.In the winter of 1868 Marie Louise Perry, daughter of a well-to-do and respectable family living near Boston, eloped with a young man named James Wilson. The young lady had but recently graduated from one of the Boston schools, and was about 19 years old. Wilson was a railroad employee. The couple went to Jersey City, and were married. In the spring of the same year Wilson deserted his wife and went to parts unknown in company with a Miss Hall, daughter of his landlady. His wife learned that they had taken the Erie railway west, and she resolved to follow them, hoping to discover their whereabouts. She stopped at towns along the road, and when she reached Lordville, Delaware co., her money was exhausted, and she was taken sick with fever. She was removed to the poorhouse at Delhi at her own request. The above was substantially her story.

Having recovered her health at this place, it was supposed that Mrs. Wilson would at once communicate with her relatives and return to her home in Massachusetts; but she had made the acquaintance of Lucy Ann Slater, and, inexplicable as it may seem, the two formed a mutual affection so strong that they refused to be separated, not-withstanding the great difference in their character habits and antecedents. In the spring of 1869  both Lucy Ann and Mrs. Wilson disappeared from the county-house and were not heard of in two years. During the summer of that year a couple calling themselves Rev. Joseph Israel Lobdell and wife appeared in the mountain village of the western part of Monroe county, Pa. For two years they roamed about that region, living in caves in the woods, and subsisting on berries, roots and the charity of the people, until they became so great a uisance that they were arrested in Jackson township and committed to Stroudsburg jail. While in jail the discovery that Rev. Mr. Lobdell was a woman was made, and soon afterward a raftsman from this section chanced to be in Stroudsburg and informed the authorities that their prisoners were the missing paupers from Delhi. The Pennsylvania authorities returned them to their old quarters in Delhi forthwith. They remained here sometime, when they again ran away, and have since been roaming about in Pennsylvania, living in huts and caves and jails and county houses.

A gentleman from this place being in Aldenville, Wayne county, Pa., a few days since, found the pair domiciled in a bark hut near that place, and known there as man and wife. When their identity became known, the strange fact was disclosed that a lady who had been particularly charitable to the couple was years ago engaged to be married to Lucy Ann, the latter having spend some months near Bethany
dressed as a man. Her sex was discovered accidentally, and she had to fly the place in the night to escape being tarred and feathered. This was a short time before she entered the poorhouse at Delhi. There is on record now in the courts of Wayne county a document that was drawn by Mrs. Wilson, the companion of Lucy Ann, it being a petition for the release of her “husband, Joseph I. Lobdell," from jail on
account of “his” failing health. The pen used by the writer was a stick whittled to a point and split; the ink was pokeberry juice. The writing is faultless, and the language used a model of clear, correct and argumentative English – showing that the writer, now a voluntary outcast and the associate of an insane, foul and unsexed woman, is highly educated and capable of adorning the best circles.

Mary Slater, the daughter of the strange being whose history has been briefly given, has not escaped her share of misfortune – growing to attractive womanhood in the family of the kind farmer who rescued her from the life of a pauper, she incurred the hatred of a young man named Kent, who sought her hand in marriage and was refused for another. In August 1871, he planned and accomplished her abduction one dark, stormy night. She was drugged, grossly maltreated, and thrown into the Delaware river near Cochecton. She was washed ashore on an island, where she was found in a semi-conscious state by a riverman the next day. Taken to his house, she was restored to life, but not to reason, and unknown, she wandered into the woods, where she was found – a raving maniac, and nearly dead from hunger
and exposure – three days afterward, and restored to her friends. She in time recovered her mental and bodily health, only to learn that the young man she was to marry was her half-brother, being the illegitimate son of her father, Henry Slater, according to the testimony of people who professed to know.

The Wellsboro Agitator, Wellsboro, Pa., April 24, 1877

Contemporary Sources

1877: History of Meeker County, Minnesota. Chapter: Wild Woman's History--The Slayer of Hundreds of Bears and Wild-Cats, pp. 98 -  111.  AC Smith:  1877.

Lucy Ann migrated to Minnesota from Delaware County, teaching singing school to pay her way.  She spent several years there as a man, including some months guarding a claim with a man who slept under the same blanket with her and never realized her biological identity as a female. In 1858 her female sex was accidentally discovered and she was sent back to Delaware County.

 

1877: A Modern Romance: Strange Life of Unhappy Women. New York Times, April 8, 1877, p. 7

Lucy assumed the name of Joseph Israel  Lobdell and married Marie Wilson. They lived in caves in the woods in Monroe, Co. Pennsylvania, subsisting on berries, roots, and charity.

 

1879: Death of a Modern Diana: the Female Hunter of Long Eddy.  New York Times , October 7, 1879,  p 2.

This obituary was premature.  Lucy Ann Lobdell died in Binghamton, NY in 1912.