LIVING IN A CAVE by Benji Cossa
In the early 1800s William Wilson, known to some as Amos, was granted a pardon (an account involving an appeal to none other than Benjamin Franklin) exonerating his sister from the charge of murdering her children. Unfortunately, he could not stop the execution. The story goes that while she was struggling with the rope tight around her neck, Wilson appeared on the scene too late, throwing himself down in the mud below her feet, pardon in hand, only to have her life expire before his eyes. Some say his hair turned white from grief at that moment.
After this traumatizing event, Amos turned his back on society, and made a home for himself in what is now Indian Echo Caverns near the banks of the Susquehanna River. In this way he lived almost 20 years working at a nearby farm, writing an account of his life, and in prayer before his death, 1821. He was known the region and beyond as the Pennsylvania Hermit.
http://www.archive.org/stream/pennsylvaniaherm00phil#page/n27/mode/2up
