Old Leatherman mystery could be solved as experts expose troubling probe into America’s real-life Bigfoot and demand hidden archive is unsealed

A French-speaking man who roamed the Northeast in a handmade leather suit in the late 1800s became a beloved local celebrity lauded in newsprint as the ‘Old Leatherman.’

Schoolchildren were let out of class to greet and feed the friendly vagabond as he passed by on his 365-mile circuit of New York and Connecticut towns, which he traversed, like clockwork, once every 34 days.

According to lore, he was Jules Bourglay, the disgraced suitor of the daughter of one of France’s top leather merchants, who had brought about that family’s financial ruin and fled in shame to the US from Lyon, France.

But questions over the man’s identity, his routine and 60-pound leather outfit persisted after his death in 1889, and a theory emerged that he was French Canadian with a native grandfather who had schooled him in survival.

Historians in 2011 dug up his grave in Ossining, New York, hoping DNA tests could uncover the truth, only to be disappointed. The plot yielded just a handful of metal nails, which were reburied nearby.

Now, in a startling twist in the 170-year-old saga, the archaeologist who led that excavation revealed explosive details about flaws underpinning the dig at Sparta Cemetery, near the banks of the Hudson River.

As it turns out, they might have been digging in the wrong place.

Nicholas Bellantoni, the Emeritus Connecticut State Archaeologist, told the Daily Mail that either the Leatherman had fully decomposed or the ‘location of his grave was wrong, and still remains unknown.’

Mystery still shrouds the identity of the ‘Old Leatherman’ who roamed across New England in his handmade outfit in the late 1800s 

Questions still remain even about the site of his grave in Ossining, New York, which was exhumed in 2011 but yielded no clues 

The Leatherman’s grave was only marked some 30 years after his burial – it was ID’d by the daughter of the woman who’d discovered his body. Over the decades, the daughter could easily have got mixed up about the location.

‘The moral of the story was that Old Leatherman was elusive in life, and he remains elusive in death,’ Bellantoni told the Daily Mail.

A recent investigation by the New York Times, which first reported on the mystery in 1884, reflected on the complexity of the exhumation and speculated that the body could even be buried under the road near the gravesite.

Archaeologists scoured the sloped terrain with ground-penetrating radar, but found no other likely place to dig. The Leatherman’s remains are a genetic key that could unravel the elusive puzzle.

‘Maybe that is for the better,’ Bellantoni added, speaking to the possibility of other gravesites, ‘as the legend and mystery continues.’

The lore

News stories about a wandering Leatherman started to emerge in the mid-1850s, describing his hand-stitched all-leather clothes and cap and wood-soled shoes.

He lived in caves and roamed across Canada and the American Northeast, an industrializing region convulsed by the 1861 – ’65 Civil War.

The Leatherman did not understand English well, folks have said, and only answered questions in grunts and hand gestures. He did not beg for food, but was friendly and welcomed meals from kind-hearted people along his route.

In his leather satchel, he carried a French prayer book, a tobacco pouch and a pipe. He rejected meat on Fridays, suggesting he was Roman Catholic.

From about 1883, he started his famous clockwise 365-mile circuit through some 40 Connecticut and New York towns every 34 days. Some locals picked up on the routine and left out meals for him as he passed their homes.

The Leatherman wore his handmade outfit throughout the year, including the hot summers

An excavation of the Leatherman’s grave site in 2011 only deepened the mystery  

The grave site at Sparta Cemetery, near the banks of the Hudson River, features this plaque today

The nomad became a sort of one-man sideshow. Children ran out to see him, both fascinated and repelled. Newspapers reported on his stops and schedule. Elaborate yarns were written about his life.

He is said to have survived blizzards and chilly weather by heating his various cave homes with fire. In later years, he developed mouth cancer and had to soak his food in coffee before he could manage to swallow a mouthful.

A handmade leather mitten belonging to the Leatherman. Much of his outfit was destroyed in a fire after his death 

In his allegedly poor state, members of the Connecticut Humane Society intervened and had him arrested and hospitalized in 1888. After the well-wishers left, the Leatherman is said to have discharged himself and continued stoically on his loop.

He was found dead in a rock shelter in Westchester County, New York, the following March.

A coroner concluded he’d died from mouth cancer, at around 50 years old. The death was front-page news, and hundreds of people came to view the body. His famed leather suit was displayed in New York City.

The Old Leatherman was then buried in an unmarked grave in Sparta Cemetery. Over the coming decades, newspapers kept the legend alive, often focusing on the tale of the reportedly love struck Frenchman’s financial calamity.

In 1953, Ossining Historical Society erected a bronze plaque at the graveyard commemorating ‘Jules Bourglay from Lyons.’

The legend grew from there. Hikers toured Leatherman caves, runners raced an annual Leatherman’s loop and Seattle rockers Pearl Jam released a song in 1998 about a ‘man of the land’ who visited ‘once a month.’

The Leatherman’s regular walking circuit was between the Connecticut River and the Hudson River

The nomadic character’s hat, scarf, clothes and shoes were handmade from leather

Demystifying the Old Leatherman

Local researcher Dan DeLuca started to debunk the myths about him, with a study of newspaper and other records that led to his 2008 Wesleyan University Press authoritative account, The Old Leather Man.

DeLuca believed the Leatherman was French Canadian, and had learned to hunt, fish and trap from his Native American grandfather. He’d visited his grandfather in Canada until the relative’s death in the early 1880s, said DeLuca.

Nicholas Bellantoni, the Emeritus Connecticut State Archaeologist

After that, he is thought to have walked his famous loop for the final six years of his own life.

DeLuca and Bellantoni tried to get to the truth in 2011 by excavating the grave – a move that was primarily aimed at relocating it away from Route 9 traffic so schoolkids visiting the site would be safer.

They spent two days sifting through soil, but found only nails, which may have been part of a 122-year-old casket. The absence of any human remains killed their hopes of laboratory answers, Bellantoni told the Daily Mail.

‘Had we found his skeletal remains, we would have conducted various forensic tests to determine if the bones were that of an older adult male having died from a cancerous jaw,’ he explained.

DNA and carbon isotope tests would have aided in developing ‘a biological profile to help us determine as much as possible of his true identity,’ added the veteran 40-year archaeologist.

He concluded that either the Leatherman’s remains were buried elsewhere, or that they’d fully decomposed in the highly acidic soil. There were, he added, no signs of human remains nearby, either.

The soil from the grave and the nails were reburied, away from the road, with a new marker that reads, ‘THE LEATHERMAN’.

The soil and nails from the original grave were reburied at a nearby site in a ceremony in 2011

The Leatherman walked his famous 365-mile loop for the final six years of his life

Still, the absence of human tissue fueled doubts about whether the Leatherman had been laid to rest in Ossining at all.

The grave site sat unmarked until about the late 1910s, when the daughter of the woman who found the deceased Leatherman visited with friends and pushed a pipe into the ground as a marker, records show.

But she could have been mistaken.

To this day, says Bellantoni, we ‘just cannot be 100% sure it was the Old Leatherman’ buried in that plot.

The Daily Mail reached out to other experts on New England folklore, but could not find anybody else undertaking serious research on the Leatherman or looking for traces of his DNA at alternate grave sites.

Still, researcher DeLuca amassed more than 15 binders of material about the character, much of which never made it into his book. DeLuca died in 2016, but his archive could reveal more clues.

Michael Hoberman – an expert on the Leatherman and other word-of-mouth histories, and a professor at Fitchburg State University, in Massachusetts – says the trail has largely gone cold.

‘As a society, we want to know the facts. But the thing about the Leatherman is that we really know nothing about him,’ Hoberman told the Daily Mail.

‘For more than a century we thought we knew where he was buried, and what a disappointment it was to find out that we don’t even know that.’

The Leatherman’s former homes in caves and rock shelters have become an attraction for visiting hikers

In his leather satchel, the Leatherman carried a French prayer book, a tobacco pouch and a pipe.

Absent of hard evidence, the Leatherman legend is instead a way for people to talk about social concerns – from getting out of the rat race to harkening back to times when people were kinder, he says.

The story of a foreigner crossing the US-Canada border and receiving meals and support from welcoming locals is especially potent now that immigration has become so divisive, Hoberman adds.

And that tales like this can serve as a way for people to make sense of and contextualize things going on around them. 

‘We really want to feel like we have a realistic take on the past,’ Hoberman says, ‘and it’s pretty much impossible to ever get there.’

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