Joseph Root (1860 – 29 October 1912) was a well-known

hermit A hermit, also known as an eremite (adjectival form: hermitic or eremitic) or solitary, is a person who lives in seclusion. Eremitism plays a role in a variety of religions. Description In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Ch ...

who lived in what is now

Presque Isle State Park Presque Isle State Park () is a Pennsylvania State Park on an arching, sandy peninsula that juts into Lake Erie, west of the city of Erie, in Millcreek Township, Erie County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The peninsula sweeps northe ...

in Pennsylvania. Born in

Erie, Pennsylvania Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 ...

, Root lived on Presque Isle without any modern conveniences. He has sometimes been nicknamed "the King of the Peninsula" or "the King of Presque Isle".

Life

Presque Isle State Park

Root moved away from his childhood home to Presque Isle while still in his adolescent years. As one of the first permanent inhabitants to the peninsula (Presque Isle wasn't declared an official state park until 1921), he built a number of shacks in various parts of the peninsula to suit the particular activity of any given day. There was also a lighthouse keeper who resided at the park during the late 19th century and he often had his tomatoes swiped by Root. Root built his shacks out of

driftwood __NOTOC__ Driftwood is wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves. In some waterfront areas, driftwood is a major nuisance. However, the driftwood provides shelter and fo ...

, packing crates and anything else that washed up on shore. Root hunted and fished to support himself in the harsh environment he would become fond of raw fish in particular. There was a rumor that a dead cow once washed up on the shore of Presque Isle and Root fed off of it for an entire week. Root also ate local wild plants such as wild

cattail ''Typha'' is a genus of about 30 species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the family Typhaceae. These plants have a variety of common names, in British English as bulrush or reedmace, in American English as reed, cattail, or punks, in ...

s, duck potatoes,

spatterdock ''Nuphar advena'' (spatterdock or cow lily or yellow pond-lily) is a species of ''Nuphar ''Nuphar'' is a genus of aquatic plants in the family Nymphaeaceae, with a temperate to subarctic Northern Hemisphere distribution. Common names include w ...

rice Rice is the seed of the grass species '' Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima'' (African rice). The name wild rice is usually used for species of the genera '' Zizania'' and '' Porteresia'', both wild and domesticat ...

, blueberries,

dewberries The dewberries are a group of species in the genus ''Rubus'', section ''Rubus'', closely related to the blackberries. They are small trailing (rather than upright or high-arching) brambles with aggregate fruits, reminiscent of the raspberr ...

, and wild strawberries. Root was a favorite with local children, entertaining them with

ventriloquism Ventriloquism, or ventriloquy, is a performance act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) creates the illusion that their voice is coming from elsewhere, usually a puppeteered prop known as a "dummy". The act of ventriloquism is ve ...

and stories about his "friends". These friends were called the ''Jee-Bees'' (alternatively known as either ''GBs'' or ''jeebies''); they were invisible nature spirits who could accurately predict the

weather Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloud cover, cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmos ...

. During long winter nights, Root would walk to Erie to spend some time at the local

poorhouse A poorhouse or workhouse is a government-run (usually by a county or municipality) facility to support and provide housing for the dependent or needy. Workhouses In England, Wales and Ireland (but not in Scotland), ‘workhouse’ has been the ...

. Locals could sometimes see him walking on State Street with either a

fishing net A fishing net is a Net (device), net used for fishing. Nets are devices made from fibers woven in a grid-like structure. Some fishing nets are also called fish traps, for example #Fyke nets, fyke nets. Fishing nets are usually meshes formed by ...

or a cane pole.

Business ideas and later life

One of his business ideas was to build a

balloon A balloon is a flexible bag that can be inflated with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, and air. For special tasks, balloons can be filled with smoke, liquid water, granular media (e.g. sand, flour or rice), or light so ...

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. ...

, and use the prevailing westerly winds to transport travelers across state lines to Buffalo, New York. Root was committed to the Warren State Hospital for the Insane in

Warren A warren is a network of wild rodent or lagomorph, typically rabbit burrows. Domestic warrens are artificial, enclosed establishment of animal husbandry dedicated to the raising of rabbits for meat and fur. The term evolved from the medieval A ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, on 14 April 1910 after a short stay at an Erie-area poorhouse. Stories suggest he was sent there because authorities feared he'd claim the peninsula as his home through

adverse possession Adverse possession, sometimes colloquially described as "squatter's rights", is a legal principle in the Anglo-American common law under which a person who does not have legal title to a piece of property—usually land ( real property)—ma ...

Legacy

Joe Root is remembered in the Erie, Pennsylvania, area as a colorful character and something of a symbol of Erie's history. A now-shuttered local restaurant, Joe Root's Grill, whose last day open for business was 30 September 2019, honored his name, as does a winter golf tournament, Joe Root's Frostbite Open (sponsored by local businesses, one of which was the restaurant).

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Root, Joe 1860 births 1912 deaths 19th-century American people American hermits People from Erie, Pennsylvania