April is National Poetry Month, a fitting time to resurrect the memory of James Gates Percival (1795-1856). Long before Dickinson, Whitman or Longfellow, American students all read the eccentric Percival.

His first book of poems received rave reviews in 1820 but didn't pay the bills. Trained in science as well as literature, Percival was appointed state geologist of Connecticut and from 1835-1842, he personally investigated every square mile of that state.

Called "over-learned and lacking in practical judgment," Percival was so sensitive to moral issues that he refused to ride a horse with saddle sores and dismissed an assistant for throwing stones at birds. He lived in abject poverty, "conscientiousness unfitting him for business success," and shut himself off from the world.

In 1853 he came to Wisconsin and was appointed state geologist. He traveled 6,000 miles and descended into more than 200 mines during his research here. He also renounced his poetry (but was always pleased to hear a schoolboy recite it). Frontier residents who encountered him, "head bent, his eye cast downward, and with . . . his aspect of poverty, almost of squalor," called him Old Stone- breaker.

With his Wisconsin earnings, Percival built a peculiar house back in Connecticut. It had few windows, no front door, and resembled a bunker more than a home. He died in Hazel Green, however, before he could occupy it and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Though often too poor to buy food, he left a library of thousands of books which sold for $20,000 after his death.

- Wisconsin Historical Society www.wisconsinhistory.org