Object ID	2004.0011.003
Accession#	2004.0010
Object Name	Rifle, Long
Description	A Lancaster musket made of steel, brass with wood stock. Brass decorations on two sides and a silver finish decoration on one side. Also known as a Pennsylvania militia musket. It was manufactured by H.E. Leman of Lancaster, Pennsylvania (see manufacturer markings, photo #5). Used during the Civil War by William Marks who served from February 26, 1864 to the end of the war. Also see cleaning rod used for this gun, Object #2004.0011.002.
Search Terms	Weapon Civil War Armaments Union Army Brown Brown Family
Collection	Brown - Marks Family Collection
People	Marks, Captain William Marks, William Marks, John M.
Subjects	Firearms
Catalog date	11/17/2006
Catalog type	History
Collector	Marks Family
Count	1
Dimension notes	Stock is 12" long
Dimensions	W-1.5 L-55 inches
Event	Civil War
Found	Collection of Captain William Franklin Marks
Home Location	G.A.R. Hall Museum
Made	1861-1865
Makers mark	H.E. Leman - Lancaster See photo #5
Material	Steel, Brass, Wood
Notes	The rifle and cleaning rod were passed down through the Marks family to Captain William Franklin Marks, half uncle of Robert L. Hunker (see Provenance). The musket belonged to William Marks who served in the Civil War. He joined the Union Army before his eighteenth birthday, enlisting on February 26, 1864 and mustered out on November 9, 1865. He lied about his age. He served in Company F of the Eleventh Regiment in the Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry under the command of Colonel Richard Coulter and assigned to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Potomac. The regiment served in the battles of Murfreesboro, Spotsylvania Court House, Seven Days, Battle of the Wilderness, Fredericksburg, Culpeper, Cold Harbor, and Appomattox Court House. After an honorable discharge, Marks returned to his farm near Acme, Pennsylvania where he spent the remainder of his life. He married Eliza Ann Myers (originally Moyer in German) and had seven children, one of whom was John Michael Marks, the father of Captain William Franklin Marks. Captain Marks and his wife Marie Boyle were Robert L. Hunker's half-uncle and aunt. They had no children and bequeathed the Civil War memorabilia to their nephew Robert L. Hunker. William Marks' older brother Emanuel Marks, six years his senior also served in the Union Army. He was born in 1841 and died of "spotted fever" (typhus or cerebrospinal meningitis fever) during the Civil War. He is probably buried in an unmarked grave at Rectortown, Virginia. Further research is in progress on his death and grave site. The Marks family is part of the genealogy and descendants of the Jacob Hout family. Hout's granddaughter Catherine Hout married Christopher Overly. Their eldest child, Margaret (Peggy), married John Marks (1818-1899), a Czechoslovakian immigrant. They resided near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania and their graves are extant in the Fairview Cemetery. They had twelve children, two of whom served in the Civil War: Emanuel, the eldest and William, their fifth child. This information is from The Hout Family by Margaret Birney Pittis (1874-1965) whose family were coincidentally the first settlers of Ohio's Harrison County, adjacent to Robert L. Hunker's Gully Ridge Farm in Waynesburg. They came from Baltimore, Maryland to Brownsville, Deersville, New Philadelphia and Cody, Ohio. The writer was a successful and prominent businesswoman in Cleveland, Ohio, a first in her generation to succeed in a man's world. She never married and has no descendants. See The Hout Family, pages 397 (Birney - Pittis), 144 (Hout - Overly), and 148 (Overly - Marks). See "Related Items" for the other Civil War items bequeathed by Captain Marks. Further research is in process.
Owned	Last owned by Captain William Marks, Half-Uncle of Robert L. Hunker
Place of Origin	Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Provenance	The musket was passed down through the Marks family to Captain William Franklin Marks who had no children. In 2001, he bequeathed it to his half nephew Robert Lewis Hunker and grandson of Captain Marks' mother, Dora Welshonse Brown Marks, wife of John Michael Marks. Robert L. Hunker, the founder of the Robert L. Hunker Historic Preservation Foundation placed it in the G.A.R. Hall Museum through the Hunker Historic Preservation Foundation.
Recfrom	Marks - Brown Collection