By Ed Simmons
The stories it could tell.
Of desperate war. Of resolute soldiers in life or death struggle for American freedom.
Of 1st Lt. John George Woolfolk, who after the Revolutionary War is believed to have carried it home to Caroline.
The “Woolfolk Musket” – five feet long with polished walnut stock, browned steel smoothbore barrel, flintlock and iron ramrod – has now found its resting place with the Caroline Historical Society. It is the only surviving Revolutionary War musket known in Caroline County.
Wayne Brooks, president of the society, said the relic will be displayed in a three-sided glass case in the society’s museum room at the Sydney E. King Arts Center in Bowling Green.
“They fought in lines,” Brooks said of the soldiers, American, British and French, who carried such flintlock muskets. They were accurate up to 50 perhaps 100 yards at the most.
“They would walk towards each other until they got close enough. Then they would stand there and shoot at each other.”
It took a lot of nerve to stand in the open braving such a duel. It took steady hands to reload after each shot, pouring in the barrel a measure of gunpowder, dropping in the musket ball, with ramrod tamping it down, cocking, then measuring more gunpowder into the firing pan, a process that in practiced hands could take a minute.
Born Oct. 1, 1750 to Robert and Ann George Woolfolk, the eldest of eleven children, John Woolfolk would become an officer in the Caroline County Militia prior to the Revolutionary War.
During the War, 1775 to 1783, the Caroline Militia was part of the 17th Virginia Regiment which served at the early battle called Great Bridge and continued through to the British surrender at Yorktown.
In 1790, Woolfolk married Elizabeth Powers Broadnax and established “Mulberry Place.” He died in April 1819, and his obituary April 23 in the Richmond Enquirer stated he was “a sedulous and respected citizen… a man of indefatigable perseverance, great integrity of soul, benevolent manners, humane feelings, generous and charitable.”
The musket descended through the Woolfolk family to Winston Woolfolk, a founder of the Caroline Historical Society, and remained at “Mulberry Place.” He had it displayed at “Scotchtown” in Hanover County, home of Virginia’s first governor, Patrick Henry.
In 1968, Winston Woolfolk, who would die without heirs, gave the musket for safekeeping to Gordon Barlow who pledged to preserve its history. Barlow and his wife Margie moved to Augusta County in 1969, taking the Woolfolk Musket with them.
They loaned it several years ago to the Caroline Museum and Cultural Center, which is now disbanding. The Gordons then asked that the musket be passed on to the Caroline Historical Society.
“By completing this transfer, the Gordons will continue to fulfill the wishes of Winston Woolfolk to keep the musket in Caroline County,” said Brooks.
Brooks is now working on determining the origin of the musket. It’s something of a mystery.
He believes it might have originally been made by French gunsmiths, perhaps as early as 1717. It was modified through the years possibly by American gunsmiths, and its original wood ramrod replaced by an iron one.
It may even have been one of the 25,000 French muskets that the Marquis de Lafayette brought over during the Revolutionary War, joining the American cause and propelling it eventually to victory.
There’s another explanation, or coinciding explanation, as well.
Gordon Barlow said in an Oct. 6, 2017 letter to Kathy McVay of the Caroline Museum and Cultural Center that it is “a Committee of Safety musket probably made at the request of the Caroline County Committee of Safety.”
Research “explains the architecture of the Woolfolk Musket and the use of parts from earlier muskets in its fabrication, thus a true American Revolutionary War musket.”
Whatever the mystery of its pedigree, the enduring Woolfolk Musket lives on.
Brooks added, “We want to make more people aware of what we are doing with our exhibits and hope that they will donate items from Caroline history so others can learn from these objects of history.
“And we can always use more volunteers.”
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