This is a very good example of an American copy of the British Brown Bess bayonet showing the same socket with collar and bridge, three-step mortice for a top-mounted bayonet lug, triangular blade with flat upper surface and lower sides with fullers. It measures 12-1/4” overall, with a 4” socket, and 16-3/4” blade. The socket and neck are brown. The blade shows more light and dark gray, likely less oxidized from being in the partial scabbard that is still with it.  The socket shows some pitting and a short crack from the forward edge of the third leg of the mortice and a small chip to the rear edge of the second leg. The number “2” is engraved on the socket in the angle created by the first and second leg of the mortice, likely a mating/rack number for the musket. The blade shows no sign of an Ordnance mark, but has a maker’s stamp, slightly worn but clear, consisting of an “H” next to a reversed “J” on the top flat at the base of the blade.

The scabbard is black leather, now oxidized to brown, missing just the last couple of inches at the tip. The seam is still stitched closed for about one-third of its length from the throat down, relatively tight, missing the thread for the next third but still closed, and then with a gap for the bottom third, open, but not missing any leather until the broken off tip. The stitching is somewhat crude, simply joining the two edges of the leather. The color and surface are good, showing typical age crazing and cracks, but solid. Some stitching holes around the throat indicate it had a collar or was sewn into a frog, likely on a shoulder belt. There is no indication of a British style brass hook.

Until the influx of French arms beginning in 1777, American troops in the Revolution carried an assortment of Brown Bess and Brown Bess style arms, often older Anglo-Dutch imports, along with some made in the colonies, with a mix of hunting and fowling guns. Bayonets had always been in short supply. Massachusetts rolls for provincial troops in the French and Indian War, for instance, often show payments to local blacksmiths for bayonets, at least enough to arm half the men- apparently those assigned to the front rank.  [sr][ph:L]

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