And as to how I got here, it begins in the 50's with a kid staring up at two antique SxS's hanging over the jalouise windows on opposite ends of our breezeway (I suppose that would be called a family room these days.) One gun was the percussion double that family tradition said had come west with our forefather after the civil war (I've already told its story here under the title "11ga W. Morse & Co. SxS") and the other was a 10ga Baker hammer gun. When William Henry Baker sold out to Lyman Cornelius Smith in Syracuse in 1880 and moved south to start what would eventually become Ithaca, L.C. continued building the Baker doubles (until 1883). This is one of those last year Baker/Smith's. I couldn't know then that it, along with my Dad's love of his 16ga Ithaca 37, would kindle a life long interest in the guns of Fall Creek and particularly the Ithaca doubles. I can say, though, that it's been, and still is, fascinating.
