Johann Adam Hartmann

Johann Adam Hartmann (1748–1836) was a German-born trapper and frontiersman in New York State. Some consider him as a possible inspiration for Natty Bumpo, the main character in James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales.

Hartmann was born in Edenkoben, Palatinate, Holy Roman Empire in 1748. His parents were Anna Maria Scholl, a native of Edenkoben and Johann Hartmann, a weaver who was originally from Switzerland. The couple married in 1737. Hartman left his hometown at the age of 16 to travel on the ship Boston from Rotterdam to Philadelphia. From there he moved to Upstate New York where he lived as frontiersman, trapper and hunter. When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775 Hartmann joined the American side and served as ranger at Fort Dayton. He participated in the Battle of Oriskany, where he got wounded by a shot. Alfred H. Kuby pointed out in 1983, that Cooper has mentioned Hartmann in the first edition of The Pioneers (1823) and that during his travels in Europe Cooper had spent some time in the region where Hartmann was born.

The city of Edenkoben dedicated a plaque to Hartmann on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Oriskany. Due to some computation error, that only got discovered after the plaque had been set up, it contains the wrong year of birth, 1743 instead of 1748. The Lederstrumpfbrunnen (lit. Leatherstocking fountain) features three major statues of figures related to the Leatherstocking Tales, one of them is a statue of Hartmann/Bumpo displayed with a hunting rifle and a dog.