Leatherman

For more than 30 years in the late 1800s, the Leather Man - so-called because he dressed all in leather - walked a circuit bound on the east and west by the Connecticut River and the Hudson River.

Most accounts assert that he was from France and that his name was Jules Bourglay, but no one knew for sure because the Leather Man almost never spoke. He kept to a regular schedule, and households along his route anticipated his arrival and prepared food for him.

The Leather Man slept in caves, including one located in what is now Ward Pound Ridge Reservation and another on the Leatherman's Ridge property. He died on March 25, 1889, in Mount Pleasant and is buried nearby in Sparta Cemetery, in Ossining.