If you’ve lived in western Connecticut for very long you’ve undoubtedly heard tales about the “Old Leatherman.” The legend began to grow during the 1860’s when the first recorded instances of his sightings appeared in local newspapers.
A vagabond clad completely in leather, he regularly appeared walking through various towns taking hand-outs of food and drink but never tarrying long enough to be bothered by the law. His sightings were regular, and it soon appeared that the mysterious man was following a regular route. The Port Chester Journal of February 17, 1870, claimed the people of North Greenwich described the man as a passerby at least once a week, while a December 4, 1875, account in the Connecticut Valley Advisor claimed he passed through Middletown about once every five weeks. By 1880, most newspaper accounts had him appearing once about every thirty-four days.
No one knew where he slept, as he never asked for nor accepted lodging when it was occasionally offered. He seldom made a sound except for an occasional grunt or perhaps a few words usually spoken in French. While he eagerly devoured the food that was offered him, he almost never partook of a meal indoors, and when he did, he preferred to sit alone near the door.
The first known newspaper account that specifically identified this man as the “Old Leather Man” was published on Thursday, August 26, 1869, in a New York newspaper, the Port Chester Journal. In a short article written by reporter Jonathan Clark who wrote under the pen name of Robinson Crusoe, the author claimed to have followed the Leatherman and discovered that he slept in a nearby cave. Why at approximately 35-years of age he would have been described as “old” is anyone’s guess.
As time passed, the legend of the Leatherman grew. His visits were recorded in local newspapers, and it soon became obvious that he was traveling in a clockwise loop that began in Westchester County and moved northward and eastward through Litchfield County and then southward through New Haven County before curving westward through Fairfield County and back to Westchester. A total of 41 communities along that route claimed to have had him visit on a regular basis. The length of his loop was about 360 miles, making his average daily trek approach 11 miles. This part of his legend is well documented, but much of the rest of his story is not.
Who was this mystery man and why was he dressed only in leather?
In 1884, the Waterbury Daily American published a story about the Leatherman that would provide the answers to the mystery behind the quiet mannered vagabond who roamed western New York and eastern Connecticut.
According to Charles W. Burpee, the city editor of the newspaper in which the story first appeared, the article was authored by a reporter in Roxbury who claimed to have had a lengthy conversation with the Leatherman where he learned his life story.
The story identified the Leatherman as Jules Bourglay. Born in Lyons, France, he fell in love with the beautiful daughter of a wealthy leather merchant named Laron. Unable to convince Laron to allow him to marry his daughter, Jules offered to work for the leather merchant for a year to prove his worth. Through some risky speculative purchases, Jules bankrupted the firm when the leather market crashed in 1857, losing any chance to marry Laron’s beautiful daughter. Jules then fled to America where he would spend his days wandering, making penance dressed in the very material that ruined his life.
A very well received and popular story that answered the questions that everyone who had ever encountered the reclusive Leatherman had wanted to ask. The story was picked up by every newspaper along the Leatherman’s circular route and his legend grew even larger. His photo, along with his story, was sold on postal cards throughout the region. A mere legend before, he was then a folk hero.
There was only one problem. That story was a complete fabrication. Every single word of it. The Leatherman had never talked to anyone about his past.
When Burpee realized his paper had published a bogus story, he printed a retraction. But it didn’t matter, the false narrative was then part of the legend and the legend continued to grow.
Throughout the 1870’s and 1880’s, newspaper accounts would tell of the coming and going of the Leatherman as he passed through local towns. His arrival times and where he stopped were often reported. It has been said that if he knocked on the door of a house that refused him food and drink, that he would simply move on and never return.
The Leatherman was annoyed by those who asked too many questions, and when he did respond, it was usually short and to the point. A March 11, 1883, article in the Litchfield Inquirer reported a local asking the Leatherman where he had slept the previous evening and that his response was a terse, “In the woods.” Noting that it had been cold that night, the local then asked how he stayed warm. “Had a fire,” was the answer before the Leatherman simply moved on.
It was reported that several caves were identified as sleeping quarters along the Leatherman’s route. At least a few had small vegetable gardens where produce would be available during his journey. A few more showed evidence of small streams having been diverted to provide him with a source of fresh water. Supposedly, he kept a supply of firewood stored in each cave where it would remain dry enough to start a fire should it be raining or snowing when he arrived.
One of the more perplexing aspects of the Leatherman’s legend is the consistent claims that his endless journey was so punctual and precise that people knew both the day he was due to arrive in town and the hour he would visit those people who would feed him. The July 12, 1885, edition of the Hartford Times has an actual timetable purportedly amassed over the previous few months showing the exact day and time he visited several outlying towns and residences in Litchfield and Hartford Counties. It doesn’t vary by more than a few minutes from visit to visit. Is it accurate, or is it another fictional creation that was meant to enhance the readership of the newspaper and promote the person who wrote it?
Another difficult question to resolve is where the Leatherman came by the money he occasionally used to purchase supplies. More than one general store gave an account of his purchases. No one ever claimed to have given the leather clad vagabond money, nor did anyone ever recall him asking for any. It would seem certain that if the Leatherman ever worked to earn wages that someone would have recalled it and reported it.
As the 1880’s wore on, the Leatherman began to age, and his appearance began to show signs of disease. His mouth bore obvious signs of cancer; the kind that often developed from chewing tobacco or smoking a pipe – both of which he was known to do. People along his route were concerned about his deteriorating health. In December of 1888, the Connecticut Humane Society finally requested the police to detain him and then transport him to the hospital in Hartford.
It was during that brief hospital stay that we may have learned the Leatherman’s true identity. He was admitted under the name of Zacharias Bovelat. Was that his real name? If he hadn’t provided it, who then had? The Leatherman refused treatment and was released without us ever finding out more about him.
On March 24, 1889, the Leatherman’s body was discovered just outside a Saw Mill Woods cave in Mount Pleasant, New York on a farm that belonged to George Dell. The body was interred in a pauper’s grave in an Ossining, New York cemetery.
On the 27th of March 1889, Charles W. Burpee wrote a letter to the editor of the Hartford Times, once again retracting the story he had approved back in 1884 that had identified the Leatherman as Jules Bourglay. Again, no one paid any attention.
In 1953, the Leatherman’s grave was given a rather fancy bronze plaque with Bourglay’s name and fictional story for all the world to see. The legend lived on and folks who had never met the Leatherman told stories like they had. In A History of the Town of Lewisboro by the Lewisboro History Book Committee and historian Alvin R. Jordan, a Miss M. Louise Bouton, born in 1889, the same year that the Leatherman died, recalled that he “came around once a year … always to the east side of the house. He would knock on the leader drainpipe. Mother would give him coffee and some sandwiches. He would say, ‘Thank you so much, lady,’ but never look at you. He was dressed all in brown leather. No one was afraid of him.” It was as if she really remembered the man, but it was actually a story that her mother might have told her many years before.
The erroneous Jules Bourglay headstone remained in place until 2011, when the widening Route 9 in front of the cemetery led to the decision to exhume and reinter the Leatherman in a new plot within the same cemetery.
With the help of author Dan DeLuca, who wrote extensively about the Leatherman, plans were also made to test the body for DNA to possibly determine the true identity of the old Leatherman. But the soil had settled, and the earth had shifted. When his grave was opened, the only remains of the Leatherman’s coffin were a few nails and a couple of rotten scraps of wood. There was no body to be found and no DNA to collect. Where the skeletal remains of the mystery man went just adds to his legend. Those nails and scraps of wood along with some soil from the original site, were reinterred and a simple stone marker erected at the head of the new gravesite. In keeping with the mystery that still shields his true name and identity, it simply reads. “The Leatherman.”
