Here is an an amazing website called Fulton History where you can search actual New York newspaper articles from the 1795-2007. Within a couple of minutes, I found an article from 1879 in Newtown NY, filed under “Items of Interest”. I’ve included here a shot of the short article, accompanied by other stories in the same column. The other stories really put the “Old Leatherman” into the historical context of the time period.
(Click on the thumbnail to view the article, then click on it again to zoom)
Please feel free to send me anything of interest you’d like to share if you are doing your own research, and I’ll post it.
- Lead sent to me by “Jude” about the Nursery Rhyme: “Misty Moisty Morning”
One misty moisty morning,
When cloudy was the weather,
I chanced to meet an old man,
Clothed all in leather.
He began to compliment
And I began to grin.
How do you do? And how do you do?
And how do you do again?
In a newspaper account I found while searching Fultonhistory.com, it was thought that a local person had written this rhyme about “The Leatherman”. I had known it as a Nursery Rhyme, but now through Jude’s lead, I have just learned it can be traced back to around 1680. Here’s the link to a scan of the original from the University of Oxford catalog, called “The Wiltshire Wedding Between Daniel Do-well and Doll the Dairy-Maid: With the Consent of her Old Father Leather-Coat, and her dear and tender Mother Plodwell.
