1400 W University Ave
Muncie, IN 47303
USA
Fellowship begins at 9:30 am. Meeting will be starting at 10:00 am.
Our speaker Bob Miskimen is a country boy who had a love for a rifle and marksmanship!
These traits were acquired from ancestors who were “Tinkers”, Carpenters, and Farmers.
He has a Patriot Ancestor, David Miskimmins, who fought in the Revolutionary War in
Pennsylvania’s Ninth Infantry battalion from 1780-1782. This man had humble beginnings in
Ulster (Northern Ireland) to a Scotch-Irish family. In 1748 at the age of 16 he Indentured himself
by coming to the Colonies and his Indenture was acquired by one Abraham Ferree of Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania. Abraham was a native born son of a French Huguenot family, key to both
farming and rifle making traditions during the revolutionary war.
Bob’s earliest ancestor settled in New York was Louis DuBois (pronounced do-boys) and came
in 1660 and settled in the upper Hudson Valley. He was also a French Huguenot, of which many
fled France before 1685, due to religious persecution. Our founding fathers took note of most
immigrants to the colonies came due to either Economic or Religious Freedoms. They
established our Nation’s Constitution and the Bill of Rights to enshrine these desires into our
new nation.
Before the revolutionary war, there was a precursor de-facto government established within the
colonies with various Committees (Committee of Correspondence November 1772, C of
Inspection, C or Observation, C of Patriots, and most relevant to today’s presentation, the
Committee of Safety). Many of the members of the Committee of Safety were later delegates to
the Continental Congress 1775-1782.
The area around Lancaster in South Eastern Pennsylvania was the hub of early American Steel
manufacturing. Hence, this is where most of early weapons manufacturing was initiated and it
was also the home of the first Continental Congress. This is the topic for today’s presentation.
Bob also has a direct ancestor who fought in the Civil War for the Union from Iowa. He is the
eleventh generation in this country and no other direct ancestor besides his Name-Sakes had
served the US Military, so in 1976 he stepped up to the cause to serve in the US Marine Corp.
Bob Miskimen
(whose patriot ancestor was an Indentured Servant to the Ferree family)
Excerpted From: Captain John G.W. Dilling, The Kentucky Rifle
Forging
How, since the 15th century and right up to the American Revolution, did weapon
manufacturers drill a hole in an iron barrel flawlessly straight and over three feet long? And
how was the hole maintained so perfectly parallel to the axis of an iron rod, that when a bullet
was launched, it flew true to its target? The answer was not drilling, but boring. With a drill
machine, the workpiece was held still while the material was penetrated. Whereas a boring
machine moves the workpiece against the milling cutter, hence a boring mill, both hand or
water driven.
The technology of shaping a gun barrel with a precise and centered hole, primitive as it was,
by the 18th century, became a discipline of meticulous and time intense mastering. It had
flourished to produce some of the most accurate weaponry of precision; one of the finest
examples – the Kentucky long rifle. Replica testing at Colonial Williamsburg Virginia proved
these rifles produced a bore to diametral tolerances within 0.0005 of an inch; all by hand!
Comparable to the accuracy of today’s complex machinery, it is mind boggling. As gun
experts will tell you, ‘it can’t get much better than that.’
How gunsmiths and blacksmiths ended up with a near perfect hole in a long tube of wrought
iron involved the same basic principles that allowed Alexander the Great’s armorers to crank
out spears and swords; heat and hammer. Add to that an ingenious twist of a rotating boring
mechanism, and the result was a weapon that could hit a squirrel from a branch