AFA Autumn 2021

Autumn 66 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com At the auction, Dorothea Miller, the sister-in-law of the Concord Museum’s collections manager, bid on behalf of the museum. In a letter to the donor of the acquisition funds, she recounted a flurry of intrigue before the hammer came down. “I asked Mr. Grancsay of the Metropolitan [Metropolitan Museum of Art curator of arms and armor Stephen V. Grancsay, whose American Engraved Powder Horns (1945) is a landmark study of the subject] and Mr. Pell of Ticonderoga [Stephen Hyatt Pell who restored Fort Ticonderoga, which his family had owned since 1820] please not to bid on it. They were very nice about it—as museum people always are to each other.” The collusion, if decidedly unethical, seems to have been effective, as the horn made just $9 at the sale (Fig. 9). Dorothea Miller was a bit smug about the affair (“I think Mr. Grancsay is envious for he mentioned the horn in a lecture he gave a few weeks ago. . .”) but had in fact been mistaken. The “Concord” so enticingly inscribed on the horn did not indicate Concord, Massachusetts, where Reuben was born, but Concord, New Hampshire, where he mustered before marching on to Boston. Reuben Hosmer was one of several members of the Hosmer and Barrett families who moved to New Ipswich, New Hampshire, in the 1760s, and also established the nearby town of Mason. I am indebted to the late Bill Guthman (as are we all) for helping me understand and appreciate some of the rich complexity of American military powder horns, and to Joel Bohy, Chris Fox, and Ed Kane for their help with this article. David F. Wood is curator of the Concord Museum, Concord, Massachusetts. Fig. 9: Receipt from O. Rundle Gilbert auctioneer, for the Reuben Hosmer horn (fig. 8). Concord Museum Collection Records. Fig. 8: Reuben Hosmer powder horn, Concord, N.H., May 1775. Concord Museum Collection; Gift of Mrs. Edward Motley (1940) (A2003.1). Photograph by Gavin Ashworth.