The English and Irish surname Foster is of occupational origin deriving from the Old English term Forrester meaning someone who worked in the forest. The name is first recorded in England in the 11th Century. The earliest record of the name Foster is of a family who held an ancestral seat in Northumberland. The name Foster is the 86th most common name in the United  States with more than 220,000 people with name living there. Notable bearers of the surname Foster include Nat Foster the American pioneer. Born in 1766 in Hinsdale New Hamphire Nat Foster was a pioneer hunter and trapper in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. Foster is widely credited with being the model for James Fenimore Cooper's character of "Natty Bumppo."   When Foster was around twenty-three or twenty-four he married Jemima Streeter and the couple settled in Salisbury in Herkimer County, New York. He farmed in the summer and hunted game in the winter, wolves, bear, and panther, and trapped for furs. He carried an unusual type of rifle called a "double shooter", which had one barrel and two locks mounted vertically so the rifle was able to fire two separate shots. He died in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1840.