Ossining, N.Y.

As the snow begins to recede from the meager headstone with the wrong name on its bronze plaque, this is the question being asked about the homeless wanderer, dressed in a 60-pound leather suit, who died more than a century ago: How best to remember a man who spent his life, it seems, intent on being unknown?

This spring, a team of historians, geneticists, archaeologists and anthropologists will exhume the remains of the Leather Man, probably the most famous hermit to inhabit these parts. First noticed around 1856, the Leather Man, who fashioned his suit from discarded boots, wandered Westchester County and western Connecticut for decades, sleeping in caves and lean-tos, rarely speaking, accepting food and then walking on. From about 1883 to 1889, he traveled a never-changing 365-mile loop through at least 41 towns; he died in a cave near here on March 20, 1889.

What’s known about the Leather Man is almost entirely limited to what was observed during his walks, reported in thousands of articles in newspapers like The Deep River New Era, The Penny Press of Middletown, The New Milford Gazette and The Brewster Standard.

Image An 1888 photograph of the Leather Man by F.W. Moore. Credit... Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Everything else is a mystery. His headstone reads Jules Bourglay, but that was not his name. Nor is there any reason to believe it was Isaac Mossey, Rudolph or Randolph Mossey or Zacharias Boveliat, as he has sometimes been identified. He was said to have been born in Lyon, France, the son of a wealthy wool merchant who was driven mad by economic ruin and a broken heart. It was reported that he had vast real estate holdings; that he once had a thriving business in Poughkeepsie; that he might be Portuguese; that he was a devout Catholic; that he was a fugitive from justice; and that he was a black man. There is no proof that a word is true.