Nicholas Stoner: The Trapper and Revolutionary War Hero of New York’s Wild Frontier
The Sacandaga River glinted under a crisp Adirondack dawn, its banks heavy with frost. Nicholas Stoner, a grizzled figure in buckskin, knelt by a beaver trap, his breath clouding in the chill. His hands, scarred from war and wilderness, worked with quiet precision. This was his world—traps, pelts, and the untamed heart of New York’s frontier. But Stoner wasn’t just a trapper. He was a Revolutionary War hero, a brawler, a survivor whose life wove through battles and backwoods, leaving a legend as enduring as the fur goods we craft at Westerman’s Fur Products. Step into his story, from a boy’s drumbeat in war to a trapper’s twilight.
A Boy Amid the Smoke
In 1762, Nicholas Stoner was born under Maryland’s wide skies to German immigrant Henry Stoner and Catherine Barnes. By the 1770s, the family had carved a home in Fonda’s Bush, a speck of settlement near Johnstown, New York. Life was raw—log cabins, endless forests, and whispers of rebellion. In 1777, at 14, Nicholas’s world shattered. Tory and Native raiders torched Fonda’s Bush, their flames licking Patriot homes. Henry grabbed his musket, and young Nicholas, too slight for a rifle, clutched a fife. Father and son, with brother John, joined Colonel James Livingston’s New York regiment, their hearts set on liberty.
Nicholas’s fife piped courage into soldiers’ steps. At Fort Schuyler in 1777, under General Benedict Arnold, he played through gunfire. At Saratoga, a cannonball tore past, killing a man beside him and spraying bone into his face. His hat brim fell, sliced clean, and his left ear went silent forever. In 1778, Rhode Island’s fields turned to terror—captured by British redcoats, he endured months as a prisoner, his teenage frame gaunt but unbowed. By 1780, he stood grimly as Major John André swung for treason, his fife silent for the traitor’s march. Eight years of war forged a boy into a man, etched with scars and stories.
Love and the Lure of the Wild
Peace brought Nicholas back to Johnstown’s green hills. In 1782, he wed Anna Mason, a widow with a daughter, and together they raised six children—John, Jeremiah, Henry, Obediah, Mary, and Catherine—in a cabin near Johnson Hall. He tried his hand as deputy sheriff and militia captain, but the forest called louder. The Sacandaga’s ripples and the Adirondacks’ shadows were his true home. Clad in buckskin, rifle slung, he hauled double-spring traps for beaver, raccoon, and fox, their pelts a lifeline in the 1780s fur trade. New York shipped 30,000 raccoon pelts yearly, and beaver hides fetched top coin—Stoner’s catches fed his family and fueled markets.
Locals swore he was a living myth, his rifle as sure as his temper. Some whispered he inspired James Fenimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking,” a trapper-hero roaming the same woods. But the frontier wasn’t kind. Iroquois trappers, pushed to Canada after the Revolution, vied for his traplines. Nicholas, whose father was scalped by Native raiders in 1780, carried a grudge—his clashes over pelts were the stuff of tavern tales.
The Tavern Fire
One night, in Johnstown’s De Fonclaire’s Tavern, the air grew thick with whiskey and boasts. A Canadian Native, knife gleaming, bragged of wartime scalps. Pointing to a notch, he sneered it marked “old Stoner”—Nicholas’s father. Rage surged through Nicholas like a river breaking its banks. He lunged for a red-hot andiron, hurling it at the man’s throat. The iron seared flesh, knocking him cold. Stoner’s hand blistered, but his fire didn’t dim. Arrested, he faced a cell—until a mob of fellow veterans stormed the jail, freeing their hero. The Native, some say, died fleeing to Canada. Jeptha Simms’ 1850 Trappers of New York immortalized the brawl, painting Stoner as a frontier fury.
He wasn’t all fists. Stoner hunted with Native guides, their tracks crossing in uneasy respect. But traps stolen or trails disputed sparked his wrath—each pelt was hard-won, a testament to his skill.
A Major’s Last March
When the War of 1812 flared, Stoner, now in his 50s, couldn’t stay still. As fife-major in the 29th New York Infantry, he earned the title “Major Stoner.” In 1814, at Plattsburgh, he piped defiance as Americans repelled a British invasion. His brother John fell to illness at Sackets Harbor, a loss that shadowed Nicholas’s return. Yet his traps waited, and the Sacandaga welcomed him home.
Twilight by the Lakes
In his later years, Stoner settled in Caroga, near Garoga Lakes, his cabin a haven by Newkirk’s Mills. Into his 80s, he roamed, beaver traps clanking, raccoon pelts slung over his shoulder. In 1818, a $8-a-month Revolutionary pension eased his days. By 1846, Simms found him at Johnstown’s militia gatherings, buckskin faded but spirit bright, regaling crowds with tales of war and wilds.
On November 26, 1853, at 92, Nicholas Stoner’s trail ended in Newkirk. Buried first in Kingsborough Cemetery, his bones now rest in Gloversville’s Prospect Hill. His name echoes—Nick Stoner Golf Course, Nick Stoner Island, and lakes in Caroga bear his mark. A 1976 marker at his home and a WWII battleship placard in Fulton County honor the trapper who lived large.
A Trapper’s Legacy
Stoner’s beaver and raccoon pelts weren’t just goods—they were life, balancing nature’s bounty with human need. At Westerman’s Fur Products, we carry that forward. Our raccoon fur hats and beaver gloves, sourced from regulated harvests (200,000 raccoons trapped sustainably in 2022, per Fur Commission USA), honor his craft. Trapping funds $15 million in conservation yearly, keeping ecosystems as Stoner knew them—wild but tended.
