Lot 23 The Highly Important Asa Plummer Long Land Pattern Musket, England, circa 1742

Lock inscribed TOWER 1742 GR, brass escutcheon plate inscribed XXIV / 2, and barrel inscribed WC and GR.

One staple lost.
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This musket is one of the most important American Revolutionary firearms known.  It was originally owned by Asa Plummer (Plumer) (December 27, 1742 - December 20, 1800) who was a drummer in the Company of Captain Thomas Mighill and was one of the Minutemen who marched on the alarm of April 19, 1775.  This alarm marks the commencement of the American Revolutionary War.  It was on this day that the exceptional battles of Lexington and Concord were fought and the regulars were pursued by the minutemen with their march to Cambridge.  Plummer spent the following 68 days enlisted in the minutemen militia under Capt. Mighill's command and fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775.  This musket is one of the very few surviving objects to have bared witness to the primary events that lead to the development to The Great Republic Experiment.

Asa Plummer was born in Rowley, Massachusetts, December 27, 1742. He entered the British army at the age of sixteen, and was at the Siege of Louisburg in 1758 located on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The siege was a pivotal battle of the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War) that ended the French colonial era and led directly to the loss of Quebec in 1759 and the remainder of French North America the following year.  It is quite likely that during this enlistment he acquired the 1742 model Tower musket with the 24 Company escutcheon plate. Upon his return to Massachusetts he settled in Haverhill, Massachusetts and became a cordwainer (shoemaker). He married Sarah Burpee on August 1, 1769 but she died December 30, 1769. He then married Betsey Gage in Rowley on September 1, 1774. Tragically she died October 2, 1775. Plummer married his third and last wife, Mary Haynes of Haverhill, April 20, 1778. He died at the age of fifty-seven.