Abstract
HISTORIANS HAVE TRAPPED William Henry of Lancaster (1729–86) in the identity of gunsmith. Though meant as a com-pliment—most accounts portray Henry as the most important gunsmith in the "rifle-making hub of colonial America," Lancaster County—this confinement is ironic, since Henry escaped this occupation as soon as he was able. The term gunsmith, then as now, could describe men who repaired guns, who produced specialized gun parts (such as bar-rels or locks), who created an entire gun from scratch (lock, stock, and barrel), or who ran a factory that employed other men. Henry seems not to have engaged in any of these activities after 1760. By the last decade of his life, Henry had achieved a level of financial security (and apparently embodied the virtuous independence thought to derive from it) that led his peers to entrust him with positions of responsibility and that left Henry free to accept them. He served first in local and state governments and was later appointed an administrator and financier for the Continental army and elected twice to the Continental Congress. We have failed to register the shape of his career, the magnitude of his trans-formation; instead, historians have imagined that during all these varied activities, Henry continued to work as a gunsmith. Indeed, the belief that Henry "was engaged in the manufacture of firearms for over thirty years," that he produced the rifles or muskets carried by soldiers from the French and Indian War through the Revolution, has been central to stories about him.