Odd News

Wanderer from 1800s gets more peaceful grave

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-05-26 09:03

OSSINING, New York - A mysterious man who wandered New York and Connecticut in a 60-pound (27-kilogram) leather suit during the 19th century became a little more mysterious Wednesday.

Historians announced that all they found when they dug up the 1889 grave of the man known as the Leatherman was dozens of coffin nails.

"The Leatherman was a mystery in life and he's going to be a mystery in death," said Ossining Historical Society President Norman MacDonald.

The grave in Ossining's Sparta Cemetery was being relocated because it was just a few paces from busy Route 9, and recent interest in the Leatherman was bringing more visitors to his resting place. MacDonald said the grave site had become dangerous.

Accounts of the nomad's all-leather outfit, his quiet demeanor and his regular ways - he made a 365-mile (587-kilometer) loop through the same towns about every month - have fostered interest, although his name is unknown and he died 122 years ago.

Pearl Jam recorded a song about him, "Leatherman," in 1998 describing him as "making the rounds 10 miles a day."

The historical society won permission to disinter the remains and hoped to arrange DNA testing that might shed some light on where the Leatherman came from and whether he had autism, as some suggest.

But MacDonald said there were no visible remains of the body. Nicholas Bellantoni, a University of Connecticut archeologist, said there was no hope of finding a DNA sample suitable for testing.

"It's ashes to ashes," he said.

Bellantoni, who supervised the excavation, said time, plus the impact of traffic over the shallow gravesite, had combined to destroy both soft and hard tissue. He also said a road-grading project could have scraped away some of the original gravesite.

However, he said the soil in the grave would hold "what is left organically of the Leatherman."

So the nails and some soil from the grave were placed in a new pine coffin topped with wildflowers and lowered into a newly dug hole on the cemetery's hillside, well above the road, after a Presbyterian minister read the 23rd Psalm.