William Foulkes (Foulks)

School: Lancaster (Pennsylvania/PA)

William Foulkes (1737-1812) appears in county records as an early gunsmith working within the city of Lancaster (c. 1759) and later surfaces in Paxton Twp., (now Dauphin Co.) as a gunsmith working near the present-day Fort Hunter, north of Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River. It is likely that he took over the shop of James Chambers at this site. There are no known specimens of Foulkes’ work in existence. See Heckert and Vaughn, The Pennsylvania-Kentucky Rifle, Science Press, 1992