This blue marker is located on a street corner in Belfast PA in front of the sandwich place…read more
The marker reads, "Henry's Gun Factory. Here rifles and other firearms were made for use in the War of 1812. Built by William Henry, 2nd, about 1800, the famous Henry shotgun was made here as late as 1904. The site is about half a mile away."
Online, there is more information.
The Pennsylvania Long Rifle (sometimes incorrectly called the Kentucky Rifle) was one of the most significant firearms in American history. It was used by frontiersmen and also served in the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812.
Some time in the 1730's, an Irish immigrant named John Henry came to the United States and settled near Lancaster, in southeastern Pennsylvania. Here, he took up the practice of gunsmithing, and began manufacturing Pennsylvania Long Rifles. Before he died in 1747, Henry had three sons, and all of them would go on to continue as gunsmiths. It was the beginning of a dynasty.
When the War of 1812 broke out, the Henry family was contracted to make rifles for the Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania militia, and when the Philadelphia factory proved too small to meet the demand, another factory was constructed on the Bushkill outside Nazareth, at a 40-acre complex just downstream from the old smithy. Known as the Boulton Factory, it would become the center of Pennsylvania Long Rifle production for almost 100 years. One of their biggest customers was the American Fur Company, which not only used Henry rifles for its own trappers and explorers, but sold them at profit to various Native American tribes.
After the war, the Henry factory and its 75 workers began to focus on sporting arms, producing percussion-fired breech-loading shotguns and hunting rifles. These were hand-made, ornately decorated, and expensive. Business, however, continued to fade away. In 1895 the Boulton factory stopped production, though workers continued to assemble guns to order from already-made parts. The last gun came out of Boulton in 1904, and Granville Henry, the last of the dynasty, died in 1912. In all, the Boulton works had produced at least 100,000 firearms.
Today, the remaining buildings of the Henry Gun Factory and the Homestead where the Henrys lived are preserved as part of the Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center near Nazareth PA. The site also contains the Pennsylvania Long Rifle Museum.
[Review 15143 overall, 645 of 2021, number 560 in Pennsylvania.]