Large Numbers of Scots Came in Town of Broadalbin. After Revolutionary
War, the village, was noted for large number of beautiful homes.
Although several tracts of land were secured by patent in early times in
the vicinity of Broadalbin, it was not until 1770 that Henry Stoner, a
German and father of Nicholas Stoner whose deeds are recorded with the
history of Fulton county settled there. The elder Stoner was murdered by
Indians during the Revolutionary war but the son avenged the death of his |
father by striking down the assassin in a barroom brawl in Johnstown.
Henry Stoner, the father of Nicholas, emigrated from Germany to the
American colonies, as is believed, nearly twenty years before their
emancipation from British tyranny. He landed at New York, and after a
short residence in that city removed to the colony of Maryland, where he
married Catharine Barnes, by whom he had two sons, Nicholas and John.
Nicholas Stoner, who was about a year the senior of his brother, was born
Dec. 15, 1762 or 63: which year is not now known with certainty, the family
record having been burned with his father's dwelling in the Revolution. He
is five feet eleven inches high, of slender but sinewy form; and though his
light brown hair is now (1848) silvered by the frosts of fourscore winters,
and his body is a little bent, yet his step is still firm without a cane, and his
intellect vigorous. He has from boyhood worn a pair of small rings in his
ears.
His complexion, owing to his mode of life, is now swarthy. In his younger
days he must have been a man of uncommonly prepossessing personal
appearance; for his acquaintances of forty years' standing, speak of him
"is one of the likeliest looking men they have ever known." His walk
indeed, almost every motion betrays his forest life, for he moves with the
caution of a trapper and the stillness of a panther: added to which he
becomes impatient and vexed at restraint.
Jeptha Root Simms ; Trappers of New York
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