Welcome to The Jefferson Arsenal!

Hello, fellow history enthusiasts! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jon Swain, I'm the proprietor of The Jefferson Arsenal. I'd like to take a bit of time to welcome you to the page, and tell you a little about myself and the business that I run.

I was born and raised in Western Maryland's Middletown Valley, on the slopes of Catoctin Mountain just a stone's throw away from the Potomac. Growing up, I had the distinct feeling that the reverberations of the Civil War were still palpable among the towns and creeks of my homeland. The great battlefields of Antietam, Gettysburg, and South Mountain were all within a 45 minute drive from my front porch. Thus, from a young age, I was very in tune with the seminal events that shaped the course of our nation's history.

I like to think that I was instilled with a sense of humility, self-sacrifice, from the various various monuments that dotted the rolling landscape of my homeland; and that it was this sense of duty to my country that drove me to enlist in the US Marine Corps on my eighteenth birthday. I proudly served as a rifleman in the Global War on Terror in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, with some of the finest young men that this country has to offer.

After the war, I attended college at St. Mary's College of Maryland, receiving my Bachelor's Degree in History in 2013. The following year, I began work on The Jefferson Arsenal.

Our goal here at the Arsenal is to provide the customer with authentic and functional ammunition for Civil War-era small arms. The products we offer have been carefully researched using primary sources from the 19th Century, and exhaustively tested in the field. The end result is a product that is certain to meet your expectations of accuracy and quality.

If you haven't already, I encourage you to follow us on Facebook at the link below. Thank you for stopping by, and please feel free to introduce yourself!