My parents just bought a house in White Springs FL to spend the winter in warmer climates. My dad didn't want to carry the guns down there, so he gave me his .410 shotgun (the first gun I ever shot when I was 4), a few pistols, roughly .38 and one .22 double barrell Derringer from the early 1900's.

He never outright said they were all mine, but his orders included "Keep them all in the family no matter what." Needless to say...they're all mine now.

I cleaned off the shotgun first, and it works like a dream. GREAT squirrel gun and absolutely BEAUTIFUL mahogany colored stock. Pistols I need to work on a little, but I'm sure they'll turn out really nice. These were all owned by my grandfather, including the 30-06 that he gave me when I was 17. It's almost 50 years old and looks BRAND NEW. This one is my favorite and one of my most prized posessions but.......

There was also a VERY old rifle that has always intrigued me:

It has the original stock, no cracks, original ram rod, but is a breach loader (leads me to believe that it could be muzzle loading AND breach loading???), original leather strap and is in near mint condition for a 140+ year old rifle. The hammer and breach still move like it just rolled off the line, and the firing pin still slides. If there were ammo for it, I'm 100% sure it would fire.

Now for the interesting part: when I was oiling it to clean the rust the following stamping appeared:

Barrell behind rear sight- Modelo Argentino 1879

Behind Breach- E. Remington & Sons Ilion NY USA
Pat May 31 1864 June 11 Nov 12 Dec 24 1874
Dec 31 1872 Sept 9 1873 Jan 12 March 18 1874

No serial number on the rifle itself, but there were 2 numbers etched into the stock behind the butt plate- 2769 & 5192. (Along with G. L. B. scratched into the wood- My grandfather's initials).

I think that it's a Argentine military rifle from roughly the 1880's and around a .45 cal. I just E-mailed Remington to find out everything. Should hear back in a few days about it. They should tell me what and who it was made for and what cal. it is.

Now we have to get a gun cabinet to store all these old pieces .

Update will be posted.

Sounds pretty interesting. Are you sure it's a ramrod and not a cleaning rod?
My brother dug up an old rifle on our ranch a couple years ago, has a hexagonal barrel, roughly .22, and an action that looks just like that of a Spencer carbine, but the corrosion was too bad to see any markings on it.

You may be right. I considered that it could be a cleaning rod, but it's strangely shaped for one.

Do you have any pictures of it you could post?

Well, the digicam is at my parent's home right now.

I'll see if I can get a few shots of it soon.

Dont know much about old ones...But, isent 1880 a bit new for a muzzle loader?
Maybe it is a cleaning rod??

Most every major rifle/ shotgun company I know of still makes at least one muzzleloader. A few months ago, I shot a .50 cal muzzleloader that wasn't anymore than a few years old.

They're great deer rifles, just make sure you hit it the first time around because you're more than likely not going to get a second shot.

My best bud back home has a .50 muzzle-loader with a synthetic stock and with a thumb-over, it is one slick rifle, perfectly balanced and fits into your shoulder slicker than snot. How's that for an analogy?

We've got a few over here in the mountains:

Slicker'n a greased mole's @ss.

Madder'n a three legged dog tryin' to bury a turd on an ice covered lake.

How'syermoman'em? (That ought to be a trivia question there HAHA)

Ov'ar (Over there)

Up'ar (Up there)

Colder than a witch's titty in January.

Higher than ten hippies.

Crazier than a pet coon.

I can't think of many more, but people down here in Southern California claim that I don't make much sense when I talk, so I'm guessing I use a lot more that I just don't think about.