• By Karen Feeney
• Posted Thursday, May 26, 2022

The Longrifles of the Wachovia Tract

C. Michael Briggs is a native and resident of Greensboro, N.C. He is a longtime student of local history and a collector of Piedmont North Carolina decorative arts including North Carolina longrifles and banded powder horns. He has done programs on these subjects for the National Park Service, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Greensboro Historical Museum, High Point Museum, Rowan Museum, Davidson County Historical Museum and the Charlotte Museum of History. He is the coauthor of "The Longrifle Makers of the Salem School: A Pictorial Study of the Longrifles from the Wachovia Tract" and author of "The Longrifle Makers of the Davidson School: The History of Longrifle Making in Davidson County, N.C."

Join us for a program at the Central Library on Saturday, June 4 at 2-4 p.m. about the craftsmanship of these longrifles. The Salem School and the Davidson School were two of the nine regional styles of longrifles made in the piedmont and mountains of North Carolina between 1760 and 1860. The program will feature a display of ornate historic longrifles made in the Salem and Davidson Schools. Briggs will explain who the gunsmiths were that worked in the schools and how their culture and religion affected the icons and symbols they put on their longrifles.

Central Library Auditorium
660 W. Fifth St.
Winston-Salem, NC 27101
336-703-3070