The Misadventures of an Original Tansel Powder Horn & Bag Set ©
Foreword: For those who collect Tansel powder horns, the most difficult Tansel item to find is not a Tansel cup as most collectors think, but rather an original bag & horn set. In 40-plus years of collecting and researching Tansel powder horns, the author has seen only four original sets and heard of another, with most being from the Tansels’ Indiana era after 1829. One of those sets has a fascinating “survival” story behind it, offers some insight into why so few bag & horn sets have survived, and has an old picture of the rifle and spike tomahawk that originally went with it.
The Story: Back in 2021 an Indiana Tansel horn with an elaborate bone powder measure was posted for sale on Ebay. The author saw the items and immediately recognized them as part of a fine, original Indiana Tansel powder horn & bag set he had seen many years before on display in a small Indiana museum. The Ebay posting raised an immediate concern… was the sale legitimate, or had the items been removed illegally from the museum? He decided to keep bidding until he won the Ebay auction, then confront the seller about the items’ origin, but only after securing them.
Figure No.1: An Ebay seller posted this image of a Tansel powder horn and bone powder measure for sale on Ebay in 2021. The items were recognized by the author as previously being in a small Indiana museum, complete with their original hunting bag. The posting prompted the author to find out what had caused them to be removed from the museum and posted for sale.
Both the Ebay seller and author lived in Indiana, so the author asked if the horn and measure could be picked up locally rather than shipped to prevent damage or loss in shipping [actual intent was to meet the seller and get his i.d.]. To the author’s surprise, the seller readily agreed and offered to have his wife deliver the items the following week when she was traveling through the author’s neighborhood to visit a friend. The wife showed up as scheduled, and the horn & measure safely changed hands. The author then asked the wife about the horn’s recent history, telling her that he had photographed the Tansel powder horn and bone measure with their original leather hunting bag in a county museum many years before. To his surprise, she immediately began telling him about the horn’s history… and there was a lot to tell!
The complete horn and bag outfit had been a family heirloom on her husband's side in southern Indiana for many years, and before that, its earlier origin in the same county was well-known locally and documented. The family had loaned a large number of early family items to a local museum many years ago. Recently, they learned that several of the family pieces had disappeared while in the museum’s care, upsetting them, so they withdrew their remaining items from the museum. She then proceeded to give the author four (4) old 1950s and early 1960s newspaper articles that documented the bag & horn and other accoutrements, with two articles providing a full provenance from the first owner of the bag & horn set up to the present day. The author was overwhelmed with all the information, and to make it even better, two old newspaper articles had photographs of the current owner's grandfather holding/showing the Tansel bag & horn with the great bone charger dangling off its side... AND… in one photograph he was holding the original rifle and spike tomahawk that had accompanied the bag & horn back when the outfit was being used. What a heart-pounding surprise!
Figure No.2: An old, local newspaper clipping documents part of the history of the Tansel bag & horn set and illustrates the original spike tomahawk that once accompanied the set back in the 1830s and later. Another clipping, not shown here, shows the rifle that accompanied the outfit.
Early History: The Tansel horn & bag set was originally owned by Cornilious Ratliff of North Carolina who moved his young family to southern Indiana about 1808. Based on the horn’s approximate date, the horn was acquired in the 1832-1835 period in Indiana. The original rifle (no longer with the set, but a picture survives) that accompanied the bag & horn was long and slim with straight comb and toe lines, possibly of North Carolina manufacture, but with an oval beaver-tail type cheekpiece and slim size that made it appear to be an early percussion rifle dating to about the same time as the Tansel powder horn. A fanciful story relayed by later members of the Ratliff family told how the horn got carved. A group of local Indians came by the Ratliff home one day. The Indians had never bothered them, but the family was always uneasy when they appeared. An Indian asked to borrow their bag & horn for a hunting trip, and the Ratliff family loaned it to him to avoid any problems. Several weeks later the Indians returned with the bag & horn, with the horn now completely carved with the figures on it today. The Indian who had borrowed the set said he had taken it to the "tribe's best carver" to decorate it as thanks for letting him borrow it. Readers may believe what they want, but the author believes the horn was carved by Stark Tansel, second son of Francis, about 1832-1835 in Hendricks County, Indiana.
The Hunting Bag Reappears: The author told the owner's wife that the horn and measure originally were attached to a leather hunting bag; he asked if her husband still had it. She said all the family's items returned by the museum were piled up in their basement, and she would look for it. When asked about the rifle and tomahawk, she said the rifle had been sold by the family years before for a good price, and the spike tomahawk was one of the family heirlooms that had disappeared, causing the family to pull their remaining items from the museum. A few days later the wife contacted the author and said they had found the old bag, but it wasn't in very good shape, so “Do you still want it?" The answer was an emphatic “yes.” She then said she was coming back through the area in a few days and would deliver it. True to her word, a few days later the bag was delivered, and when compared to old photos for verification, it looked exactly like it did 25+ years before. In a few minutes the set was back together again, reunited after an "almost disastrous" sale on Ebay…. which gets us to the “Post Script” of the story.
Figure No.3: This circa1832-1835 Tansel powder horn and bone measure were reunited with the set’s original leather hunting bag. The leather remains in good, pliable condition, probably due to proper care while in the local museum’s display. Not visible is a small, empty patch knife sheath on the back side of the bag.
Post Script: If the author had not seen the bag & horn set 25 years before, or if another Ebay buyer had outbid him, no one would have asked the seller "Where's the bag?" and one of a very few surviving, original Tansel horn & bag sets would have been parted forever. There was never a clear reason given for why the owner removed the horn and measure from the bag before posting them for sale on Ebay, but his wife intimated that he thought the bag was “worn out and of little value,” but he knew the carved powder horn and fine powder measure had significant value. The old bag was probably not long for this world if it had not been previously seen and asked about. Every once in a while, Christmas comes early!