Delmont nonprofit wants to honor local gunsmith, highlight local history through plaques

A gunsmith who helped cement the rifle’s place in American history and two of Delmont’s landmarks will be adorned with plaques from the local historical society, if fundraising plans are successful.

Jacob Earnest was born near Greensburg, and as an adult lived in the large brick house that today is next to Delmont’s Rose Wigfield Parklet. The house was built in 1827.

“He also had another wood-frame house and a gun shop in town,” said Delmont Historical Society President Vicki Walters. “They were torn down in the 1970s, and that’s where the parklet is today.”

Earnest’s great-great-grandson, Jim Earnest, admitted to being a little confused when he heard about the park’s new name.

“I didn’t understand why they named his former property after Ms. Wigfield,” said Earnest, 84, of Salem. “So it got me started on some sort of way to mention and recognize him.”

Jacob Earnest was a wood carver and gunsmith. One of his Pennsylvania long rifles has a place in the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg. Another one of his rifles was auctioned for thousands of dollars through Maine-based Poulin Auctions in 2021. He settled in the Delmont area in the 1830s, when it was still known as Salem Crossroads.

“Another piece to his story is that his grandparents were settlers in Bedford County in the 1700s, and the mother and several children were captured by attacking Native Americans,” Walters said. “They were taken to Fort Detroit and eventually traded to the soldiers there. The mother went to work as a cook and housekeeper for the soldiers, and when she returned to Bedford County later in life, she had the nickname ‘Indian Eve.’”

Jim Earnest has only had the chance to hold one of the guns his great-great-grandfather created.

“I’ve heard of people who have them, and an attorney from Pittsburgh brought one to the Bushy Run Historic Arms Show one year,” he said. “My brother and I both got to hold it. It was a really beautiful gun.”

The Earnest family made a donation to the Delmont historical society to help fund a bronze plaque memorializing Jacob Earnest.

Walters said the society is continuing to raise funds for two additional plaques. One will mark part of Delmont’s downtown as the Salem Crossroads historic district, a status with the National Register of Historic Places that was achieved in the late 1970s by Walters’ predecessors, the Salem Crossroads Historical Society.

“They never got around to putting up a marker,” Walters said. “The third one will be placed by the borough’s historic watering trough, to replace the sign that the Rotary Club put up when they originally restored the trough.”

Walters said the society is hoping to have Earnest’s plaque installed by August for the annual Delmont Days festival, which takes place at the Wigfield Parklet.

Anyone wishing to donate to the society can send a check to the Delmont Historical Preservation Society, 77 Greensburg St., Suite H, Delmont, Pa., 15626.