talkingroots: Remembering great grandpa’s firearm

I’m not a hunter. I’ve never fired anything more serious than a BB-gun at any living creature (and I never hit anything alive). One of my prized possessions, however, is a 19th Century black powder rifle.
I came into possession of this firearm sometime after my Dad, also Deason Hunt, died back in the early 1980’s. Mother saw that I got it because it is a Hunt family relic. It belonged to my great grandfather, William “Billy” Marshall Hunt and has been in the family from the time he acquired it.
One of the special family stories about the gun occurred in the late 1930’s when my grandfather, Joseph “Joe” Lafayette Hunt, was terminally ill with cancer. One of his worries (or requests) concerned recovering the gun which he had loaned out to an acquaintance. My Dad took it upon himself to go out and find the individual and recover the gun and return it to his Dad to ease his mind in the matter. I am sure my words do not do justice to the anquish they all felt at that time concerning Granddad Joe Hunt and his condition and the small role the weapon played in their peace of mind.
I know the gun came in the family either during or before the Civil War but not the exact time or manner. Perhaps it was carried when the family moved from Tennessee around 1850. Family tradition in the Joseph Hunt family was that the gun was carried by William when he served as a militia guard form Union prisoners at Camp Ford during the Civil War. This story came most recently from my Dad and his brother William Thomas Hunt, my Uncle Willie. Uncle Willie was old enough before William “Billy” Hunt died to have heard him talk about the weapon and his role in the war. Uncle Willie in correspondence in the 1960’s of hearing the fact of his grandfather serving at Camp Ford spoken many times in his childhood home.
I am a member of the Camp Ford Association in nearby Tyler, Texas as a way to commemorate William Hunt’s service there during the Civil War. A future museum on land on which the prison camp sat is in the planning stages.
Source: talkingroots.wordpress.com