For more than 150 years, stories have been written about the “Old Leatherman,” a vagabond garbed in leather clothing.
Several were written by Allison Albee in The Westchester Historian, the journal of the Westchester Historical Society, which was headed by Albee for many years. A resident of Rye, Albee was also a founder of the Rye Historical Society.
Recently, The New York Times Magazine carried an article by Sam Anderson, titled “What I found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero.” It is a long account of how the author retraced the route of the Old Leatherman by “dropping out of society, following in his footsteps, knocking on the doors he knocked on, sitting in the caves he sat in.”
Anderson’s article provides a good introduction to the fascinating legends and facts that have been accumulated over the decades by various writers. For a broader view, I recommend Dan W. DeLuca’s book: “The Old Leather Man: Historical Accounts of a Connecticut and New York Legend,” published in 2008 by Wesleyan University Press.
According to DeLuca, the first reported appearance of “Old Leathery” was in 1856, and from then until 1882 he traveled periodically between the Connecticut and Hudson rivers. Then in 1883, he started traveling a clockwise circuit, following a regular route of 365 miles every 34 days until his death. Along the way, he lived rough, sleeping in caves, huts, and other shelters with only his all-leather outfit as protection from the elements.
A letter to the editor of The Port Chester Journal on Feb. 10, 1870, stated: “I suppose that many of the readers of your valuable paper have heard of the ‘old leather man,’ who has for the last year or so been seen occasionally wandering around this and other neighborhoods, and who has established his winter quarters in a wood belonging to Mr. Joseph Park, and bordering the road running to White Plains, between Purchase and North Street.”
Park, head of the firm of Park and Tilford in New York City, lived in Rye in what is known as Whitby Castle (now part of the Rye Golf Club) and owned more than 2,000 acres in Rye and Harrison. When a large part of that land was sold in 1909 to a syndicate that formed the Westchester Country Club, The New York Times described the boundaries of the property as “running south of the Polly Park Road to North Street with Purchase Street cutting through it.” Therefore, it appears that the Old Leather Man’s local shelter was somewhere along Polly Park Road.
Another letter to The Journal, published on Feb. 17, 1870, denied a report that Mr. Park (one of Rye’s leading benefactors) planned to eject the Old Leather Man from his property, commenting that the mystery man “has always been civil and quiet in his manner.” When he passed through the area in 1877, The Journal noted that, “Nobody knows who he is, where he comes from, what his nationality is, or what is his name and age.”
After surviving the blizzard of 1888, the wanderer’s health gradually deteriorated, and he died near Ossining in March 1889 inside a cave on a farm he had often visited. He was buried in a pauper’s grave at the Sparta Cemetery, where a bronze plaque was unveiled at a ceremony in 1953. In 2011, however, his remains were exhumed and reburied in a more suitable location at the cemetery with the headstone reading simply, “The Leatherman.”
Anyone interested in learning more about this mysterious man should read DeLuca’s book. Appendix C of the book gives useful information about “Selected Old Leather Man Sites Accessible to the Public.” Among the closest are a cave at the Audubon Greenwich Center in Greenwich and a shelter in Armonk. One of the best-known caves is at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River. Information about the Old Leatherman and the cave are available on a map at the entrance to the park.
