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Two thousand and five hundred “musquets with bayonets” were to be delivered to the armory at Harpers Ferry at the price of $10.75 per gun. Wheeler’s plant just above the old mill on the Rush River was to produce 500 weapons per year, under the terms of the contract.
According to Estes, the government advanced Wheeler and Morrison $2,500 against the $26,875 total to be payed for the 2,500 “musquets”, taking a lien against their property as surety. The boys in Washington could have saved themselves the trouble of that paper work.
A gun collector’s hand book that Estes has gives a description of the guns Wheeler and Morrison made (markings unknown)and a value for good and fine quality examples of the work of the Washington manufacturers. those old guns are rare, indeed, because only 125 of the 2,500 are believed to have been delivered, according to the handbook.
Not only did Wheeler and Morrison fail to live up to their contract with the government, they managed to finagle two unsuspecting buyers into purchasing their property, the same property that had the $2,500 lien against it. Estes has a copy of H. R. 701, the act of Congress passed June 15, 1836, that relieved the new owners, Daniel Ward and George Ficklen, of the debt owed by the wheeler-dealers.
From the date that they sold their encumbered holdings, George Wheeler and Caleb Morrison disappear from the pages of Rappahannock history, ending Washington’s short life as a gun capitol of the Piedmont.
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