Three Rivers
Hudson~Mohawk~Schoharie
History From America's Most Famous Valleys

Trappers of New York
or a BIOGRAPHY of NICHOLAS STONER & NATHANIEL FOSTER;
TOGETHER WITH ANECDOTES OF OTHER CELEBRATED HUNTERS,
AND SOME ACCOUNT OF SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON AND HIS STYLE OF LIVING
by Jeptha R. Simms
A Reprint with New Supplementary Matter
Printed by Enterprise and News
St. Johnsville, N.Y. 1935
Albany: J. Munsell, 82 State Street. 1850

CHAPTER XII.
BIRTH PLACE AND MARRIAGE OF NATHANIEL FOSTER

Settles in Salisbury-Description of his person-His success the first year in hunting-Large game killed by him-Anecdotes of his wolf killing-Supplies Museums with moose skins-Is near being shot-His rifles-A tussle with a deer-A wolf for a pet-Where Foster learned to write-Brown's tract of land-Source of mill stream-Brown attempts to settle his lands-His death-Herreshoff goes there-His birth place and person-Clears up land-Builds a forge-Expends large sums of money-Becomes discouraged and commits suicide-Time of his death-Inquest-Place of burial- Inscription to his memory-Cost of his iron-His taxes-Brown's tract when and by whom surveyed-Its townships-Survey of roads-Moose lake-Indian clearing-Distance from Boonville to forge-Huckleberry lake-Surveyor kills a hedgehog-Anecdotes of Herreshoff.

Nathaniel Foster, justly celebrated as a hunter and trapper of northern New York, was a native of Hinsdale, Windham county, Vermont; the town is now called Vernon. He was named after his father, and was born about the year 1767. At the age of three or four and twenty he married Miss Jemima, daughter of Amos Streeter, of New Hampshire; a year or two after which, and nine or ten years subsequent to the close of the Revolution, he removed to the town of Salisbury, Herkimer county, New York; at which time the country around his new home was mostly a wilderness.

In person he was nearly six feet high, erect and strongly built, with a large muscular frame that seemed well fitted for fatigue. His features were commanding, though not finely marked, and when cheerfulness lit up his countenance through his keen dark eye, they were rather prepossessing. His complexion was sallow, his hair was a sandy brown, but not very gray to the hour of his death, although he grew bald in the latter part of his life.

At the time of Foster's emigration to New York wild game was so abundant in the northerly part of Herkimer county, that, with his fondness for the excitement attending a hunter's life, circumstances combined to make him a perfect Nimrod. To adopt the language of a correspondent, "He was a Leatherstocking of an original stamp, and devoted to a wildwood life." He began his pioneer residence in the winter, and the following spring he took a sufficient quantity of fur, principally beaver, to purchase a cow and many articles necessary in housekeeping. He afterwards obtained yearly quantities of valuable fur, such as beaver, otter, muskrat, marten, &c. He has been known to have three or four hundred muskrat traps set in a single season, employing at times several men to help him tend them.

Deer, bears and wolves were so numerous for years after Foster made his home on the borders of the forest, that he slaughtered them in great numbers. Indeed it is believed, that he has killed more of those animals collectively, than any other individual in the state during the same period; having slain no less than seventy-six deer in one season, and ninety-six bears in three seasons. He has also been known to kill twenty-five wolves in one year; having a line of traps set for them from Salisbury to the St. Lawrence. These animals were so great a pest among the sheepfolds when the country was new, that a liberal bounty was paid for their destruction by the state; increased at times by the liberality of certain counties and towns in which they were the most numerous. The avails of his hunting and trapping amounted in one year, when a liberal price was set upon wolves, to the sum of twelve hundred and fifty dollars. He occasionally killed a panther.

The bounties paid for the destruction of wild animals, often made the taxes of frontier towns a burden; and a wealthy farmer in the neighborhood of Foster, took a stand one season which prevented the paying of such a reward for the destruction of wolves as hunters thought they deserved. The consequence was, that all the old and young Nimrods in the vicinity turned their attention to other game, and purposely let the wolves alone; which in a year or two more were greatly on the increase. Foster told his farmer friend at the election, he would be sorry for the manner in which he had voted, and after the animals had had time to increase, he was not much surprised, one morning, to hear a most pitiful story from him, about the injuries he had sustained the night before by wolves; they had been into his sheepfold and destroyed more property in a single night, than his tax, when the highest bounty was paid for their scalps, had amounted to in several years. He soon found, to use a hunter's phrase, he was barking up the wrong tree for sympathy. "Well," said Leatherstocking, with not a little manifest indifference, "I don't know as I can pity you much. If you are unwilling to pay me for protecting your sheep, you must buy traps and take care of them yourself." It is perhaps unnecessary to add, the penurious farmer was ready to vote a more liberal bounty than ever for the destruction of wolves, at the next proper election.

Some winters Foster turned his attention almost wholly to the killing of deer, disposing of their saddles and skins for the eastern market. The visitor to the Albany Museum will there see the skin of a large moose which was shot by this hunter, and for which he received from the property some fifty dollars. There is the skin of another large moose in a New York or Philadelphia museum, also killed by this hunter. The following incident attended the death of one of those animals. Foster had a favorite dog, as fond of hunting as was his master. The bay of this sagacious animal one day called its owner to a retired spot in the forest, where he discovered Watch holding a moose by the nose; keeping his own body between the forelegs of his adversary, to avoid the heavy blows aimed at him with the antlers of the enraged animal, which formidable weapons weighed together nearly thirty pounds.

On nearing the spot Foster sent a bullet through the heart of the moose, which in its death-struggle dashed the dog off with a terrible blow. The print of the dog's teeth remained upon the nose of the moose, but both animals appeared to be dead. Foster took off his coat and laid his canine friend upon it, at which time a partner in the hunt arrived upon the ground. With a heavy heart Foster prepared to skin the game, when his comrade observed a moving of the muscles about the dog's neck, and told the former it would recover, but the old hunter shook his head doubtingly. After a while Watch raised his head slowly from the ground to receive the caress of his master; but as soon as his eye rested upon his fallen antagonist, he sprang to his feet and seized the lifeless moose by the throat, from which he was with no little difficulty removed. The restoration of his favorite dog to life, caused Foster more real joy than could possibly the killing of a dozen moose.

One or two years after Nathaniel Foster settled in Salisbury, his father removed from the east with his family, and located in the same town. He, too, was something of a sportsman. Nathaniel had two brothers younger than himself, who, as they attained sufficient age, indulged occasionally in hunting deer. The following incident will show how providentially the elder brother was once saved from harm. His brother Elisha having on some occasion borrowed his gun, sent it home by a young son. The lad as he neared the dwelling saw his uncle going in at the door, and to be very smart, as boys sometimes are, he drew up the piece and snapped it at him. On entering the house he told his kinsman what he had done; when the old hunter took the piece from the hand of his nephew, walked to the door and snapped it, and a bullet whizzed through the air from its muzzle. He remarked as he went to set it away, that he had shot seventy-six deer with his rifle that season, and it had not before missed fire in a single instance during the whole time.

The rifle with which Foster usually hunted would carry two balls as well as one; and when he desired to render the death of large game doubly sure, he loaded with two bullets. Foster and Stoner had each a rifle at one time made after the same pattern, by Willis Avery, of Salisbury, and called double shotters. They were made with a single barrel with two locks, one placed above the other far enough to admit of two charges, and have the upper charge of powder rest upon the lower bullet. The locks were made for percussion pills, and when the pick which crushed the pill at the first lock was down, there was no danger to be apprehended in firing the lower charge. These rifles cost about seventy dollars each. That of Stoner was borne by a soldier into the late Florida war

The following incident will serve to show one of the numberless perils to which hunters are exposed in the forest. Nathaniel Foster and his brother, Shubael, were on a deer hunt many years ago in St. Lawrence county, when the former came suddenly upon two noble bucks trying titles to the soil. To end the dispute, he drew up and shot one, and as it fell, the other bounded off a few rods, and halted to witness a more novel engagement than its own recent one. The fallen deer was not killed, but was badly stunned by the fall striking it near the backbone, and as the hunter ran up to cut its throat, the animal sprang upon its haunches, and in its own defence struck furiously at him with its antlers. Quick as thought, this modern Leatherstocking placed the knife between his teeth, and grappled the weapons of his unexpected foe. The struggle for the mastery was long and fierce, the hunter not daring to let go his hold; but, as good luck would have it, he got the head of the deer between two trees, against one of which a horn was broken, and the worried animal thrown down. Before it could recover, the hunter dealt it a blow upon the head with a club fortune had placed at his command, when he succeeded in cutting its throat. The tussle lasted more than thirty minutes; and when his brother arrived upon the ground, he found the grass and bushes trampled down for several rods around. The strength of the hunter was nearly exhausted in the engagement; while his tattered garments gave evidence, that a visit to his wardrobe would alone restore his outward man to the condition it was in an hour before.

On a certain occasion, Shubel Foster visited wolf-trap, in company with his brother, Nathaniel in which a wolf was caught by one of its hind legs. It crawled under a log on their approach; and the senior hunter conceiving it would make him a fine pet, resolved to take the snarler home alive. With a forked stick he fixed a kind of halter upon its nose, and loosening it from the trap, he thus led the captive home. It would go ten or fifteen rods as quietly as a dog, and then spring at their faces with all its might. He kept it muzzled and fasting about the house for several days, much of which time it concealed itself under a bed. It was finally slain and a bounty taken for its scalp.

Nathaniel Foster was familiarly called Uncle Nat, among his intimate friends. His early advantages at school were limited, as were those of many of the hardy pioneers of western and northern New York, who chanced to be boys in the great American con test for liberty. When he settled in Salisbury, he could neither read nor write; but about the year 1810, William Waterman, then a merchant in Salisbury, learned him to write at his store, as he in formed the author.

The northerly part of Herkimer county was not only a wilderness when Foster began the life of a a hunter, but much of it is still in a state of nature. It is dotted with numerous crystal lakes and rivulets, to the shores of which Foster was invited in his hunting excursions, as wild game grew scarce nearer his home. About the year 1793, or 1794, John Brown, a capitalist of Rhode Island, purchased a tract of two hundred and ten thousand acres of wild lands about the head waters of Moose river, a tributary to the Black river. Lying in the northeast part of Herkimer and the western part of Hamilton counties, is a connected chain of eight small lakes, and their outlet forms one branch of Moose river. It is known there, however, as the Mill stream. These lakes, which lie in a line running nearly cast and west, are called in Gordon's Gazeteer, the Fulton lakes, but why they are so called, does not appear.

Brown did not purchase this land of the government, as I am informed, but got it of some individual in payment for a debt, and soon after opened a road from Remsen to it. It is said to have cost Brown some thirty cents an acre. He visited the tract in the winter of 1798 and 1799, and had then, or previously, several log dwellings, a gristmill and a sawmill erected upon it, with the view of bringing it into market. He spent very little time upon the tract, however, and had not accomplished much in the way of subduing those wild lands at the time of his death, which took place in 1806.

Charles F. Herreshoff having married the widow Francis, a daughter of John Brown, resolved upon making a permanent settlement upon Brown's tract (so called since his purchase), and went on to it with that intent about the year 1812. He has generally been regarded as a German, but in answer to an inquiry, he assured Darius Hawkins, he was a Prussian by birth. He had a commanding appearance, being over six feet high and well formed. He was very gentlemanly in his deportment, though extremely proud and aristocratic. He is said to have been a finished scholar. On entering the forest he declared with an oath, that he would settle the tract, or settle himself.

Herreshoff spent the greater part of his time on the tract for several years, but his wife, it is believed, was never there: she disapproved of his seemingly visionary operations. Although he was not as well calculated as some men of a less enterprising spirit are to settle a new country, still, considering the great difficulties he had to encounter, which are of a magnitude people living at ease in cities can hardly conceive, he had accomplished much towards the fulfillment of his purpose. He repaired the mills Brown had erected, and in the course of a few years he had cleared up nearly two thousand acres of land, the greater part of which had been heavily timbered, and erected thereon some thirty or forty buildings. The mills were nearly three miles from the most westerly lake of the Fulton chain, and at that place he built a forge for the smelting of iron ore. He also opened several roads to the nearest settlements.