His sons died in the American Revolution | W. Matheson Signed Flintlock Pistol

The elegant style of this pistol, including the lock and furniture, is stylistically appropriate for the first half of the 1700s suggesting this pistol was from an early American maker, perhaps Winchester Mathewson (1721-1778) who moved to the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania where his son Nero died in the Wyoming Massacre on July 3, 1778, during the American Revolution. In the battle Iroquois warriors aligned with the British along with Major Butler and his rangers killed nearly all of the American militiamen defending the small frontier community. Many were killed and scalped by the Iroquois after being captured. Another of Mathewson's sons, Constant, was killed at the Battle of Mud Fort, and his third son, Elisha, survived the war and was discharged after seven years of service in 1783. The well-known Rhode Island gunmaker Welcome Mathewson (b. 1778) active in the early 19th century in Burrillville, Rhode Island, was Winchester Mathewson's great nephew.