Gunsmith Valentine Shuler: New Philadelphia to Missouri

From New Philadelphia, Ohio, to the rolling hills of Daviess County, Missouri, Valentine Shuler’s journey, both physically and socially, was typical of many tradespeople of the 19th century.

The patriarch of the Shuler family was a gunsmith named Johann Valentin Shuler (1759-1833) who, along with his wife Eva (1772-1833) and their children, relocated to Licking County, Ohio from the village of Pine Grove in what was then Berks County, Pennsylvania in the 1810s. One of their sons, also named John Valentine Shuler (1808-1885) but more often referred to simply as Valentine Shuler, was trained in the gunsmithing trade by his father. He moved to the City of New Philadelphia, in Tuscarawas County, Ohio after 1830 and there married Elizabeth Himmel (1818-bef. 1853) in February 1835.

The Shuler family established itself along East High and East Front Streets in New Philadelphia and Valentine, in addition to his gunsmithing trade, also became a partner in a saw mill in town. That Valentine was well respected in the community is evidenced by his election in 1842 to city councilman as well as taking on a young man named Uriah Jesse Knisely (1838-1881) as an apprentice from the locally prominent Knisely family. Uriah was the son of New Philadelphia carpenter Jacob Knisely (1808-1898) and his wife Sarah (1810-1841).

Whether Uriah Knisely completed an apprenticeship with Shuler is unclear, but regardless, he went on to marry and become a prominent, young minister in Newcomerstown before his untimely death from tuberculosis in 1`881. His brief obituary mentioned his prowess for mathematics, something an apprentice gunsmith would have been required to understand. Shuler’s first wife passed away before 1853 when, that year, Valentine married Jane Wills (1820-1888). Jane was living with her half-brother, and brickmaker, Valentine Wills (1824-1894) of New Philadelphia at the time of the marriage.

Valentine Shuler moved his family, after 1857, west into Missouri where he lived when he was mustered into the 50th Illinois Infantry Regiment at the beginning of the Civil War. When he was mustered in the fall of 1861, Valentine gave his occupation as gunsmithing and his muster location as Chillicothe, Missouri. Valentine served with the unit in Missouri and Tennessee and saw action at Fort Donelson, Nashville, and the Battle of Shiloh. Valentine was discharged in May 1862, though no reason was listed for his early discharge from the regiment.

Valentine Shuler returned to Missouri following his service in the army and relocated one more time, before 1865 when the name first appears in county deed records, to Jackson Township in Daviess County, Missouri. Shuler’s occupation was recorded on subsequent census records as farming, no longer gunsmithing, and it was in Missouri that he and Jane raised their three sons. Despite his listed occupation, Valentine merged his farming and gunsmithing and trained a son and two nephews to be gunsmiths in is later years.

Valentine Shuler lived, and practiced gunsmithing, in New Philadelphia, Ohio from the early 1830s when he was in his 20s until after 1857 when he would have been in his late 40s. Based on this, it is likely that at least half of his gun making took place while he was living in Tuscarawas County. Valentine Shuler died in April 1885 in Daviess County, Missouri and is buried at Mt. Zion Cemetery in Jamesport, Missouri. Jane Wills Shuler died three years later and rests with her husband.

Sources for this post include:

Hutslar, Donald A. Gunsmiths of Ohio: 18th & 19th Centuries. (George Shumway: York, Pennsylvania), 1973. (www.archive.org)

Shumway, George. Pennsylvania Longrifles of Note. (George Shumway: York, Pennsylvania), 1968.

https://daviesscountyhistoricalsociety.com/1865/06/28/978/

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© Noel B. Poirier, 2024.