The World of Hermits in Gettysburg and Beyond

No doubt many subscribers to Military Images have toured the Gettysburg battlefield. But how many have made their way to Wolf Hill, southeast of town? Part of the area is now national park land—a less-traveled site and the scene of skirmishing—that once hosted a hermit named George Thomas, known locally as “Herr Thomas.” A German immigrant, he made his way to Gettysburg and, by the early 1890s, was living a hermit’s life on Wolf Hill. The timing is notable: veterans from across the country were returning to the field to remember youth, service, and sacrifice. One wonders whether they encountered the “Hermit of Wolf Hill” as they walked the grounds.

Thomas appears in I Have Never Minded the Loneliness: Hermits and Their Stories by Timothy Renner—illustrator, author, musician, and co-creator of the Strange Familiars podcast, which explores weird-but-true histories.

I Have Never Minded the Loneliness profiles 37 hermits from the 19th and 20th centuries—people who chose seclusion to seek spiritual connection and solace in nature’s rhythms.

Renner, who has explored hermitage in his own life, refers readers to an 1851 quote by naturalist and essayist Henry David Thoreau: “My profession is always to be on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas in nature.”

Through words, photographs, and illustrations, readers meet voyagers with evocative nicknames—the Drummer Boy of Shiloh, the Hermit of Mosquito Pond, the Emperor of the Rockies, the Giant of the Adirondacks, the Hermit Queen of Happy Hollow, and more.

The accounts of these hermits will transport you to another time—to nature’s operas far from the bustle of the wider world.

Pick up a copy. Highly recommended.

I Have Never Minded the Loneliness: Hermits and Their Stories
By Timothy Renner
333 pages
Dark holler Arts
Softcover