James at last!! Mystery Man of Evergreen Cemetery. Chapter Five

James Dow Sperry, our man of many mysteries has come to the light of understanding as to who he was and how his mystery will be forever. Born to a strict puritan family and a father who struggled to maintain a proper household for his family, James left home at the age of sixteen for the Adirondack Mountains to work as a lumberman. He joined an Indian tribe while there and remained until 1853. James’ younger brother Daniel, also disenchanted with is home life, left home at the age of twenty three or twenty four and followed James to the Adirondacks to pursue the life of a lumberman.

Not long after his arrival and working career began, Daniel was killed by a falling tree. His body was shipped home to be buried in the family plot. I would like to believe that upon Daniel’s death, James accompanied his body home and although the relationship between he and his father was strained, I see no lack of love for his mother or siblings. It would therefore seem due and reasonable for his return to ‘visit his mother’ around that time, to have been as an escort for his brother’s body. I find no mention of this and therefore cannot conclude it as fact, but it seems reasonable to assume given the timeline of events known.

In 1853, James went west to Wisconsin and we presume that he came to Menomonie to work for the Knapp, Stout and Company lumbering operation. There was recruiting done far and wide in order to fill the necessary manpower needs of this new and burgeoning venture. I feel it is reasonable to assume that given his background, James would have heard of the new venture and came to be a part of it. He would have first settled in Menomonie and could have been considered to be amongst the first of those pioneering spirits to help establish the town. We have found no record of his existence here and as such, the claim that he was a Menomonie Pioneer is dubious beyond his mere presence at the time.

There are several confusing incidents that are rumored to have happened during his time here. The first incident being that he was said to have come here with his brothers from southern Minnesota. James came west before any of his other family members and the reports from his family state that he came to Wisconsin. He may have certainly come through southern Minnesota, but there seems to be no reason for this to have occurred. I would expect that he came alone or with some people he met along the way, but certainly not with his brothers. The only logical answer to the rumor would be that he came to Prairie Farm with his brother to do some hunting. His brother Nathaniel along with his friend Rayne Parker could possibly have come through southern Minnesota and decided to visit James on their way to Rockford in 1857.

The scenario may have been that Nathaniel and Rayne stopped in Menomonie, met up with James who decided to take them to Prairie Farm for a hunting excursion. Nathaniel could have tried to convince James to come with them and James tiring of his insistence, hid from them until they left, giving him up for dead. I would assume that such an incident would have caused Nathaniel to write home and inform their parents and no such mention exists, so it is doubtful he was given up for dead, but they may have parted on bad terms. This could explain the seemingly unwelcome and short visit James made to Nathaniel in 1858 or 1859 and how James knew of where Nathaniel was living.

Sometime during his earlier years, James purchased some land north of present day Boyceville with three other partners. Richard Mills, W.W. Eastman, Paris Gibson and James Sperry owned the small parcel of land but it was under mortgage. On March 14, 1870, they were forced under court order to sell the land to pay for the debt owed. Other than this document, there is no real paper trail on James Sperry.

The second rumor comes from his obituary that James was visited in 1890 by his brother Isaac, who tried in vain to convince him to come back to civilization. This could not have been anyone other than Anson since by this time, all other brothers had died. There is a time when Anson may well have had the opportunity to visit James. This would have been between the first unsuccessful run for County School Superintendant, and the trip to Colorado to run the mines. There is no mention of this trip or meeting in Anson’s memoirs and although unlikely, it could have occurred. The other possibility is that the rumors were simply unfounded. This is one of the rumors we will never know the truth about.

The biggest curiosity and rumor is that James suffered from some love lost and as such scorned all women. While this may be true, I could find no such mention of this tragic incident and that James left home at the age of sixteen makes it dubious. He may have fallen in love while in the Adirondacks but the life as a lumberman and the member of an Indian tribe make it unlikely unless he fell in love with an Indian woman which wouldn’t seem to have turned him against all others. The other opportunity would have been while here in Menomonie before he moved to Prairie Farm which once again, we have no history of and one would expect such an event would have been part of the local gossip at the time. A more reasonable thought, in my opinion would be that he was a misogynist and that no certain event caused his dislike for the female personage.

James moved up along the water route hunting and trapping until his death. It seems reasonable to me that if he were present at the death of his brother in the Adirondacks, James might have avoided the actual lumbering operations and instead chose to exercise his skills as a hunter and trapper to help supply the camps with food and hides. Following the lumber camps north as the woods were cleared and living in the wilderness certainly would be expected of a hunter and trapper. James learned the ways of the Indians and his love for solitude and the need to be in the woods may have seemed strange even to the people of that time which explains why he was considered a hermit. He seemed to have no dislike for his fellow men as was testified by those who knew him and held him in high regard.

James’ visit to his brother Nathaniel in 1858 or 1859 exemplified his high regard for family that never seemed to wane. He went there to save his brother from possible harm and doing so, given the circumstances, could have meant bloodshed and possible death for James. That kind of love is the kind that never dies or can be given up. Anson gives mention of the letters that James always sent home to their mother, further sign of a man who has not given up civilization to live in solitude. I see James more as a man who preferred to live amongst the animals and the trees rather than finding some comfort amongst the walls and streets of town. He found his spirituality in the openness of the world around him as opposed to the confines of a church or the strict Puritanism of his youth.

James took ill and sent word to his family that he was dying. Word reached Anson and by the time Anson arrived, James had died. Anson took to the task at hand and made certain that James had a Christian burial and that his affairs were made in order before he presumably hurried back to make the County School Supervisor election. Unfortunately for Anson, he missed his opportunity to get reelected and remained home to continue his work. Anson left Louis Smith Tainter in charge of the estate James left behind. There were bills to be paid, accounts to settle and Louis Tainter was in charge of the bank which held James’ money. It would be several months before the estate was completely settled and the courts satisfied. There would have been no reason for Anson to have stayed for this to happen and his busy life kept him from returning.

As stated earlier, Anson felt a duty to his brothers and returned nearly 15 years after James’ death to place the memorial stone that he was not able to do when James died. My feeling is that Anson came to Menomonie to seek closure about his brother. Here is where the bank that Tainter ran was and with the grave site so far away in the middle of nowhere, he sought to find out about his brother where civilization was. He managed to find some ‘old timers’ who knew James and spoke of him in high regard. I envision James seeking out a headstone locally and relating the story of his brother in short terms, had the stone carved as we see it. Anson certainly loved his brother and desired to leave a proper memorial in a proper place of notice.

It would not have been difficult to learn that Evergreen Cemetery would have been the place of Civil War veterans, pioneers and people of note. Anson would have wanted all of the people here to know how proud he was of his brother. He chose a site high up on the hill near others of noteworthy regard and here had his memorial placed to a brother he barely knew, but loved so dear.

If it were not for the exemplary works and life of Anson Martin Sperry, James Dow Sperry would have certainly drifted off into obscurity. If it were not for the love of Anson, James would never have become the mystery and thereby the story we can tell of him now. Anson’s love for his brother placed a memorial marker in a place of prominence so that one day we would know the man he revered though he knew him so little in his own lifetime. There remain a few minor mysteries around James, but no more than around anyone who keeps their life to themselves. James is an amazing person in his own right, a child who left home to seek his life alone and lived it honorably. His brother gave him the honors and made him, in some ways, larger than life in the mystery he created for us to solve.