It Happened Here -- N.Y.'s Ghost Towns

When one thinks about "ghost towns" the image that comes to mind is usually one of the American West with abandoned, dessicated, wooden Victorian storefront buildings deserted of life, except for an occasional rolling tumbleweed.  Every state, of course, has "ghost towns," small hamlets, that have been abandoned by their inhabitants, usually because of economic forces.

The first eastern "ghost town" I encountered was in Gay City State Park, near Marlborough,   Connecticut.  One of its hiking trails follows an old tree lined road through an open deciduous forest. On either side of the road are perhaps a dozen cellar holes, and nearby the foundation of a mill, and a small cemetery with marble headstones dating from the early 1800's.  Like most of the "ghost towns" in the East there are few if any structures remaining, only field stone foundations and cellar holes.

I learned of another  eastern "ghost town" in my researches on Edwin Drake (NYSHM's : It Happened Here--The Oil Driller  6/9/13)   Pithole, Pennsylvania was a boom-town that burst into existence with the oil boom in1865. By year's end there were some 20,000 residents in Pithole,  fifty four hotels and three churches. The "bust" came equally as quickly as production dropped in the wells, other wells in the region became more productive, and some severe fires swept Pithole. At the same time, the dollar-per-barrel price of oil plummeted as the result of over-production. By 1868 there were only 237 residents in Pithole and the numbers continued to decline.

Most towns that loose their identity as a town, or more accurately, as a "named place" do so not because of abandonment, but because they are absorbed by a larger "named place." I live in a hamlet, Dormansville, that is gradually drifting toward such a fate. Once home to several water-powered mills, a church and several businesses, the mills were abandoned by the 1920's or 30's and the businesses gone. The church manages to hang on but a major blow occurred in the 1960's when it lost its post office, due to postal reorganization/consolidation. Increasingly it is seen as a part of Westerlo, but because of its proximity to Albany and it jobs, its population remains stable.

Rte 143, Dormansville

Another hamlet, the other side of Westerlo has lost both businesses and population and might be considered a "ghost town" as all traces of it disappear from view.

Co. Rte 1, near NY 85, Westerlo

A town's location at a transportation hub can be an important asset to its survival. Several hamlets in the Finger Lakes seem to have disappeared after the ferries that connected them to other towns were discontinued.

NY 89 (both)

Successive disasters can bring a town to the verge of abandonment. As the  commercial viability of turnpikes, developed in the first decade of the 19th Century declined with the development of canals and railroads, the importance of villages that sprung up along these turnpikes declined.

The twin imperatives to provide a growing metropolitan New York City with fresh water and to control the spring floods that often caused  flooding at Albany and the cities along the upper Hudson resulted in several large reservoirs being built in upstate New York. Unfortunately, they involved the flooding of large valleys that were home to numerous small towns.  Buildings were moved or razed wholesale; cemeteries were dug up and the remains relocated.

Co. Rte 98, at Bachellerville Bridge, Edinburg

           GILBOA SETTLEMENT
           COTTON MILL 1840-1869, TANNERY             
            CHURCH & CEMETERY STOOD ON             
      GROUND NOW COVERED BY RESERVOIR
          OF NEW YORK CITY WATER SUPPLY
                STATE EDUCATION
                     DEPT. 1949
        
   --sign is currently obscured by dam
      reconstruction, Rt. 990V

Graphite, west of Hague, in Warren County is perhaps most like western "ghost towns"-- a mining town isolated from other industries or sources of income.  Even after some forty years, when its mine closed, its people left.

N.Y. Rte 8, Hague

It Happened Here -- "It's a 

Wonderful Life"

This week NYSHM'S:  It Happened Here strays a little from its regular subject matter, those (usually) blue and yellow,  (usually) free standing,  (usually) cast iron or aluminum signs that dot New York State to consider a small brass plaque on an aging steel girder bridge in Seneca Falls, NY.  Given the season, its a story is too good to pass up! 

 

According to local legend, Hollywood film director Frank Capra visited Seneca Falls back in 1945, coming to the region after interviewing an actress in New York and heading to visit an aunt in nearby Auburn.  Capra was drawn to the south side of town, a neighborhood populated by Italian immigrants, like himself. Though his presence in town went largely unnoticed, a local barber recalled in later years cutting Capra's hair and bantering back and forth about their surnames.  Tommy Bellisima's name in Italian meant "beautiful one;" Capra's name meant "goat." At the time, Bellisma, a recent immigrant had no idea he was talking to a famous Hollywood director.

For Capra, this was a difficult time in his career.  After several years of making films for the War Department he was now, for the first time, re-entering the commercial marketplace, and he was head of a new independent film company that had broken away from the major film studios. He had acquired the rights to a short story "The Greatest Gift" from RKO Pictures as part of a package deal that included two other scripts. It had originally been a short story enclosed in a christmas card written by Phillip Van Doren Stern.  Though he had bought the whole package, this was the property he wanted.  So what was Frank Capra doing during his short stay in Seneca Falls? Was he simply relaxing, passing through, escaping from the Hollywood glitz and urban bustle? Was he trying to reconnect with "small town--main street America?" Or was he actively searching out images and settings he would recreate when he built the set for Bedford Falls on a studio lot in California?  His autobiography and two biographies* written about him make no mention of his visit to Seneca Falls.

Town residents firmly believe he was profoundly influenced by a stroll across the Seneca Falls Bridge Street Bridge.  In the original short story the central character, George Bailey is standing on the town's bridge over its fast moving river, contemplating suicide when the hero's guardian angel intervenes, telling him "I wouldn't do that if I were you."  In the movie, George Bailey is on the bridge contemplating suicide, when his guardian angel throws himself into the water, distracting Bailey from thoughts of suicide, to an overwhelming concern for saving another person's life.  When he saves the angel and they reach shore together, Clarence, his guardian angel uses what just happened to introduce to George the notion that his life matters to others, then he goes on to show George what would have happened to his town and those he loved if he had never been born. 

On the Seneca Falls Bridge Street Bridge was a plaque Capra would have undoubtedly seen that honors Antonio Varacalli.  In 1917 Varacalli heard the cries of a girl who had jumped from the bridge in a suicide attempt. Though he couldn't swim, he jumped in and managed to get the girl to shore, into the hands of onlookers, before he, himself succumbed to the cold and rushing water, and was swept to his death. 

Did Varacalli's selfless act lead Capra to change the scene? Was Capra inspired by the village of Seneca Falls? Certainly the bridge in the movie looks like the Bridge Street bridge and after the movie came out in 1946, and especially after it fell into the public domain and became regular Christmas fare on television from the 1970's on, people in Seneca Falls began to recognize places in their town in the 1940's that resembled places in the movie. Besides the bridge, there was the divided main street, Lower Falls Street, part of the Genesee Turnpike, resembling (without trees) Genesee Street in Bedford Falls; there was the Falls Street business district, reminiscent of the Bedford Falls business district; 32 and 54 Cayuga Street, reminiscent of George Bailey's old Granville house; the Strand Theater with its 1920's marquee over the sidewalk; the 1940's train station, a bar that resembles Martini's in the movie and the hotel at 108 Fall Street--now named the Clarence, in honor of George Bailey's Angel.**

A tissue of plausibility can be spread over much of the town. A skeptic can say that if Seneca Falls in the 1940's resembled Bedford Falls it was because Frank Capra was trying to create a typical small town of the 1940's and Seneca Falls happened to be the type of town he was trying to create.  An historian could argue the only documentary evidence we have that Capra got anything from the town, was that he got a haircut!  But then, the Holidays are a season for belief and if you want to believe that Seneca Falls was the inspiration for one of the great holiday classics, I'm okay with that.

From the Bridge. Another sign declares this "George Bailey Ln."

Marker of the Week -- Another Street, a More Certain Inspiration

Norman Rockwell, the famous artist/illustrator frequently came
to Troy for backdrops and scenes to stage his illustrations. He would take photographs and later incorporate elements of them in
his paintings. (He also often did this with his live subjects, catching  the expression he wanted on film, then transferring it to canvass.)
In 1952 Ford Motor Company
offered him a commission for a painting commemorating their company's 50th anniversary.  The result was "The Street was Never the Same, Again" and featured a Model A Ford chugging down the street with throngs of Rockwell characters hanging from windows, transfixed on stoops and gawking from the street as this first automobile sputtered along in front of the buildings at 594, 596 and 598 4th Avenue.








*Frank Capra. Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title. 1971; Joseph McBride. Frank Capra, The Catastrophe of Success. 1992; Richard Schick. Frank Cappra, A Life in Film. 2011.

**An organization, The Real Bedford Falls promotes an "Its a Wonderful Life" weekend in Seneca Falls a few weeks before Christmas every year. They have produced a walking tour brochure with over a dozen sites with reputed connections to the movie.

The Battle of Big Sandy

 and the Big Cable Carry  

The Twentieth century would call it an arms race.  In 1814 the United States and Great Britain were locked in a race to see who be able to build the biggest ships to dominate the Great Lakes.  Eventually Britain would win that race by building a huge ship-of-the-line, the size of Nelson's flag ship. the HMS Victory--so large that it required a crew of 700 seamen to man her. But in the meantime the war had stalemated and the diplomats had hammered out a peace agreement to go into effect on January 1, 1815.  In the spring of 1814, however, shipbuilding was continuing at a furious pace.  The United States was at a disadvantage because all her naval stores--cordage, cannon, sails, etc. had to be brought up the Hudson, portaged around the Cohoes Falls to the navigable part of the Mohawk, portaged to Woods Creek and taken by batteaux to Oneida Lake were it would be taken up the Oswego river to Fort Oswego and then, under the eyes of the British, be taken along Lake Ontario to Sackett's Harbor where the warships were under construction. The British, on the other hand, could bring any supplies not produced locally, all the way to Montreal, under sail, transferring them to batteaux for portage or passage over the rapids, and on to their shipyard at Kingston, (now, Ontario), near the foot of the lake.

 In April 1814. British General James Yeo learned of a large shipment of critical naval supplies arriving at Oswego. On May 5th he approached  Ontario with a fleet of six ships and  more than 1150 men.  Before he could make his landing a storm blew up and he was forced to postpone the assault to the next day. This gave time for  Colonel George Mitchell to bring more of the fort's guns to bear on the attacking ships, and more importantly, hide most of the vital stores up river at Oswego Falls (now Fulton, NY).

 

Felling trees across the road, and ripping up bridges along the way Colonel Mitchell did what he could to insure the British would have a difficult time reaching the ship stores and removing them. On the morning of May 6 th Yeo attacked and successfully drove the some 465 defending Americans from the fort.  From the Fort and harbor he captured a large number of provisions and the schooner Growler.  The Americans had attempted to scuttle the Growler but British crews were able to successfully re-float her.* After pursuing the fleeing Americans a few miles inland, General Yeo returned to his ships, betting on the likelihood that the Americans would have to transport the cannon and heavy ships cables by water and that he could intercept their batteaux or small boats when they attempted to sail from Oswego to Sackett's Harbor.

At the end of April American Lieutenant Melancthon Woolsey was dispatched from Sackett's Harbor to bring the supplies up from Oswego. After the defeat at Fort Oswego, to throw the British off guard he advertised widely among area farmers for heavy wagons and teams of oxen to carry the stores back to the safety of Oneida Lake. He also commissioned the building of several sets of large wheels for the transport of the cannon. The weather turned bad and on the night of May 28th Lt. Woolsey commanded the nineteen "Schenectady boat" batteaux, loaded with the cannon and stores back down, over the Oswego river rapids, back to Oswego.  There under the cover of darkness and foul weather he began to make his way silently northward to Sackett's Harbor.  But then one of the batteaux became separated from the others and fell into the hands of the British.  (Later, there would be suspicions that this batteau piloted by a Mr. Curley intentionally fell away from the others and was handed over to the British.) General Yeo dispatched a force of three cutters, a gig and three gunboats to intercept the Americans.  They found them off the mouth of the Big Sandy Creek, about sixteen miles from Sackett's Harbor. The Americans retreated up the Big Sandy as far as they could go, and  the next day the British followed. But unbeknownst to the force of 150-200 British seamen and  Royal Marines pursuing them, a force of 150 American riflemen under the command of Captain Daniel Appling had been assigned to accompany the batteaux and another force of 120 to 130 Oneida Indians, who were the American's allies, had been shadowing the batteaux from on shore. In a copse of  trees that covered both shores at a sharp bend in the stream, the riflemen and their Indian friends set their ambush. Behind them, at the batteaux, and further back were perhaps 200 militiamen called from their homes that morning.

Big Sandy Creek, near the Batteaux anchorage

As the British advanced they fired their cannon into likely ambush sites along the sides of the creek, hoping to intimidate and scatter any contingents of militiamen who might have been assembled to defend the trapped batteaux.  In the bow of one of the gunboats was a massive "bug gun," capable of firing a 64 pd. projectile, (probably a howitzer or carronade, used like a shotgun.) As they approached the copse of trees, its gunner began to pour a bag of musket balls into its mouth in preparation for firing into the willows. Captain Appling fired at the gunner and in an instant over two hundred and fifty

A short barreled Carronade at Sackett's Harbor Battlefield

rifles and muskets joined his.

 In less than ten minutes it was over.  Thirteen British sailors and marines lay dead, some thirty were wounded and all the rest were captives. Several who had tried to escape were brought down by the Oneidas. There would be no one to report back to General Yeo.


 




The McKee House was the nearest house to the 
battlefield. The McKees fled when British round 
shot began falling around their house. They 
returned to find their parlor filled with British 
wounded. The Otis' lived nearby. Their house 
was also used to shelter the wounded. They 
returned to find virtually every stitch of cloth 
in their house had been appropriated for band-
ages. They were finally partially compensated 
by the US Government in the mid 1850's.
By 1972 the McKee house was in a derelict
condition and was torn down, but its marker
remains.

Yeo's fleet, however, remained stationed off of the Galoo Islands, a short distance from shore, blocking the passage to Sackett's Harbor.  Fortunately, the arrangements made for the diversion were already in place and in a few days the wagons and teams of oxen could be summoned along with the sets of big wheels for the biggest guns. Via a network of back roads soon a caravan of cannon ( 21-- long 32 pd., 10 --24 pd., 3 --42pd. carronades and 8 cables ) was on its way to Sackett's Harbor.

But a single cable remained--a monster  9600 lb., 594 foot 6" or 7" diameter cable, probably intended as the anchor hawser for the frigate Superior.  It was too heavy to be carried by any one wagon. A militiaman had a suggestion: could the men carry the cable?  A cart was loaded with as much of the cable as it could safely carry, and the rest trailed behind.  Eighty four of Appling's riflemen and militiamen from the two supporting companies hoisted the cable in unison on to their shoulders and they were on their way along a twenty mile route that led to Sackett's Harbor.  About an equal number of riflemen, militiamen and farmers encountered enroute followed along, ready to relieve the carriers.
Shoulders  were bruised and  rubbed raw under a burden that was estimated to be about 100 lbs. for each man. Veterans of the carry reported they were unable to use their arms for about a week, afterwards.  On the second day they entered Sackett's Harbor accompanied by the cheers of onlookers and the strains of martial music.  A barrel of whiskey was rolled out for the cable carriers and each man was rewarded with an additional $ 2.00.

Soon the brigs Jefferson and Jones, awaiting their armaments at Sackett's Harbor would be ready to sail and they would be joined by the frigate Superior, fitted out with the cordage and cannon brought from Oswego.  They would dominate Lake Ontario until the end of the war.**





*Few ships have had a more checkered career than the schooner Growler. Bought as the schooner Experiment by the Navy from private owners in 1812, she was renamed the Growler and refitted as a warship with 4 - 4 pd cannon and 1 32 pd long gun at Sackett's Harbor. She was captured on 8/10/13 and renamed the Hamilton by the British.  Less than two months later she was captured by the USS Sylph and became the Growler, again. She was captured again by the British in the Battle of Oswego and finished the war as the Hamilton, in British service.

**Most of the available historical documentation has been brought together in Bettinger, Blaine T. "An Analysis of the Events Surrounding the Battle of Big Sandy and the Carrying of the Great Rope in 1814 and the Ensuing 185 Years." www.thegeneticgeneologist.com/battleofbigsandy.htm.

It Happened Here--REF 025.4 DEW

Librarians from all over the world will recognize this code that would lead them to a book, that gives the guidelines for cataloging any book in most of the libraries of the world. This is the "call number" of the Dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index, or one of its many editions or reincarnations; and the man who invented it was raised here in the tiny town of Adams Center, in Jefferson County, upstate, New York.

Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey was born  in 1851 into a lower middle class family, the youngest of five children in an area swept by the religious reform movements of the mid-nineteenth century, that became known as the "burned-over district." Secure in his position as a white. Anglo-Saxon, protestant male, Dewey  saw his calling, and that of his kind, to be the bearers of Culture and to improve the world by devising ever greater efficiencies. His attendance at and graduation from Amherst college, (then an all-male institution) did little but confirm his world view, and it enabled him to develop an agenda that focused on three objectives that would dominate much of his life.

First he saw a mission to bring education to the masses by making libraries accessible to them and by training librarians to fill these libraries with the "right sorts" of books.

During his undergraduate years Dewey devised a classification system for library books. The Dewey Decimal Classification System divided the areas of knowledge into ten areas with specific subsets of knowledge represented by whole numbers and smaller divisions of these by decimals. Books on the same subject, by different authors would be distinguished by the first letters of the author's last name. At a time when most libraries coded books by their room, bookcase and shelf location, this was a major improvement. It allowed libraries to group books together by subject enabling the public to access them and facilitating browsing.  Secondly, libraries could expand their collections, assigning new books a number and moving books to accommodate growth as needed without re-labeling everything. After graduation, in 1874 Dewey was appointed to a position of assistant Librarian at Amherst and was able to put his classification system into practice. While at Amherst Dewey helped further the image of the Librarian as a professional by helping found the American Librarian Association; by founding the Library Journal that discussed library issues and reviewed the suitability of newly published books; and by establishing the Library Bureau, a company that sold furniture and file cases and standardized supplies to libraries.

It was during this time he began to promote his two other objectives: Metric reform of American weights and measures, and Spelling reform.  Establishing an "American Metric Bureau" with himself as "manager" he began to promote the use of metric measurement. selling metric instructional aids and metric scale instruments and devices.  His organization published a quarterly "Metric Bulletin".
Similarly, since his undergraduate years he became devoted to spelling simplification, dropping his middle name and shortening his first name from Melville to Melvil.  For a while he insisted on spelling his last name as "Dui". Becoming a staunch member of the Spelling Reform Association. he insisted in using reformed spelling throughout his life.*

By 1883 his work at Amherst had come to the attention of Columbia University who recruited him. Dewey agreed to come to Columbia if he could institute an agenda of reforms. These included consolidation of the University's Law, School of Mines, six other collections and general library into one facility, an aggressive acquisitions program, and a commitment to establish a new  "School of Library Economy."

In recent decades Melvil Dewey's biographers have revealed him to be a work-a-holic, a driven, uncompromising figure who was manipulative and who used people to promote his agenda and one who often burned his own bridges. He has been described as a person with "obsessive-compulsive personality disorder"--someone who has obsessions and compulsions, but who unlike a person with OCD, instead of becoming debilitated, is energized by things he can't stop thinking about or doing.** When Columbia dragged its feet on providing for a School of Library Economy, this personality syndrome may have led him to enroll students at Columbia, find an empty storage space, equip it with borrowed furniture, hold classes and matriculate a class of six young men and sixteen young women, promising them they would receive degrees at some future time--this in an age when Columbia wasn't even admitting women!

Another dimension of Dewey's compulsions was that the great librarian seemed unable to restrain his affection for his female co-workers. Unsolicited hugs, squeezes, and pecks on the cheek were frequent and public, and though there seems to have been no documented incidents of more serious sexual liaisons such behavior upset many of his staff and it outraged Victorian sensibilities.

By the fall of 1888 he had engendered so much opposition that it was time for him to go, but fortunately, for Dewey, another institution, the New York State Library wanted him to re-catalog their collections. The position of State Librarian carried with it a salary that Dewey considered inadequate but state officials found a way around this difficulty by creating for him a second post as Secretary to the State University of New York Board of Regents. *** At that time the board of Regents was a more or less moribund collection of retired nonsalaried academics and literary types charged with  chartering New York schools and colleges--a largely pro-forma duty. They were in for a rude awakening.

Melvil Dewey proceeded with his primary duties with dispatch and vigor.  His "School for Library Economy" was re-established in Albany; the collections of the State Library were re-cataloged; the library's acquisition programs were accelerated so that the State Library's collections exceeded 500,000 volumes and the library became the fifth largest in the United States. Dewey set up extension sites in local libraries, facilities in Albany for making inter-library loans, and a traveling library system; he set up the first "children's library"; and he continued to publish bibliographies of what he considered "best books" for public libraries.

Dewey soon turned his attention to the Regents.  He promoted rigorous minimal standards for schools and educational institutions. He went after and de-certified  diploma-mills and schools training students in the use of devices of medical quackery; and he engaged in a prolonged turf war with the Department of Public Instruction which was charged with the responsibility of overseeing the physical plants of public schools. In 1901 the Regents and the DPI were finally merged into a new Department of Education but the Secretary now found his actions being scrutinized by a new Commissioner of Education.

For a long time Melvil Dewey and his wife  Annie  held the dream of creating a retreat for hardworking librarians, social workers and other public service professionals--people like themselves, where they could go to escape the conflicts of their work environment, and recharge and recommit themselves to the struggle. While working for the state, Dewey began buying property around Lake Placid and with other investors established the Lake Placid Club. Open year 'round it became known as the St. Moritz of North America and eventually became the inspiration for Lake Placid being selected as the site for the Winter Olympics in 1932, and again in 1980.

 But there was a darker side to the club. Wishing to make the club a retreat, members passed a regulation stating that "no one will be received as a member or guest against whom there is any reasonable physical, moral, social or race objection." Dewey defended the regulation, extending its implied prohibition against Jews and Negroes to 'new-rich groups' like 'many Cubans' because of 'lack of refinement.' Going beyond mere affirmation of the regulation, the inveterate classifier/systematizer categorized five classes of applicants, from A, "admirably suited applicants", through C, "common clients" to E, unsuitables "who must be excluded for protection of the rest". When several of Dewey's high ranking and respected colleagues and co-workers were turned away from club admittance  because of their "unsuitability" a cry arose for his removal from office. Their voices were combined with those of the enemies he always seemed to create after any period of employment and he was encouraged to retire before being forced out in 1906.

Melvil Dewey continued to develop his club until 1931, opening a Lake Placid Club, South in Florida in 1927.  Dewey died of a stroke in 1931.  He was a man of both prodigious accomplishments and prodigious sins.


*In later years his spelling influence was manifest in the affairs of the Lake Placid Club, from items on its restaurant menu, to the designation of the "Adirondak Loj," a name that appears on maps to this day.
** see Joshua Kendall. America's Obsessives,The Compulsive Energy that Built a Nation (2013)
***Initial discussions considered Dewey taking over directorship of the New York State Museum as well but Dewey wisely declined to go up against the aged but formidable 77 year old James Hall. --see NYSHMS: It Happened Here. Feb. 11, 2014    "Marker for a Mastadon".

It Happened Here -- The Life of Nick Stoner

               "Incidents of greater or lesser interest occur in the lives of almost every member of the

                   human family which only need to be known which may be justly appreciated or subserve

                   some good or wise purpose, but occasionally an individual crosses the broad landscape 

                   of life whose career may be said to consist of a bundle of incidents, the greater part of 

                   whose existence is in fact so full of novelty, as to claim, for at least a portion of it, a record

                   for the benefit or amusement of mankind"--So begins Jepha Simms 1851 Trappers Of New York

          

In  Nick Stoner, Jephra Simms seems to have found a combination of the fictitious Deerslayer, aka Leatherstocking, aka Natty Bumpo, and the real life diarist Joseph Plumb Martin--the rare common man who not once or twice, but over and over again finds himself observing and participating in the great events of his time--a veritable real life Forest Gump of the 18th and early 19th centuries.

The creators of historical markers in Fulton County,  found his story significant as well, identifying, places in his life in three NYSHM's.

Nick first moved with his mother and father and younger brother from New York City to "Fonda's Bush" in the present town of Mayfield adjacent to William Johnson's holdings near the Sacandaga Vlaie. In the great "drowned lands" of the lower Sacandaga he learned fishing, hunting and trapping skills he would use all of his life. In the summer of 1777 with the threat of Indian attacks increasing, many settlers on the exposed frontier left for the safer settlements in the Mohawk valley.  Nick and his brother John were sent to the Fisher (Visscher) brothers homestead between Johnstown and Amsterdam.  The Fishers were active Whigs and much involved in the defensive measures being planned in Johnstown. Undoubtedly the boys accompanied them into Johnstown and it was not long before Nick had enlisted as a 14 or 15 year old fifer attached to one of the companies of state troops being formed at Fort Johnstown. In short order John also signed up as a drummer. Soon after he heard of his sons' enlistments, Henry enlisted as well in the same regiment. (Perhaps enlisting more from paternal than patriotic motives-- to keep a closer eye on his headstrong sons.)

North 2nd Ave Extension, Broadalbin (Mayfield)

E. Montgomery St., Johnstown

War's grim realities were quickly impressed on the young fifer when his regiment was assigned to Benedict Arnold's expedition to relieve Fort Stanwix.  A few miles short of the fort they came upon the Oriskany battlefield. Bloated corpses lay together where they had been dragged and stripped by the Indians. After seventy-odd years, the old trapper's recollections were still vivid. Stoner also recalled seeing Hans Yost Schuyler the Tory captured and induced to go amongst St. Leger's Indians and spread stories of a huge relief army coming to break the siege of Fort Stanwix.

A few weeks later Nick Stoner was at Saratoga when General Arnold, without orders, burst on the battlefield to rally the Americans to storm Breymann's redoubt that destabilized the British line, and brought about an American victory. Stoner was within yards of Arnold when a cannonball smashed the head of a companion, next to Stoner and bone fragments from the soldier's skull imbedded in the side of Nick Stoner's head, destroying his hearing on one side and rendering him unconscious.  The following day friends found him among the dead and wounded. Over the fall and winter he was nursed back to health at Fort Johnstown.

Co.Rte 117, Fishhouse

In the Spring of 1778 the first raids against the more remote settlements along the Mohawk and adjacent valleys occurred.  Although Simms does not describe an attack on the Stoner cabin, he details the attack and kidnapping of neighbor Godfrey Shew and his sons that spring, and he mentions the Stoner cabin was burned.

That summer the Stoners' regiment was sent to Rhode Island in an abortive campaign in which American forces attempted to link up with French forces to capture a British Army occupying Providence.  (The French fleet was driven off by a hurricane.) In skirmishing before a general engagement Henry was severely wounded by a musket ball that entered his skull.  Later, Nicholas was captured in a nighttime raid by British grenadiers and marines. Henry survived his wound and Nick was exchanged as part of a prisoner exchange that saw American General Charles Lee freed for British General Prescott.

After the Battle of Rhode Island the New York troops were reorganized, but Nick was again garrisoned in Fort Johnstown where he supplemented his pay by providing fresh fish and game
to officers who were willing to pay.

In 1780, Nick was stationed with his regiment on the Hudson. As part of the military guard he witnessed the hanging of Major Andre; the following year, on loan to General Lafayette, to replace a French fifer killed in action around Yorktown, he played at the surrender of Cornwallis's Army.  Stoner recalled a different scene from the famous Trumbull painting. Where Trumbull showed General O'Hara, the stand-in for Cornwallis who claimed illness, on foot, surrendering his sword to a mounted General Lincoln, and a mounted George Washington prepared to receive the sword, Stoner recalled all three generals were on horseback.  Furthermore, Stoner recalled that when O'Hara surrendered his sword, Lincoln returned it!

Though general fighting ceased after Yorktown, raids and murders continued along the Mohawk valley and the frontiers of New York. In the spring of 1782 Henry Stoner was killed by one of a band of seven Indians sent to kidnap or kill William Harper a leading whig, and/or John Littel, commander of Fort Johnstown.  Failing in their major objectives, they attacked Stoner.

In the last year of the war Nick Stoner served with Colonel Willet in a band that accompanied him as he entered New York City after it had been evacuated by the British.  Nick had learned to play the clarinet.  He observed Washington arrive by barge and after Washington had made his farewell address,  the young fifer--turned band member played as the General exited the town.

Thirty years later Nicholas Stoner found himself back in uniform as part of the 29th New York Regiment repelling the British invasion of Plattsburgh in the War of 1812.  Fighting north of the town, under enemy fire, he helped tear up planks from a bridge leading into town to slow the enemy's advance.  After the battle he played at internment ceremonies for British Commodore Downie and both British and American dead.

Cor. E. Main and E.State, Johnstown

Following the Revolution, Nick Stoner had settled into life on the southern edge of the Adirondacks as a hunter/trapper and occasional farmer and deputy to sheriff John Littel,  former commander of the Fort.

 One day Stoner was drinking and meeting with a local constable in the kitchen of Fonclaire's Tavern. In the kitchen were several Indian trappers who had come to town to sell their furs and had come to Fonclaire's to celebrate with a good meal and some heavy drinking. Stoner got up to question a light skinned Indian.  Another Indian took offense at the tone of Stoner's questions. A fight ensued and soon Stoner was throwing the Indian's companion into a table which collapsed to the accompaniment of breaking crockery and shattered half emptied whiskey jugs. Retrieving the Indian, he attempted to throw him into the blazing fire but succeeded only in throwing him into a large platter of pork and boiling pork fat cooking on the hearth, burning his opponent severely. Stomping out of the kitchen Stoner crossed over the body of another Iroquois, passed out from drink on the floor. Reaching down he put his finger in the enlarged hole in the Indian's ear lobe and tore a large earring from his ear. Meanwhile, in the main room another former warrior was entertaining his friends and onlookers with tales of hunting prowess.  Hearing the commotion in the other room, and people calling out the name "Stoner" he was reminded of his wartime exploits. He produced a large scalping knife with nine notches in it, and declared each one represented a scalp he had taken.  The frenzied fifer-turned-trapper entered the room just as the Indian announced that the last notch was for a farmer he had scalped near the very end of the war, named Stoner.  The infuriated Nick Stoner grabbed an andiron from the blazing fire and though it raised blisters on his hand, flung it at the Indian, searing his jugular vein and causing him to instantly collapse. While friends calmed down the enraged frontiersman,  in haste and confusion the Indians gathered up their wounded comrades and beat a hasty retreat up the Sacandaga, through the Adirondacks to their homes along the St. Lawrence.

Over the years Nick Stoner's reputation for having an explosive temperament and a willingness to use violence against those who crossed him by stealing game from his traps or the traps themselves nearly eclipsed his patriotic service. By his own account, in three separate incidents he had shot  Indians who stole from him or otherwise threatened him; and many other stories, each more outrageous than than the last, he denied with his words, but by his looks suggested they might just possibly have been true. Eventually woodsmen from the Johnstown area might escape harassment by northern Indians they encountered by merely asserting that Stoner was nearby and hunting with them, or even that they were friends of the feared woodsman.

From a distance of 230+ years it is difficult to know what to make of Nicholas Stoner.  Closer to his own time he was lauded as the archetypal frontiersman--a man of action, using frontier justice to defend what was his and to punish miscreants.  Today it is a little easier to dismiss him as a bully and a brawler, ready to raise a fist or a flintlock against anyone whose interests ran counter to his own. One might even build a case for the presence of demons created in his youth that came to bedevil his adulthood: an adolescence filled with violence and bloodshed that may have led to a lifetime of
PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) or even a horrific battlefield injury way back in 1777 that deprived him of hearing in one ear and may have driven fragments of another's skull into his own, TBI (traumatic brain injury) perhaps leading to emotional instability* and fits of temper.

NY 10, Caroga Lake (Newkirks Mills)

*When a frantic Jean Baptiste de Fonclaire appealed to his lawyer to prepare him a writ ordering Stoner to desist from destroying his tavern, the lawyer Amaziah Rust told him Stoner was "apt to be deranged with changes of the moon" but not to worry because the altercation would soon be forgotten and Mr Stoner would undoubtedly pay for any damages he caused.