This leather, fringed bullet pouch with a leather strap was donated to the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association by the widow of a Deerfield, Massachusetts, Revolutionary War veteran. It held extra gun flints and cloth for cleaning a flintlock weapon, likely a rifle, as well as bullets and patches. Most men who fought in the American Revolution (1775-1783) fired smoothbore muskets, but units of riflemen existed in both the British and American armies. Rifles were much more accurate than muskets because the bullet spun out of a narrow, spiral-grooved or “rifled” barrel. This made them useful for long-range, targeted firing. Colonel Daniel Morgan’s riflemen used them to deadly effect when they shot down virtually every British officer who advanced on Freeman’s Farm in the opening minutes of the Battle of Saratoga, New York. Rifles had disadvantages; they were more finicky and took far longer to load than muskets. Unlike most infantry, riflemen did not generally carry cartridge boxes with individual pre-measured rolled cartridges containing gunpowder and a bullet. Instead, a rifleman loaded his weapon by priming it with black powder from a powder horn, pouring additional gunpowder down the barrel followed by a ball wrapped with a wet or greased patch of cloth, and ramming the charge down to the base of the barrel with a ramrod.