r of being the real
Leather-Stocking of Cooper's tales."

David Shipman served in the American army in the Revolutionary War, and
was a member of the Fourteenth Regiment of Albany county militia under
Col. John Knickerbocker and Lieut.-Col. John van Rensselaer. After the
Revolution he lived just over the hills west of Cooperstown in a log
cabin on the east bank of Oak's Creek, about equi-distant between
Toddsville and Fly Creek village. In 1878 Aden Adams of Cooperstown,
aged 81, stated that he well remembered David Shipman. As described by
Adams, he was tall and slim, dressed in tanned deerskin, wore moccasins
and long stockings of leather fastened at the knee, and carried a gun of
great length. He was one of the most famous hunters of the whole
country, and with his dogs roamed the forest in search of deer, bear,
and foxes. He supplied the Cooper family at Otsego Hall with deer and
bear meat, and also assisted Judge Cooper when he was surveying land
about Cooperstown in the early days of the settlement. Colonel
Cheney[91] says that after going west, David Shipman returned to his old
home in the Fly Creek valley, and lived there for several years. His
wife died, and was buried in the Adams cemetery. The ground was wet, and
water partially filled the grave. Elder Bostwick, a Baptist minister
from the town of Hartwick, officiated at the funeral, and upon remarking
to Shipman that it was a poor place to bury the dead, the old hunter
answered, "I know it, but if I live to die, I expect to be buried here
myself."[92]

Cooper's most famous hero, carved in marble, rifle in hand, and with the
dog Hector at his feet, stands at the top of the Leatherstocking
monument in Lakewood cemetery, on a rise of ground near the entrance,
overlooking Otsego Lake from the east side, about fifteen minutes walk
from the village of Cooperstown. That a monument commemorative of Cooper
and Leather-Stocking should stand in the public cemetery, in which
neither the author nor his supposed model is buried, is sometimes
puzzling to visitors. It is said, however, that the site was chosen with
reference to certain scenes in _The Pioneers_. The monument stands near
the spot upon which the novelist, for the purpose of his romance, placed
the hut of Natty Bumppo. It is not far below the road referred to in the
opening scene of the tale, where the travelers gained their first
glimpse of the village, and stands at the foot of the wooded slope upon
which,