GregSY,
The gun has been in the possession of the same family, about 1 1/2 hrs. drive from me, for roughly the past 50 years. The man who commissioned Julia's to sell it inherited it from his grandfather who bought the gun for $50. The grandfather had told the grandson that the seller initially wanted $100, but he refused to give him that much for it being that it had a broken stock, so offered $50 and bought it. It languished in a closet for all these years, until when the grandson inherited it he decided to have a new buttstock built for it. When he took it to the gunsmith he was informed what he had, not having any idea previously who Nash B. or B. Becker was. He's not much of a gun enthusiast.
JMC,
As near as we can figure, based on the information available and old letters and photos, the buttstock on the gun now is the third one. The original, which you spoke of is gone. The old broken and repaired one that accompanies the gun is not the original butt built by Fox when the gun was delivered new. Researcher (Dave Noreen) and I both believe the buttstock in the photo with the lace on pad to be most likely the broken one that accompanies the gun now. I believe the most likely explanation for the existence of the current broken buttstock is that Nash broke the original and had this one made by someone other than Fox. We both examined it closely, and even by the photos you can see that it is definitely not of the quality that the original should have been. The epoxy and brass pinned repair appears to have been done by the family who had it put up for auction, at some time in the past. Plus, it never had a pad fitted to it, as you mentioned. Thinking it to be the original, the owner commissioned another new stock built to it's exact dimensions, which was beautifully done. Nash evidently was pretty rough on his guns, as the original fore-end is battered a good bit itself, though obviously of much higher quality and workmanship than the broken buttstock.
The ivory inlay was a trademark of Burt Becker, and definitely is seen in the old photos.
Old letters and descriptions do mention the inscriptions on the barrels, exactly as they exist today.
Interestingly, and according to the previous owner, Julia's had an expert analyze the age of the bluing in the lettering on the barrels to see if it was the same age as the rest of the gun's bluing, as a means of determining if the lettering was indeed original to the barrels or had been added in an attempt to counterfeit the gun with known inscriptions. The tests obviously showed the lettering to be original to the gun.
Sorry for the long winded reply, but wanted to address the questions as best I could.
