Joy Morgan Dey / Haunted Lake Superior
Hermit Island Mansion
Excerpted from Haunted Lake Superior: Ghostly Tales and Legends from the Mystical Inland Sea (Lake Superior Port Cities Inc., 2003).
Whether the ghost of a man named William Wilson treads Hermit Island in Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands is unclear, but the history of the place certainly has enough bizarre twists to make it possible that his ghostly presence may still be lurking there.
Located about two miles northwest of Madeline Island’s northern tip, Hermit is one of the smaller islands, but its size does not measure its importance in the development of the archipelago. Undoubtedly, its forested land had been visited by Native Americans from both La Pointe and the mainland, but the first recorded white settler was the hermit Wilson, who had been expelled from La Pointe in the 1850s, but seemed to better relish his solitary existence on the island that he selected as his home.
In his 1960 history book, La Pointe: Village Outpost, Hamilton Nelson Ross says that Wilson ran afoul of “King” John Bell, who tyrannized Madeline Island in various roles from magistrate to sheriff and as a person of influence with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Apparently, Bell and Wilson didn’t like one another to begin with and Wilson exacerbated that dislike by threatening to kick Bell’s dog. Bell vociferated his protest and challenged Wilson to a fist fight, the loser of which would forever vacate Madeline Island.
The streets of Bayfield were picked for the battle and the outcome was in considerable doubt for nearly the entire day, since both men were powerful and in their prime. Eventually Bell defeated Wilson, who stuck to the agreement by abandoning La Pointe and setting up on Hermit Island.
Crafting barrels for the fishing industry for his living, Wilson lived a nearly anonymous life at his lonely island outpost. A contemporary account of his death was penned years later by Benjamin G. Armstrong in a wonderful, out-of-print book called Early Life Among the Indians, published in 1892.
According to Armstrong, Wilson had asked him to buy a barrel of whiskey and bring it to Armstrong’s home on nearby Oak Island. When Wilson came to get the whiskey, he asked if Armstrong would accompany him back to Hermit Island to help him get the barrel up to his house, saying he’d pay for the time and the whiskey there.
When they got to his island, Wilson prepared to pay Armstrong, who says in his account: “He brought out either three or four bags of coin in buckskin and one stocking-leg filled with coin and laid them on the table. From one he counted out the money for me and when he was finished he asked, ‘Is that enough?’ I told him it was and a little too much and gave him back the change.…”
Sensing Armstrong to be an honest man, the obviously unschooled Wilson asked him to count all his money and the amount was almost $1,300 – a king’s ransom in those meager frontier days.
In the winter of 1861, Armstrong heard that no smoke had been seen at Wilson’s home for several days and rowed over to La Pointe to report that unusual fact to the magistrate, the aforementioned John Bell, who indicated he had not seen Wilson for two months and would get a posse together to investigate.
They found Wilson’s corpse on the cabin floor, with all appearances pointing to murder as the cause of death. Recalling his audit of Wilson’s money from several years before, Armstrong told the judge about the treasure. A thorough search of the house and grounds turned up only about $60, which was hidden behind a clock. No record has surfaced that the buckskin bags or the stocking leg stuffed with money were ever recovered.
While the unnatural death of the hermit and the loss of his carefully acquired hoard would be reason enough for his spirit to continue its vigil on his island, the disturbance of his once peaceful abode by dozens of people looking for his loot over the next few years likely contributed to his unrest, since some accounts say that scarcely a square yard of the island escaped excavation by treasure hunters.
But the real disturbance of Wilson’s peace on Hermit Island was to come after it was acquired by the “brownstone king,” Frederick Prentice, a wealthy easterner who saw opportunity in the excellent brown sandstone found in the area. By the 1890s he had established the Excelsior Quarry on Hermit Island and settled 100 workers around it. The pit was the source of constant activity and noise. Old Wilson could not have been happy at the disturbance.
Then, in 1895, Prentice had an expensive, elaborate home built on the eastern shoreline preparatory to his marriage to a much younger eastern woman. According to reports, however, his bride took one look at her supposed new home and went straight back to New York the same day she arrived on Wilson’s island.
There were some who said old Wilson wasn’t much for women and that his spirit had soured her attitude toward the mansion so that she’d leave his island alone. Others claim that she was simply a spoiled little rich girl. Whatever the truth, the house was never really used by its builder and would be turned into a resort in the early 1900s. By the 1930s, old Wilson was having his way with the building that brought all those noisy, nosy visitors to his island. The building was abandoned, vandalized frequently and was finally razed, its fancy trim and gingerbread woodworking prematurely reduced to rubble by time, humidity and – perhaps – by the spirit of an old-time hermit who wanted to be left in peace.
Old Wilson’s spirit has had the last laugh, too, for his island is now part of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, which ensures that its regenerated forest and resulting tranquility will be protected from the noise and activity of development. Recreational visitors to his island apparently don’t bother him and his soul may have at last found peace.