A century ago Archibald McArthur (1844-1925) was a celebrity. He arrived penniless in Dodgeville just after the Civil War but quickly became a wealthy young attorney. He dressed in the latest fashions, owned the finest horses and started a newspaper. For decades he was a prominent man about town.

But one day in middle age he had a conversion. He gave away all his finery, sold his newspaper, gave up the law, grew a beard, and became a vegetarian. He took a vow of poverty, shunned alcohol and tobacco, dressed in tattered overalls, and hunkered down in a tarpaper shack near the courthouse. When he did go out, it was to read poetry and philosophy in the village cemetery. He declared that he "preferred the companionship of dead persons to living ones" and claimed to regularly communicate with spirits.

In 1922, at age 78, McArthur abruptly bought an automobile, loaded his few possessions in it and drove himself to Florida. By then he was worth more than $250,000, equivalent to about $3 million today. He revised his will, leaving each of his surviving relatives only $5 and giving nearly all of the rest to a stranger who befriended him on a park bench.

McArthur never married, raised no children, had no close friends and never explained his motives. When he died, his body was brought back to Dodgeville and interred in the cemetery where he had spent years of solitary contemplation. Today a plain stone marks the last resting place of the Dodgeville Hermit.

- Wisconsin Historical Society 
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org

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