Category: United States

The Catholic archdiocese of Philadelphia (USA) gave canonical status to a hermit in 2001. Details at: http://www.mailutilities.com/news/archive/85/1551.html. The article mentions his life in a rundown urban area, his daily routine, and his minimal livelihood. A photo of hermit Richard Withers is on the Images of Eremiticism: Hermits page of Hermitary.

The National Park Service (U.S.) has a couple of pages on historical hermits who lived on the remote Apostle Islands in Wisconsin, near Lake Superior. One was historically identified as William Wilson (http://www.nps.gov/apis/hermit.htm); the other was a Norwegian immigrant, John Nelson (http://www.nps.gov/apis/nelson.htm).

An interview with the hermit Fr. Dunstan Morrissey entitled “Your Cell Will Teach You Everything” was originally featured in Parabola magazine. It was edited and published in Catholic Digest, and is available at: http://www.catholicdigest.org/stories/200101044a.html. There is also a very nice picture of Father Dunstan, too.
NOTE: The article is no longer available, only a summary. Go to www.catholicdigest.org then Back Issues, then Issues/Articles, then January 2001. Scroll down to summary at page 44. The photograph, however, is on our Images of Eremiticism section under Hermits.

(Added Sept. 2) More information about Fr. Dunstan and Sky Farm is available in Laura Chester’s book “Holy Personal: Looking for Small Private Places of Worship (Indiana University Press, 1999). A snippet of (real audio) video is available from NewMorning TV at http://www.newmorningtv.tv/todaysshow_112102.jsp. Scroll down to “Sacred Spaces.”

(added August 18, 2010: this article from the <i>Mendota Reporter</i> summarizes the life and death in 2009 of Fr. Dunstan. URL: http://www.mendotareporter.com/V2_news_articles.php?heading=0&story_id=2901&page=81

Robert E. Harrill, called the “Fort Fisher Hermit,” was a popular hermit near Wilmington, North Carolina, from 1955-1972, receiving and entertaining visitors in the abandoned sea-side military bunker that he called home. He is the subject of several books and a documentary film. Two Web sites are: “Fort Fisher Hermit” at http://www.carolinabeach.com/history/memory/hermit.htm and “The Hermit Story” at http://www.hearlshill.freeservers.com/the_hermit_story.htm. There is a collection of Harrill’s manuscripts at the Library of East Carolina University: http://www.lib.ecu.edu/SpclColl/ead/vault/manuscripts/0428.html

An 1829 pamphlet chronicling the life of a black fugitive slave who escaped the U.S. South to New England, where he became a hermit, is reproduced by the Libraries of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The Web site is: http://docsouth.unc.edu/robert/robert.html.