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.)
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.
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.
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.
*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.
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.)
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| North 2nd Ave Extension, Broadalbin (Mayfield) |
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| 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.
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| Co.Rte 117, Fishhouse |
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.
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| 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.
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