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Now, she wishes more people would visit her there.
Rock Ford Plantation, a 177-acre site south of Lancaster, was home to Gen. Edward Hand — a physician, politician, farmer and horticulturist — during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
"This house is the real deal," said Stoner, 48. "It sat still in history for a long time, and when they restored it, they did a great job."
An eight-year veteran of the Rock Ford volunteer corps, Stoner started work as a docent — that's a fancy name for a tour guide, she said.
At the time, the plantation had two full-time employees. But funding was an issue, Stoner said — except for occasional grants, Rock Ford receives no state or federal funding, she said — and "just one year after I got my first taste of Rock Ford, they decided they could no longer afford a staff."
There was talk of closing the house, she said, "but the volunteers wanted to keep it going, even if it was just one day a week."
That's how Stoner found herself serving — without pay — as a volunteer coordinator, a position she has shared over the years.
"We basically operated on no money … while we refilled the building's coffers through facility rentals," she said.
Eventually, the foundation was able to hire Sam Slaymaker, former director of Wheatland, to take the reins.
But Rock Ford still has plenty of use for volunteers, and "we're always looking for more," Stoner said.
"People just have so many choices, and there is so much need out there," she said. "When you're a cultural nonprofit and the economy is bad, you have to understand that … sometimes people's priorities need to be elsewhere."
Archeology students from Millersville University have cataloged artifacts that were dug up and bagged by the Department of the Interior decades ago. Other volunteers have led classes in 18th-century dance or honed their culinary skills on the hearth.
All it takes is time, Stoner said — even if it's something as simple as dusting furniture, polishing silver or tending flower beds.
"We will find something for them to do," she said.
Stoner, who majored in history at college, previously worked as a docent supervisor at Wheatland. She gave that up when her second child was born.
But being a stay-at-home mom didn't fully satisfy her restless spirit, she said.
"When I set foot in Rock Ford, I just felt like this was the greatest place ever," she said. "It's my own little escape. I pull into the park, and my life is suddenly centuries away."
Stoner's husband, John, is a certified public accountant who "doesn't care at all about history, but he humors me," she said with a chuckle.
The East Hempfield couple has two sons — Alex, 23, and Ian, 19 — and a 14-year-old daughter, Sydney.
"Volunteering at Rock Ford gives me much more than I give Rock Ford," Stoner said. "That sounds cliched, but it's true."
The post-Revolutionary era is a particular passion of hers, and she enjoys sharing it. "If I get someone on a tour who asks questions, I can keep them for hours," she said.
An avid researcher, she is looking into Hand's role in Washington's famous Crossing of the Delaware on Dec. 25, 1776.
"We're telling it this year as a Christmas story" during Yuletide tours, she said.
"Here was an actual lord of the manor. He had plenty to eat, plenty of wood for the fire — he was certainly well off by Lancaster standards. And there he was, crossing the Delaware in freezing conditions, not knowing if he was going to live or die."
Rock Ford is doing a lot to increase its public profile, Stoner said — from candlelight Christmas tours and a recent "Sleepy Hollow" production to Revolutionary War encampments and a paranormal "reveal" by ghost hunters.
"I would like to see us bring in every fourth-grader in Lancaster County and introduce them to our little corner of the 18th century," she said. "Every time I do a school tour, I always see that one kid who really gets into it.
"You can't really be a snob about history," she added. "You have to entertain with history, or people won't enjoy it. And what is history, really, but stories about people?"
