The latter used a muzzle-loading matchlock musket, so called because its charge was ignited by the ‘match’, a length of smouldering cord. But even contemporaries found these weapons unreliable.

“The last time somebody touched it they were shoving it down the muzzle of a musket on April 19, 1775,” a park ranger said of the Revolutionary War discovery.

The barrel is 30 inches long, but it was originally a foot longer. That’s because, as John Munroe aimed this musket at British troops, it backfired and split the barrel. “The mark here shows where it ...

The black-clad, steeple-hatted Puritan, walking warily to church with Bible in hand and musket on shoulder, is an enduring image of New England’s formative colonial era. In “The Wars of the ...