

Positioned in the area between the rear trigger guard extension and the base of the butt
plate, this mark appears on a pattern of 1768 Ste. Etienne Arsenal musket. Since the 1768
variant appears to be the pattern predominating within the American shipments, and since
this marking format and placement seem to be the most commonly seen result of the
armys 1777 branding program, this combination of gun and mark might be considered as
the prototypical mid- to late-war Continental Army firelock. This branding example also
demonstrates a slightly imperfect strike in that while the left end U.ST segment is

particularly deep and distinct, the right end of the impression progressively weakens.
Perhaps due to the challenge of the butt stocks lower edge angle of descent when the
barrel is horizontal, the markings loss of uniform depth is evident in the final ES, with
the latter nearly losing the upper and lower loops. Given that the branding program was
primarily executed in camp or garrison, perhaps without the full facilities of an armorers
workshop, it may be that an approach commonly used was for one man to wield the
marking iron and mallet, while a second held the gun in position on a workbench, table or
crate. The natural tendency of the musket to roll when poised on its barrel surface,
however, would have made it quite difficult to maintain complete immobility and full
control of the strike, unless provided by the use of a large padded vise.

Figure 3 Continental Army abbreviated-title branding applied to 1768 pattern Ste. Etienne
musket, circa 1777

The New Hampshire Stampings

One other category of American marking of the imported French arms dates to 1777.
With four of the eight shipments for that year arriving in Portsmouth, the state took
advantage of that opportunity to expedite re-arming the New Hampshire line. By
arranging a rental or 18th-Century lend/lease agreement with the Continental
Congress, the state was authorized to remove a quantity of muskets sufficient to supply
its three regiments in Continental service.15 Few steps could have been more timely since,
by mid-summer, the New Hampshire Brigade was greatly in need of new clothing,
equipment, and a supply of firelocks of uniform caliber, reliable in performance, and

bayonet-capable. Prior to their being issued the new French muskets allocated for the
three line battalions were marked with not only state and unit identifications but also
serial numbers, a control and accountability measure far ahead of its time.
For example, the Model 1763 Ste. Etienne Arsenal musket shown in Figure 4 is neatly
stamped on the barrel breech flat NH 1 B N0. 280, documenting its designation as the
280th musket issued to the 1st New Hampshire Battalion. Generically referred to by
students and collectors as New Hampshire Charlevilles, these are the only Continental
Army firearms to routinely bear a regimental identification. Given that feature and the
serial numbering, these arms are also the single example of a weapon that, with the
corresponding archival record, can be associated with the specific Continental soldier to
whom it was issued. In reality, listings of serial numbers and associated mens names
have been found for only a very small proportion of the three regiments, perhaps no more
than a company or two. Although such precise identification is typically not available,
any surviving New Hampshire Charleville has a very strong likelihood to have been
carried at Saratoga, Valley Forge, and on the plains of Monmouth. As would be expected,
and contrary to their popular reference, the known surviving examples of these New
Hampshire marked French muskets are about equally representative of Charleville,
Maubeuge and Ste. Etienne production.16

Figure 4 State of New Hampshire stamping for First Battalion issuance applied to Model
1763 Ste. Etienne musket, circa 1777

Continental US Lock Plate and Barrel Stampings, 1780

Chronologically, the second of the two major categories of markings applied to
Continental Army firelocks includes US marks struck into the lock plate tail and barrel
breech. Unlike the stock-branding program conducted by the army itself, these metal
stampings are typically associated with the ongoing volume of musket repair and
reconditioning work required due to damage and general wear and tear generated through
use. The wartime management of these services was provided by several specialized
facilities established in Philadelphia, the operations of which began in the spring of 1780.
Based on citations of stamps within surviving facility inventories, it appears that such
weapons markings also first date from that year. Without evidence to the contrary, there
is no reason to doubt that stamping of the lock plate and/or barrel was a standard
procedure for those muskets repaired or reconditioned between 1780 and the close of the
war in late 1783.17
Although the large majority of arms stamped in this manner were French, it was during
this second phase of the overall marking program that the physical identification as
Continental property was likely expanded to all muskets in use and in storage. Whereas it
appears that the stock brandings were applied exclusively to the newly imported French
muskets, the stamping of US on the lock plate and/or barrel appears to have been a
standard protocol for any type military musket passing through the Philadelphia shops for
repair. While fowlers and other civilian longarms appear to have been very quickly culled
out of Continental service during 1777, reliably functioning Kings arms, other European
muskets, and American crafted committee of safety and mixed model firelocks were
all candidates for US stampings during any repairs made in 1780 and thereafter.
The basic challenge and primary frustration in understanding the appearance of the
US stamping on firearms in use by the Continental Army is not the earliest but, rather,
the latest possible date of the marks application. In essentially all mentions of such
stampings in 20th- and 21st-Century arms literature, and even yet today, a properly styled
US appearing on the lock plate tail and/or the barrel breech of a period correct French
or other musket has been considered synonymous with Continental Army issuance and
usage. That such definitive interpretation is totally invalid is unquestionably documented
by the annual records of payment to Continental contract armorers working in
Philadelphia, wherein the stamping of the following numbers of new French muskets
and weapons in for repair is recorded:18
1782
1783
1784
1785

2,793
313
16,144
13,842

Within this total of more than 33,000 arms stamped, more than 90% of them were new
and unissued French muskets. Most strikingly, of course, more than 90% of the guns
were stamped US after 1783 and, therefore, after the conclusion of the war and the
dissolution of the army. In addition, huge numbers of muskets, both new and used, were
cleaned, repaired when necessary, stamped and maintained in storage during the decade
ending in 1795 at Philadelphia, West Point, Springfield and several other federal storage

arsenals. A complete inventory made in 1793 accounted for more than 45,000 serviceable
and damaged Revolution era arms held in storage.19
The core challenge, therefore, is to attempt to discriminate between a French musket
stamped during the quite brief wartime period of 1780-83 and one that acquired its US
mark(s) during the decade thereafter. Both to qualify a particular surviving example as
highly probable to have had Continental usage, and to understand the specific stamping
patterns in use during the war, a valid and reliable dividing line would be virtually
essential. Based on available data, however, such a precise attribution is unfortunately
impossible. Three general rules of thumb, though, have been thought by some students
and collectors to be provided by the size and nature of the stamped monogram itself.
The lock plate stamping shown in Figure 5 and barrel stamping of Figure 6, both from
the same Ste. Etienne Arsenal musket also stock-branded as shown in Figure 3, are of
patterns thought to be among those in use at the Philadelphia factory and armory facilities
during the 1780-83 period. In these stamp patterns, the characters exceed one-quarter
inch (0.25) in height. US stampings of significantly lesser height are quite reliably
attributable to the post-1790 period. Two other criteria of a US stamping occasionally
considered relevant are whether or not the two letters touch, and the presence or absence
of serifs, the former in each case being thought to indicate an earlier stamp pattern. All of
these factors, though, are no more than possible indicators. As example, this writer
personally recovered a US stamped French bayonet meeting none of the three
purported qualifications from a Continental Army winter quarters site occupied only
during the period of 1780-82.

Figure 5 Continental arsenal lock plate stamping applied to 1768

pattern Ste. Etienne musket, circa 1780

Figure 6 Continental arsenal barrel breech stamping applied to 1768 pattern Ste. Etienne
musket, circa 1780

As logic would support, the central problems with the US stamping as a dating
source are that: 1. stamps in use during 1780-83 were apt to be continued in use for at
least some period thereafter; 2. relatively minor variations between stamp patterns may
be more reflective of multiple armory locations and varied contractors than of small time
increments; and 3. the high likelihood is that a newly made replacement stamp would
closely replicate one previously in use. As a result, the US stamping is fundamentally
ambiguous for that wartime-usage discrimination challenge. Such a mark certainly could
be found on a musket of late-war repair, issuance and use, but unless supported by other
markings, physical evidence or documentation, a given French musket bearing only a
US stamping of its lock plate and/or barrel is literally impossible to attribute with
certainty to Continental Army usage.

Figure 7 Though not the subject of this monograph, other equipment was also surcharged.
This staved wood canteen is one example.
(Museum of the American Revolution)

Endnotes
1. George D. Moller, American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume I: Colonial and
Revolutionary War Arms (Niwar, Co.: University Press of Colorado, 1993),
159-162. No other source on American martial long-arms of the flintlock era matches the
scholarship and thoroughness of Mollers two-volume, heavily photo-illustrated work.
2. Unfortunately, the contemporary records of arms issued to the Continentals are only
fragmentary, providing no basis from which to even estimate the quantities acquired
through each of these three sources. In particular, the early-war shops and smiths
associated with production of the so-called committee of safety muskets have remained
a quite shadowy group, with not only their production data but also, for the majority, their
identity being uncertain. The number of skilled gun makers was so small that truly
extraordinary efforts were required to boost domestic production. Within the period
archives of Connecticut, for example, it is common to find purchase receipts for a half-

dozen or even fewer musket locks. In fact, it became likely that the manufacture of a
given new-made gun delivered to the army had employed the services of a lock and/or
barrel maker, a different brass furniture maker, and yet a separate stock maker/assembler.
3. Gen. George Washington to the Massachusetts Court, 10 February 1776, George
Washington Papers, Presidential Papers (Washington: Library of Congress), series 4 (General
Correspondence. 16971799). Both a manuscript copy and a transcript can be found on-line

at:
memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mgw:@field(DOCID+@lit(gw040275))
4. Washington to Gov. Jonathan Trumbull, et al, 6 February 1777, ibid. Available on-line
at:
memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mgw:@field(DOCID+@lit(gw070116))
5. Quoted in Moller, American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume I, 159.
6. Washingtons general orders, 18 April 1777, George Washington Papers. Available
on-line at:
memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mgw:@field(DOCID+@lit(gw070416))
Robert C. Bray and Paul E. Bushnell, editors, Diary of a Common Soldier in the
American Revolution, 1775-1783: An Annotated Edition of the Military Journal of
Jeremiah Greenman (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1978), 73.
7. Maj. Gen. Alexander McDougall to Washington, 12 April 1777, George Washington
Papers. Available on-line at:
http://memory.loc.gov/cgibin/ampage?collId=mgw4&fileName=gwpage041.db&recNum=156&tempFile=./temp/~
ammem_ZfYq&filecode=mgw&next_filecode=mgw&itemnum=1&ndocs=100
8. Moller, American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume I, Appendix 5, 484-485.
9. Personal observations and examinations of surviving stock-branded muskets.
10. Personal observations of period muskets and civilian longarms, and telephone
conversation with Don Troiani, July 24, 2003.
11. Moller, American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume I, 159.
12. Ibid. Mollers proposal of a one-year lag in usage of the two branding patterns is
apparently based solely upon the inclusion of a U.STATES marking iron within a
March 21, 1778 military stores inventory. Such citation simply confirms that branding
pattern to have been available on that date, but provides no evidence of its date of origin.
As discussed, the ratio of the two patterns as seen in surviving examples more logically
suggests concurrent usage beginning in 1777.
13. The recording of large quantities of new French muskets being stamped as U.S.
property during the two or three years immediately following the wars end appears to
demonstrate that only a minority of the muskets delivered in 1777 were marked during
that or any subsequent wartime year.
14. Specifically, this musket is an example of the Model 1763 with the features of both
the 1766 and 1768 sub-pattern improvements. A true M1763 is notably broader in the
stock and quite noticeably heavier. The 1766 modifications yielded a remarkably sleek
and light weapon. (The 1768 sub-pattern presents only very minor modification.) This
particular musket also bears US stampings on both the lockplate tail and atop the
barrel, suggesting possible wartime repair at the Philadelphia shops arsenal compound.
15. Moller, American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume I, 135.
16. Personal observations of and discussions with other students and collectors regarding
the known surviving New Hampshire battalion-stamped French muskets.

17. Moller, American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume I, 160-161.

18. Ibid. Mollers tabulations of the recorded numbers of new French muskets stamped
during the period 1784-1786, of course, are the essential data that clearly disqualify a
solitary US stamping on the lock plate and/or barrel as being reliable proof of
Continental Army issuance.
19. Ibid., 153-158.