Collection: Arms and Weapons

Old Salem Museums & Gardens and its Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts are home to one of country’s most important collections of early Southern longrifles, swords, and related objects.  Longrifles were some of the most complicated objects crafted in the early American South.  Artistic masterworks, they required craftsmen skilled in woodworking, silversmithing, ironworking, and the mechanical arts.  The rich tradition of early Southern rifle making is kept alive today by the talented craftsmen of the Timothy Vogler Gun Shop, located directly across the street from the Frank L. Horton Museum Center at Old Salem Museums & Gardens.