The legend of the Bruce Lake hermit remembered 123 years later

If you didn't know before, you know now: National Hermit Week is held each year from June 13 to 20. Founded in 1996 by Dr. Eleece Jel, a former corporate educator and academic turned spiritually-minded contemplative and educator. Locally, Fulton County once had its own famous hermit that once made national headlines more than a century ago. 

In modern times the legend of a Lake Bruce hermit Harry N. Roach is forgotten history to most. Roach's ultimate fate, however, still remains a mystery to this day. 

The story was first made public by the Catholic Northwest Progress, who published a story on Sept. 5, 1902, claiming that several Indianapolis gentlemen had been exploring Northern Indiana Lakes on a fishing expedition when they first discovered Roach at Bruce Lake. Living as a recluse in a small cabin north of the lake, it was reported that Roach lived almost entirely off the wild by trapping and fishing, only occasionally visiting Winamac for the most necessary supplies. 

Despite the rugged lifestyle he appeared to live, the fisherman were impressed by 'the purity of his language,' saying Roach spoke like an educated gentleman. Eventually Roach confided in the traveling fishermen about his past, stating he had once been a prominent figure in national life serving as the private secretary of James G. Blaine, former Secretary of State under U.S. President James A. Garfield and U.S. President Benjamin Harrison from 1889 to 1892. Embittered against the world, Roach railed at society, it's hypocrisy and his story as he told it, was reportedly one of pathos and tragedy. Roach allegedly stated he separated from Blaine because of his own habits and hid himself in the Rocky Mountains before drifting to Bruce Lake around 1897. 

The fishermen said Roach had initially been reluctant to admit his identity and enjoined his visitors from betraying his hiding place, allegedly stating that he desired to end his life away from the world and that he had not even communicated with any of his relatives for many years prior. It was detailed that Roach had been past the age of 70 and his disdain on society came in 1878 when he was forced to resign as cashier of a Washington bank after his brother was charged with embezzlement. 

Roach allegedly claimed he was not given a public trial or chance to clear his name, engulfing his reputation in the blackness of a general assumption of his guilt. Roach stated he was never arraigned, however, and never was prosecuted by those associated with him in the bank, and complained that he fell as a scapegoat, made to suffer ignominy and disgrace so that others could escape penalty.

"Education sometimes polishes the exterior, but the interior poison of criminality, remains," Roach allegedly told the fishermen, further hinting that he possessed manuscripts that held dark secrets about prominent politicians and Washington society. He apparently takes pleasure in his implacable desire to humiliate those he says once derided and despoiled him of his honors, vowing to bury those secrets under the dirt floors of his rude log cabin. 

The Huntington Herald reported on June 17, 1905 that Roach once lived in a splendid home in Washington by had exchanged the glamour for a life of solitude at Bruce Lake, with no companions but his savage bulldogs and cats. The area was said to be surrounded by swale and marshes, and in summertime the waters of the marshes are covered over with a greenish-yellow slime and decayed vegetation that was the feeding ground of the wild water fowl and the auditorium of the croaking bullfrogs.

Roach's story caught both local and national attention with many newspaper men making the journey to the rural lake in hopes of an interview with the mysterious Lake Bruce hermit. As the years went on after Roach's initial discovery on the lake he continued to express to curious community members that he had no desire to communicate with former friends, family, or reporters, saying it was better that he should remain unknown. That did not keep the reporters away, however, and according to stories, each time a newspaper writer had dared to attempt a visit with the hermit was said to have made a frantic retreat, followed by the snarling and growling of the ferocious bulldogs Roach kept on his property, "ready to make hamburger steak of the calves of the fleeing visitor who seeks a story from the eccentric hermit of Bruce Lake."

Due to his reclusive nature some locals denied Roach's legitimacy at all, claiming the hermit had been crazed and fantasizing fiction from fact.

In November of 1907 the Plymouth Tribune reported that Roach was missing, another mystery that ended the story for the hermit's life publicly. Vanishing from his log cabin, many locals suspected Roach had fallen from his boat and drowned. Roach's mysterious disappearance was also reported in the Los Angelos Herald on December 20, 1907.  No evidence had been left at his cabin to indicate what had became of him and it wasn't long until Roach's became lost in history, a long forgotten story from Fulton County's past.