Jonathan Browning

His most famous gun was made in Illinois. Between 1834 and 1842, in Quincy, Browning built a sliding-breech repeating rifle called the Harmonica gun, which took two weeks to make by hand and sold for $24. After Missouri's governor issued the 1838 Extermination Order against Latter-day Saints, Browning met exiles, visited Nauvoo, talked with Joseph Smith and converted. He moved there in 1842, labeled his guns Holiness to the Lord, and left Illinois in 1846 with Brigham Young. In 1852 he reached the Salt Lake Valley as captain of ten wagons.

What the plaque says

Jonathan Browning American Gunmaker and Pioneer 1805-1879 Jonathan Browning was born Oct. 22, 1805, on his father's farm, 3.4 miles west on Mt. Vernon Road. He apprenticed with Nashville gunsmith Samuel Porter. Six years after rebuilding his first rifle at age 14, Browning built a gun shop on the farm. In the 1830s, he opened a second gun shop in Davidson County. He moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, about 1840, where his restored gunsmith shop is located. In 1852, he migrated with Mormon Pioneers to Ogden, Utah, where son John M. Browning and his brothers founded the Browning Arms Company.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wynnewood State Historic Site — 6.5 mi
  A National Historic Landmark log inn at the Bledsoe's Lick springs, beside a Mississippian mound center and tied to the domestic slave trade.
• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 25 mi
  Andrew Jackson's cotton plantation east of Nashville, where visitors can walk to the quarters, Alfred's Cabin and the Enslaved Cemetery as well as the mansion.

More markers nearby

• Durham's Chapel Rosenwald School — 1.6 mi
• Hugh Rogan — 3.2 mi
• William Owen Bradley — 6.1 mi
• William Brimage Bate — 6.3 mi