In 1854, Lucy Ann Lobdell, the 17-year-old daughter of an old lumberman living at Long Eddy, on the Delaware River, was married to George Slater. She was known far and wide as an expert shot with the rifle, not only at the target, but in hunting the wild game for which that part of the valley was then famous. After a year of married life, Slater deserted his wife, leaving her in destitute circumstances, with an infant two months old. Her parents were very poor, and unable to give her a home. They were willing to relieve her of the care of her child, however, and she finally placed it in their charge. She then dressed herself in male attire and disappeared.

Soon afterward, a young man of prepossessing appearance opened a singing school in the village of Bethany, Wayne county, Pa. He gave his name as Joseph Lobdell, and became a great favorite among the young women of the village, nearly all of whom joined his singing class. He was a good singer and violinist, and had a fair knowledge of music. Before the term of his school was over he became engaged to one of his pupils, the daughter of a leading citizen of Bethany. The day was set for the wedding. News of the presence of the young singing master in Bethany reached Long Eddy, and suspicion was aroused there that he was the missing Lucy Ann Slater, whose musical accomplishments were well known in her native place. Investigation proved that the suspicion was correct. The information was obtained by a young man of Bethany, who had been a rival of the music teacher for the hand of the young lady. He told the secret to a few companions, and they planned to capture the teacher on a certain night and tar and feather her. This became known in some way to the girl Lobdell was to marry, and, notwithstanding her mortification, she warned the teacher of her danger so that she escaped from the town by night and returned to long Eddy, where she resumed female attire for a short time.

Early in 1856 she again put on male attire, and for eight years lived the life of a hunter, roaming the forest of Sullivan, Delaware, Wayne, and Pike counties. She rarely came into the settlements, and then to exchange game and furs for ammunition and necessary supplies. According to her subsequent statements, her wild life was one of thrilling adventure and privation. Her narrow escapes in contests with wild animals and her sufferings from cold, hunger, and sickness during her career in the woods she recorded in a book entitled “The Life and Adventures of Lucy Ann Lobdell, the Female Hunter of Long Eddy.” She returned to Long Eddy in 1864, broken in mind and body. Her child had been placed in the poorhouse at Delhi. She once more resumed the habiliments of her sex, and, after wandering about the valley for a year or two, an object of pity and charity, she also went to the almshouse.

In the summer of 1868 a young woman giving the name of Marie Louise Perry became an inmate of the poorhouse at Delhi. She was in poor health, a stranger in the county, and evidently well educated. She declined to give any account of herself, but it was learned a few months afterward that she was the daughter of well-to-do parents in a Massachusetts village, and was a graduate of a school in Boston. It was rumored that she had run away from home, married a man to whom her parents objected, and been deserted by him. This rumor she neither denied nor admitted to be true. An intimacy grew up between Miss Perry and Lucy Ann Lobdell. They became strongly attached to one another, although their habits, character, and antecedents were so widely different. Learning that the almshouse authorities had informed her parents of her where-abouts, the girl resolved to leave the institution, and Lucy Ann Lobdell accompanied her. They were not heard of again in Delaware county until they were discovered in the Strawsbury jail, masquerading as man and wife, and were returned to the Delhi poorhouse. They remained there but a short time, and then left the place again and resumed their roaming life in the woods, insisting on every occasion that they were man and wife. A marriage ceremony between them had been performed in 1869 by a Wayne county Justice of the Peace, he being ignorant of the fact that the parties were both women. In 1876 they appeared together in Honesdale, Wayne county. The “husband,” it was then seen, was violently insane, but the “wife” clung to him with an affection that was remarkable. For the good of both, the lunatic was placed in jail. The grief of the other at the separation was pitiful, and she begged to be allowed to share her “husband’s” cell. There is now on the court records of Wayne county a document which was drawn by the unfortunate companion of Lucy Ann Lobdell at this time. It is a petition for the release of her “husband, Joseph I. Lobdell,” from jail, on account of his failing health. It was written with a split stick for a pen, with ink made from the juice of poke berries. It reviewed the case of the “Female Hunter” from a psychological standpoint. The language used was clear, correct, and logical, showing that the writer, though a voluntary outcast, was a person of superior education. “Joseph I. Lobdell” was finally released from jail, and the couple then took up their residence on a small farm in Damascus township, Wayne county, where they lived peaceably until 1880, when the “husband” wandered away, and finally became a member of the Delhi poorhouse again. She is now in the Willard Asylum for the Insane. The “wife” still lives on the Damascus farm, and insists that her name is Mrs. Joseph I Lobdell.

Lucy Ann Slater’s child, a daughter, was taken from the Delaware county poorhouse soon after her mother became an inmate there, and was adopted by a wealthy Wayne county farmer. She grew up an attractive young woman. There lived in the vicinity a dissolute young man named Kent, who tried to win the girl, but she rejected him. One night in the summer of 1871, as she was returning from an errand at a neighbor’s, she was seized by two men, gagged, and thrown into a wagon, which was driven away toward the Delaware River. A thunderstorm came up, during which the girl became unconscious. Where she recovered she was lying on the shore of an island in the Delaware River. She had evidently been thrown into the river, but had been washed ashore. She was discovered and taken off the island by a man named Page. She was so dazed that she was unable to give any account of herself, and was permitted to wander away from the locality. When she was missed from her home a search was at once begun for her. She was found three days afterward wandering in the woods, a raving maniac. It was days before she recovered her reason. She could remember nothing except being kidnapped and hearing the roar of water. She said she recognized Kent’s voice as that of one of her abductors. He was arrested, but escaped from jail and left the country. The girl has since been married.

 

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.