Naturalist Training Center
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New
England Naturalist Training Center |
| Study of John Smith and the Erving Castle |
It is my strong inclination that John Smith was born on July 10, 1818 in Moore Green, Nottingham, England and not in Perth, Scotland in 1823. I think his early life, before his mother moved to Scotland to become or resume her work as lady’s maid to Lady McDonald, was difficult. I think John Smith’s life improved without comparison under the roof of Lady McDonald. I feel he preferred to erase those bitter years and say that he was born in Scotland on July 10, 1823 and only occasionally let slip that he was really born in Nottingham.
Although
his retelling of stories related to his mother remained clear and consistent
over time, the same can not be said about his father. John Smith claimed that
his father was a “marine in service of the crown” or a poor dirt farmer. It
is important to observe that his father is notably absent from his many stories,
compared to the number of times others are mentioned.
His
mother died while John was still young, perhaps around the time he was 10 years
old, give or take 4 or 5 years. John frames his mothers death by saying that his
parents were married at Greasley Abby, Nottingham, England and “It was at the
same she died.” At that time his maternal grandmother, who ran a boarding
house in Scotland, was put in charge of him. At his grandmothers death, circa
1827, Tibby Scugle, a long time boarder at his grandmother house, was put in
charge of him. I can’t help but
to think John may have become somewhat of an “artful dodger” type under
Tibby’s influence. By his own accounts Tibby was a frequent drinker and was in
touch with the seedier side of the street. He recalls an attempt by Tibby to
obtain money from John’s maternal uncle Robert Allen in “Bangshire”. After
many days of foot travel, the rouse ended with the police being called and John
and Tibby being thrown off the uncle’s land.
John
seems to have acquired a good education along the way, one that would serve him
well his whole life. John tells
that the tutor of Lady McDonald’s children also tutored him. He also claims
that he was able to attend “government” schools because his father was a
marine in service of the crown or because he was an orphan. In any case, he
received some training as a tradesman, specifically as a peddler. Upon
graduation from the “government” school he received a new suit of cloths,
some money and supplies (jewelry) to start him on his trade.
Additionally, he received 5 pounds and “a handsome” box from Lady
McDonald. John also states that he went to see his father, who had remarried,
and his father’s new wife gave him 10 pounds.
Nearly as soon as he began his life as a “packman” he changed the type of goods he sold and where he sold them. He found that the Scottish lowlanders weren’t as nice as the highlanders and that jewelry demanded frequent polishing where as dry-goods demanded little efforts in their upkeep. While a peddler in the Scottish highlands he met “Betsey”. He had gotten lost in a severe storm crossing the Grampian Mountains and was forced to take shelter at a farm called the “Elms”. Struggling through the night in the storm he became weak and chilled and the farmer’s daughter, Betsey, nursed him back to health at the farm.
John fell in love with her and her tender kindnesses, unfortunately he failed to tell her of his love. Once John recovered he needed to travel to Inverness to pick up more supplies and from there continue on his peddlers circuit. When he returned the next season he found that she had married an English cattle dealer and “run the border” (moved to England). His heart was broken and this set him on the path to become a hermit. Over the years John tells this story with many, many versions. One notable version is that he was starring in a play in Glasgow and asked Betsey to come see the play. His performance of a love scene was so well done that Betsey thought he was in love with the leading lady, not her. To complicate matters, John’s name was not on the playbill, for some reason it was the name of the leading lady’s brother. His authentic portrayal of a lover and the absence of his true name on the playbill inflamed suspicions in Betsey, she then and there broke off the engagement. Another version is that Betsey and John were both actors in a theater and her authenticity in her love scenes made John insanely jealous and he broke off the engagement. Pick your favorite.
The poignant events of his heartbreak lead John to begin his work as a hermit on the estates of nobles. It is important to understand that a hermit, in that time and place, was not at all what we consider a hermit of today. A hermit of those times was as much a part of a landed estate as was the groomsmen, maids and butlers. The hermit was a popular addition to many estates. The lord and his guests would visit the hermit, tucked off in some secluded area of the property. The hermit would entertain the guests with folktales and woodcraft and in return was provided with room and board. John even mentioned that there were professional hermit guilds, he was of the Red and White order where membership was earned by suffering a broken heart. During his times as a hermit he surely became versed in story telling, comfortable in the society of nobility, well read and skilled in stonework and woodcraft. Skills that he would later use in Erving. For nearly 25 years he worked on some six different estates, however he began to consider other means of opportunities.
As
luck would have it, he meet a group of friends immigrating to America and he too
decided to leave Scotland. They boarded a steamer called the “City of Cork”
and sailed for America. I believe
he left through Liverpool as he stated that I “paid my fare to Liverpool”.
After a very stormy passage he landed in New York City, May 1866. He didn’t
like the summer heat in New York City and decided to visit Boston. He traveled
by rail first to Springfield and then walked onto Boston. Once in Boston he
again found America’s cities too unpleasant and decided to walk down to the
docks and board the first ship bound for England. Along the way he passed a
boardinghouse where the landlady was singing a Scottish song. That song stopped
him in his tracks, ultimately setting him onto Erving; instead of back to
England. The woman turned out to be Scottish, she befriended John and convincing
him to stay in Boston. She suggested that John pick berries and nuts, and make
wreaths for the Boston markets and that the Locks Village area (Leverett) was
the place to collect them. During 1866 John did indeed go to Locks Village and
briefly lived in the caves at Rattlesnake Gutter in Leverett, picking berries
and the like and walking them back to Boston to be sold. That same year he found
the Hermit’s cave and made plans to move in the following spring. In an
account of his work he detailed that he made only a few dollars for a week’s
worth of picking and walking, but being that he needed little, $3.00 would stay
him very well.
The
area that he would later turn into The Erving Castle was, to John’s eyes,
filled with signs that he should live there. One sign was a spring of water that
ran mostly year round just one hundred feet to the east of the cave. He writes
that when he came across the spring it was surely a sign from God that he should
live there. He goes on to write that this spring poured from the rocks just like
the spring of water that Moses created when he smote the rock in the wilderness.
John was a very religious Baptist.
By
November of 1867, regardless of his best efforts to avoid detection, he was
discovered. Although John tells of a very frightening encounter, one that was
filled with dread for him, his discovery reads more like slapstick comedy.
John was making some additions or repairs to the wood plank wall he had
erected over the opening of the Hermits Cave, using a rock as a tool. He tossed
the rock over the edge of the cliff and by accident, nearly hit a man that was
at it’s base. The man, together with several others, was scouting a road
through the property. The workers ran away thinking that they had come upon a
highwayman’s hide-out and that their lives were in danger. John thought that
these were sheriff’s deputies come to throw him off the land as he was a
squatter on the property; later he obtained permission to live on the property.
Poor John spent a sleepless and cold night waiting for what he thought would be
arrest and jail for him in the morning. In several days the men, as expected,
returned. The men, Samuel Dirth, Henry Stimpson and Alfred Reynolds returned on
December 2, 1867. Upon meeting, the 4 men realized that there had been a
misunderstanding and that John was not a robber hiding out in the woods nor were
the men deputies. The men returned to town and told of the hermit living in the
woods.
That
meeting lead to, as John put it, “Visitors Pour in Upon Me. The next day a
company of ladies paid me a visit, bringing with them for my comfort, no small
quantity of delicacies and substantial provisions.” It seems that by a series
of accidents and chance encounters John found himself, once again, playing the
part of the classic European hermit; entertaining visitors and telling tales.
This time John controlled all the tales and entertainment. It is clear to me,
after reading and reviewing the many accounts about John Smith, given to us by
John Smith, the accounts get larger and more colorful as time goes on. I think
that John realized that he had a ready and willing audience and if he played the
part well it would be to his benefit. After all he did have a charm and mystique
about him, he was from a distant land, had an accent, knew nobility and lived in
the woods. At this time in history there had been an emergence of very
influential nature writers, John Burroughs, John Muir, Walt Whitman and others.
This emergence had helped to recreate what society perceived of nature. Nature
was no longer to be feared and dominated, but visited for its recuperative and
restorative powers. Nature was to be enjoyed for its beauty and spiritual
affects. Also, the general New England area was enjoying a booming industrial
economy and many people had more leisure time. Enter, John Smith The Hermit.
John’s timing could not have been better. According to an 1874 newspaper
account there had been 15,000 visitors to The Castle. How accurate is that
number? I don’t know. However, if you look closely at the old photographs of
the site you will notice that there was no grass on the ground, visitors had
trampled the area bare.
His successes were to be part of his undoing. The Hermits Castle property was cut up into “cabin lots” and put up for sale to those who might want to enjoy the area. To frame this event in some historical context, the same thing was happening in adjacent towns for similar reasons. The area of Montague known as Lake Pleasant was a popular religious retreat and the area of Northfield called “The Ridge” was also known for it’s religious retreats, both had undergone the same subdivisions. It was simply The Erving Castle’s turn to fall to the hand of development. However, the first and only person to purchase a lot was to unwittingly stem all further development. In 1877 Charles H. Thacher bought a lot and built a house “10 rods below the cave.” His cellar hole can still be viewed today at the site. After nearly 10 years of being lord of the manor, John had a neighbor. Although there is evidence that Charles H. Thacher, also known as, The Younger Hermit, and John Smith got along well, there were difficulties. Due to Thacher, John Smith moved out of The Hermits Cave sometime in the 1880’s. Apparently, Thacher was a cross-grained and difficult man, which lead to disputes with the guests and with John. After Thacher’s purchase, no other Cabin Lots were sold. John moved “1/4 mile down slope” from the cave and continued to live in a small, 16’ x 20’, cabin for approximately 20 more years.
Although there were many visitors to The Erving Castle over the years there remains two notable visitors who may yet help to document the life of John Smith. Around the time of 1872, during a tour of America, the Count and Countess of Meninsburgh, Prussia visited John Smith. Perhaps these notable visitors made mention of John in their personal journals or diaries. Also if we knew what these two nobles looked like they could be identified from the many unknown individual pictured at the site. In 1874 a landscape painter, Waldo E. Beaman visited the site. Although Beaman is by no means famous, there could be a landscape-sized painting of the site hanging in a museum somewhere.
We know that John liked his cats and had many over the years. His favorite cat was Toby. When Toby died John Smith grieved terribly and even had a marble headstone carved to mark the cat’s grave. Latter the Town of Erving would move that marker so that John and Toby could rest together in the town cemetery. John also liked to garden and had many flower gardens and at least one vegetable garden at the site. I suspect that the many low stonewalls that are present at the site today were the borders of his flowerbeds. I have also been able to document that he grew potatoes, onions, corn and hollyhocks. He knitted hats and gloves, made rugs and continued to collect wild edibles, all these where offered for sale at the Erving Castle. It seemed that he was able to subsist off the land with a little enterprise and a little help from his visitors, John mentions that the visitors left food for him and gave money for his cats.
The Town of Erving Report of 1896 inadvertently attests to the decline of The Erving Castle as well as to the health of John Smith. The report mentioned that C.H. Thacher had taxable property of “1 organ 30, 1 dwelling 100, land 8 1/2 a. 100 exempt.” And that John Smith was given $104.60 by the “Overseers of the Poor”, “Paid for support of…”
And so after 32 years on the property, John Smith, still loved by his visitors, in the Fall of 1899, was moved to the Town Farm in Montague so that he could be better cared for. He died at the farm on March 30, 1900. It is my hope that his spirit still walks The Erving Castle.