All,

Thank you for all of your responses. I called Dickson & McNaughton before submitting this request on the forum but they would not give me the name of the original owner. I was able to find out that this rifle was completed on March 3, 1888 and that is a best quality 8-bore double rifle with 26" barrels. The completion date is later than I expected (1883) and I can only guess that they made up two or more sets of Damascus 8-bore barrels in 1883, or perhaps a bit earlier. These could have been provisionally proved and then set aside for future use. I will ask for a digital photo of the ledger entry and agree not to contact the family of the original owner. I had expected that my only hope at this point is to find an old photocopy of the relevant page that someone had obtained in the past. Finding this information is important to me because it really helps to tell the story of the rifle and where it was used. I like to research the history of my guns and nowadays, it can be pretty easy with the London Gazette and all of the digitized books that are available for free online.

Best Regards,

Jim