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FRANCIS ABBOTT, THE HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Hermit of Niagara Falls HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS FRANCIS ABBOTT 1803 Francis Abbott was born in England. HERMITS NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Hermit of Niagara Falls “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX FRANCIS ABBOTT HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS 1816 As part of an investment project to develop power from the 50-foot cascade of water above the lip of Niagara Falls for use in “a thousand mills,” Goat Island was purchased by Peter and Augustus S. Porter. A posthumous edition of Pierre-Louis-Georges Du Buat’s work on hydraulics, as PRINCIPES D’HYDRAULIQUE ET DE PYRODYNAMIQUE VÉRIFIÉS PAR UN GRAND NOMBRE D’EXPÉRIENCES (Paris: Firmin Didot; the 1st volume analytical, the 2d experimental, and the 3d volume described as “Pyrodynamique,” that he had authored during his exile). DU BUAT, VOLUME I DU BUAT, VOLUME II DU BUAT, VOLUME III LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Hermit of Niagara Falls HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS FRANCIS ABBOTT 1818 Peter Buell Porter and Augustus S. Porter, managers of a general store in the town of Niagara in upstate New York offering food and clothing, liquors, grain, candles, hardware, lumber and leather goods, working with Parkhurst Whitney, owner of a hotel near Niagara Falls, had a stairway erected to take guests over the rocks to the base of the falls where they could pretend to their companions that they had gone, or persuade themselves that they had gone, “behind the cataract.” Above the falls, meanwhile, they constructed a bridge to Goat Island, on which, evidently, buried in the woods, there was a tiny log cabin that had been abandoned by a previous pioneer family. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Hermit of Niagara Falls HDT WHAT? INDEX FRANCIS ABBOTT HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS 1820 There was at this point not even a wall along the river side of Fort Niagara, and the interior of the post was completely exposed to fire from Fort Mississauga. Peace was its only prayer, and the 1820s would in fact be a time of peace along the Niagara River. The garrison of the fortress was small, only sufficient to guard the portage route around Niagara Falls. A similar garrison served the British for a similar purpose on the opposite shore. Peter and Augustus S. Porter instituted a ferry service across the Niagara River, and for tourists a series of gardens, walks, bridges, and staircases from which the sublimity of the scenery might best be appreciated. In this year two American whiskey smugglers went over the Niagara Falls (but not, apparently, on purpose). During this decade the “fashionable” tour, for Americans, was a string of attractive venues that followed quite closely the path of our most rapid economic development, up the grand Hudson lined with cliffs and with stately homes from New-York to Albany and the glamorous Saratoga and Ballston watering-holes of “the springs” and then west along the route of the Erie Canal to an experience of the sublime at Niagara Falls.1 This was referred to as “the northern route.” Since the 1820s, fashionable tourists had used their travels to stake a claim to status. But scenic tourism made the most powerful claim of all: not about money, but about gentility. In that sense, the cult of scenery was indeed a kind of “conspicuous aesthetic consumption,” as Raymond Williams termed it.... [I]ts most powerful offer was internal: the assurance that one truly deserved the social authority awarded to the “refined and cultivated” classes. During this decade the Crawford brothers would be monopolizing the tourist business to and through Crawford Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Initial publication of Salma Hale’s textbook THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FROM THEIR FIRST SETTLEMENT AS COLONIES TO THE CLOSE OF THE WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN IN 1815, employing as author identification “A Citizen of Massachusetts.” Alvan Fisher depicted the great horseshoe falls at “Niagara Falls.” HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS FRANCIS ABBOTT WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF 1. There is a very extensive literature on the 19th-Century aesthetic of the sublime. Steady yourself before you consult it by watching baseball games on TV until you are utterly bored out of your mind, then begin with Edmund Burke’s A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL. To study our changing attitudes toward the landscape, consult Paul Shepard’s MAN IN THE LANDSCAPE: A HISTORIC VIEW OF THE ESTHETICS OF NATURE (NY: Knopf, 1967) and Elizabeth McKinsey’s NIAGARA FALLS: ICON OF THE AMERICAN SUBLIME (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985). HDT WHAT? INDEX FRANCIS ABBOTT HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS 1829 June: Francis Abbott moved into the tiny log cabin, that had been abandoned by a previous pioneer family, in the woods of Goat Island above the “horseshoe” of Niagara Falls. He had with him a guitar, a violin, and some flutes, and lived with a dog and a cat. He would be in the habit of entertaining tourists by doing hours-long balancing acts on a wooden pier leading to Terrapin Tower that ended in a 12-foot beam 10 inches in width that projected above the rim of the falls. He would hang off the end of this beam for perhaps 15 minutes, kicking his feet into the plunging torrent. (Presumably he would leave a hat on the bridge to be filled by coins by the tourists?) He was said to write in Latin although the papers that would be found in his abode would be entirely blank. The locals would report that before making of himself such a tourist-trade “hermit” they supposed him to have toured Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France. After his eviction from the island by Peter and Augustus Porter, power investors, he would construct for himself another such cabin below the falls. CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Hermit of Niagara Falls “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS FRANCIS ABBOTT 1831 In this year or possibly in the preceding one, Thomas Cole painted the Niagara Falls being foregrounded by a couple of Indians in the Wilderness: Were the Indians sublimed by the experience? The painting does not tell us. HDT WHAT? INDEX FRANCIS ABBOTT HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS (It’s really unfortunate that the painter hadn’t foregrounded instead Francis Abbott, who lived in a log cabin near the famous falls and was generally regarded as the “hermit of the falls” — because dying is even more associated with these famous falls than wildness, and while bathing during this year, the hermit drowned or committed suicide at about the age of 28.) DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Hermit of Niagara Falls “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS FRANCIS ABBOTT June 10, Friday: When Field Marshal Baron Ivan von Diebitsch, commander of Russian forces in Poland, died of cholera, this temporarily halting the Russian advance. At about 2PM a passing ferryman witnessed Francis Abbott, “hermit of Niagara Falls,” enter the water below the American Falls. He appeared to be bathing, but after he went beneath the surface of the water, the ferryman did not again see him. His clothing would be found neatly folded. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day engaged in preparing for Y Meeting - In the Steam Boat came passengers our English friends Jonathon & Hannah Backhouse - who took quarters at David Buffums Elisha Bates & Doctor William Carey took quarters at Our house as we shared[?] with Aunt Nancy Carpenter & have the use of the rooms of the part of the house we hire of her & occupy when in Newport. Jeremiah Hubbard & his wife went to Job Shermans- & found all who came got quarters pretty readily which considering the state of things was a favour. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX FRANCIS ABBOTT HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS In New-York, Alexis de Tocqueville met with community leaders and had a conversation with Albert Gallatin concerning the ideals of American men and women in regard to chastity and adultery: I. Is it true, as I am told, that morals are pure? He. Conjugal fidelity is admirably kept. It’s not always thus with virtue before marriage. It very often happens in the country (not in our cities) that the extreme liberty enjoyed by the young people of both sexes has its drawbacks. The savage peoples who surround us carry disregard for chastity before marriage even further. They do not regard it as a moral obligation. HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS FRANCIS ABBOTT ALBERT GALLATIN June 21, Tuesday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 21 of 6 M / Engaged pretty much as yesterday, & among others we had the company of our interesting young friend Sarah H Jenkins from Hudson who being an aquaintance of our Son John we took the opportunity of writing to him by her & fowarding a few things which will be interesting to him. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX FRANCIS ABBOTT HERMIT OF NIAGARA FALLS The body of Francis Abbott, “hermit of Niagara Falls,” came to the surface on the eastern bank of the Niagara River at the point where it debouches into Lake Ontario near Fort Niagara.
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