photo: Jason myers
Gunmaker Greg S. Murry’s first reproduction (top) of the initial Crockett rifle brought to him (second from top), with two other original Crockett rifles.
Late one afternoon in 2015, Greg S. Murry, a black-powder rifle maker in Columbia, Tennessee, crouched over his workshop bench and tapped a drift punch with a hammer. Pins more than two hundred years old fell out of the forestock of an American muzzle-loading long rifle. Murry’s hands were shaking.
By his side stood the gun’s owner, a woman descended from Samuel Crockett III, who with his son Andrew operated a highly acclaimed gunmaking business at Forge Seat, the family home south of Nashville, from the estate’s inception in 1808 until 1826. Those Crocketts were kin to the famed Davy Crockett, and soldiers had used their rifles in the Battle of New Orleans. “Really, only the family knew that these rifles existed and had survived,” Murry says.