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Overview
In the fall of 1915, an educated woman named Alice Gray traded her life in bustling Chicago for a solitary journey in the remote sand hills of northwest Indiana along Lake Michigan. Living in a fisherman’s shack, she measured herself against nature rather than society’s rigid conventions. Her audacity so bewitched reporters and a curious public that she became a legend in her own time—she became “Diana of the Dunes.”
Over a century later, the story is still a popular folktale, but questions remain. Who was Alice Gray? Why did this Phi Beta Kappa scholar leave Chicago? What happened to her soul mate, Paul Wilson? In this first-ever book about Diana of the Dunes, the mystery of Alice Gray is revealed by those who knew her and through new research. Excerpts from her dunes diary are published here for the first time since 1918. In these pages, rediscover the legend of Diana of the Dunes—and learn the truth.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781614230465 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing SC |
| Publication date: | 01/23/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 163 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Ghost Story: Diana of the Dunes
Most people first hear about Diana of the Dunes through some variation of a ghost story. The ghost story presented here is adapted from several versions printed in books and online. In telling these tales, the popular mythology about Diana of the Dunes is perpetuated, but most of the facts regarding Alice Gray's life are either exaggerated or completely fabricated. In the chapters following, such distortions are revealed and set right, as much as possible.
A woman dressed in a long, flowing, white gown is often seen at night, drifting through the pine trees at the top of a sand ridge or floating just above the surface of Lake Michigan at water's edge — but then she quickly disappears. The shadowy figure is thought to be the ghost of Diana of the Dunes, a woman who lived long ago in the Indiana sand hills.
Diana of the Dunes was discovered in the summer of 1916, when a lone fisherman trolling along the Indiana shore of Lake Michigan spied a young, beautiful woman splashing naked through the waves. After swimming, she danced like a nymph on the beach to dry off. Startled and aflutter, the angler told his wife, who shared the gossip with friends and neighbors. The story traveled swiftly through the region. Soon other fishermen, their curiosity piqued about the mermaid, began to drop their lines along the shore near her shack hoping to see the mystical creature. Newspaper reporters ventured from Chicago to pounce on the story. They called her Diana of the Dunes, a strange hermit girl who lived in an abandoned fisherman's shack and spoke to no one.
Diana of the Dunes was, in fact, Alice Mabel Gray, the daughter of a successful Chicago physician. She was well educated, cultured and had traveled the world, but she chose to live by herself in the dunes, an area she had often visited as a child.
What mysterious circumstance propelled her to lead such a lonely life? It was rumored that she ran to the wilderness of the dunes to escape a tragic love affair. But the harder she fought for her privacy, the more reporters hounded her.
Along the way, Diana married Paul Wilson, who was a giant of a man. He had a reputation as a rough drifter and a petty thief. When a grisly murder took place near their shack, Paul was the prime suspect, but his guilt was never proved.
Paul often treated Diana badly. She died in 1925 from uremia, brought on by stomach injuries later found to be the result of a beating at his hand, just after she had given birth to their second daughter.
Before she died, Diana asked Paul to cremate her body and cast her ashes to the north wind from Mount Tom, the tallest dune in the region. He refused, and she was buried in a potter's field in Gary, Indiana.
Paul was later shot trying to escape from a California prison, where he was serving a sentence for auto theft.
Did Diana ever find the solitude she sought? Maybe not while she was living, but perhaps in death Diana is finally able to wander peacefully among her beloved dunes.
CHAPTER 2Chicago Childhood
One of the more important of these was the Beers family who located here after leaving their native New England. They were, in fact, part of that important migration of Yankees to Chicago which had so much influence on the cultural and economic life of the early city. — Chicago: City of Neighborhoods
The 1880s through early 1900s was an exciting and volatile time in the history of Chicago. One of the nation's largest metropolitan regions, a burgeoning Chicago then ran second only to New York in population. Marked by bold infrastructure progress and landmark efforts to advance social justice, the turn-of-the-century years featured rapid-fire events and banner headlines.
Southwest of the city, a working-class community was just becoming established. In its earliest days, what is now the McKinley Park neighborhood was once, briefly, called Canalport. The locale's terrain was primarily prairie and swamps. When most of the area was annexed by Chicago in 1863, however, developers awoke to its potential.
Even so, the most dramatic growth for the community occurred after the infamous Chicago fire of 1871. Factories and steel mills, twenty-seven brickyards, realestate companies and immigrants poured into the area. Block after block of "workmen's cottages" popped up, the houses closely situated and lined up like dutiful sentinels. A historic survey noted "ready jobs in these local factories encouraged continued residential growth. North of 35, land was subdivided and platted for cottages much like the one remaining at 3445 S. Hermitage."
In that particular house, 3445 South Hermitage (although the street was then called Bloom), Alice Mabel Gray — who would one day become known as Diana of the Dunes — was born on March 25, 1881, the fifth of six children. Her parents were Ambrose and Sallie Gray. Alice's sisters, Leonora and Nannie, were much older than Alice — fourteen and eleven — while her brothers, Hugh and Harry, were nine and four. The youngest Gray child, Chester, was born three weeks before Alice's second birthday.
Following the lead of other family members who had migrated earlier from Fairfield, Connecticut, the Grays moved to the Chicago region in 1873, arriving just two years after the Chicago fire. They came from Bean Blossom, in Brown County, Indiana. Alice's uncle, Samuel Beers, married Emily Gray, sister of Ambrose. He paid for the Grays' new, single-story home. At least for a few years, until the older girls were married, the small, frame house — measuring less than one thousand square feet — must have been quite busy with six children underfoot.
Beers continued to own it until 1900, when he sold it to Sarah Gray, a second sister of Ambrose (she sold it out of the family seventeen years later).
THE NEIGHBORHOOD
During the thirty years the Grays occupied this address, the community was tightly woven. Doctors, relatives, future relatives and neighbors — some of whom later appear as official witnesses to Gray family documents and petitions — all lived or worked within a few blocks. Along with Alice's extended family, large numbers of Germans, Irish, Swedes, English and other ethnic groups settled the area.
Samuel Beers was one of four Beers brothers, at least two of whom lived within a block or two of the Grays. According to the Beers's family records, in the mid-1800s, their father, Simeon Beers, purchased five hundred acres of land in south Chicago and established a cattle ranch and farm. McKinley Park historians claim he sold the property for housing developments; family genealogists say the property sold for expansion of the stockyards. Given the acreage and the proximity of the meatpacking industry to employee housing, it may well have become both business and residential property.
In any case, local historians honor the Beers family as founders of McKinley Park.
Alice's neighborhood closely bordered Chicago's Back of the Yards and Bridgeport areas, where stockyards and meat packaging sites stretched for city blocks on end. The stench from the stockyards, which began permeating daily life fifteen years before Alice was born, proved a constant annoyance to those who lived anywhere near it. The Illinois Labor History Society describes the adjacent industry this way:
On the South Side of Chicago, from 39th Street to 47th Street, and from Halsted to Ashland Ave., was the largest livestock market and meat processing center in the world. Approximately one mile square, it served the nation's great meat packing companies and many smaller ones located in the surrounding area. The "stockyards smell," which the breezes spread for many miles into residential areas, near and far, could be obnoxious; but people said the smell meant work.
The stockyards produced hazardous living conditions for myriad reasons, but one in particular ran along the eastern boundary of Alice's neighborhood. A southern branch of the Chicago River became a dumping ground — an open sewer — for waste from the stockyards and other local industries, including steel foundries and brickyards. It earned a legendary reputation as Bubbly Creek due to spontaneous, gaseous eruptions from the thick, murky water.
In the decade leading up to 1900, the streets of Alice's neighborhood, which had been dirt, were packed down with rock, and sewers were installed.
McKinley Park earned its name following the dedication of a new park that debuted in 1901. It was named for President William McKinley, who was assassinated just before it opened.
SCHOOLS
Both families, the Beerses and the Grays, originated in Fairfield, Connecticut. They continued to live near each other in Chicago, which meant the young cousins attended grammar and high schools together. Indications are that noneof Alice's sisters or brothers furthered their studies at the university level, although at least one of her female cousins, Lila E. Beers, graduated from Vassar College and medical school. She was the daughter of Samuel Beers.
Alice likely spent her grammar-school years at Brighton (later renamed Longfellow) School, located at the corner of West Thirty-fifth and Winchester Streets. Built in 1880, it is considered one of Chicago's oldest public schools. Mentions of Alice's later, voracious penchant for reading and borrowing library books are consistent throughout her dunes history. In that case, it seems fitting that after long and repeated demands from the modern community, a McKinley Park Branch of the Chicago Public Library finally opened in 1995 on the site where Alice's former grammar school once stood; the school was razed to make way for the new facility.
Historical proceedings of the Chicago Board of Education document Alice's 1897 graduation from South Division High School, then located at Twenty-sixth Street and Wabash Avenue, eight blocks from her house. South Division tended toward liberal educational philosophies, with an emphasis on classical studies. Perhaps this is where Alice first discovered her love of reading and her admiration for Lord Byron's poetry, her curiosity about the starry heavens and her ability to work through challenging mathematical problems. All played key roles in her later life. Three years after Alice's graduation, the high school celebrated its twenty- fifth anniversary. An article in the Chicago Tribune touted South Division's "remarkable" history, noting its status as the second-oldest high school in the city. "Many of Chicago's most prominent citizens and celebrated men have been graduated from this school. ... The history of the South Division high school lies parallel with the progress and growth of Chicago since its rejuvenation in the early '70s."
The school prided itself on allowing students to work at their own pace and focus on particular subject areas:
From a rigid and prescribed course of study formerly laid down for all students it has now adopted a system which permits the students to choose certain courses of study and to specialize in these alone.... Mr. Jeremiah Slocum, the school's first principal ... is well known throughout the entire West as an educator of advanced liberal views.
Records from this early period could not be found in Chicago Public Schools archives at the time of this writing, so Alice's particular studies or extracurricular activities during her high school years are unknown. However, it appears she was among the most successful students. During the 1895 graduation ceremonies, two years before Alice's own, she received one of two Victor F. Lawson medals awarded for academic excellence.
At the age of sixteen, Alice graduated from South Division High School on June 24, 1897, in a ceremony held at Sinai Temple on Indiana Avenue and Twenty-first Street. She was the youngest in a class of ninety students. Among her fellow graduates was her cousin, Sylvester Beers. During the graduation proceedings, just one student addressed the audience — Alice M. Gray, who read an essay titled "The Old Teutonic Home." The keynote address was given by Dr. S.J. McPherson of the Second Presbyterian Church, who spoke on "The School, the Home and the Country."
After graduation, Alice enrolled at the University of Chicago for the following fall semester. She was destined for a long association with the university.
CHILDHOOD VIEW OF CHICAGO
Although she may have been oblivious by virtue of her age, Alice was a young child when the nation's first skyscraper rose up in the heart of Chicago and when the infamous Haymarket Riot, a protest for workers' rights, resulted in the deaths of eight police officers. She was eight years old when activist Jane Addams opened Hull House, a pioneering settlement facility serving Chicago's growing community of immigrants.
The 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition invigorated the population. The six-month world festival graced Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance, stretching across six-hundred-plus acres of land near Lake Michigan. The Gray family lived about six miles south of the festival, but transit then was cumbersome. As millions of people from all over the world filtered through its gates, Alice, eleven years old, might have been among them, paying a child's fare of twenty-five cents. Perhaps she rode the world's first Ferris wheel and other carnival rides or meandered through the replica Street in Cairo to admire the souvenirs. She might have been amazed by the breathtaking display of electricity — yet uncommon in Chicago — and enjoyed Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, a popular encampment on an out-parcel near the official fairgrounds.
Despite its proximity, Alice likely did not visit the fair often, however. Hers was a working-class family, one that could not afford to own its home. In fact, circumstances would cause her father, Ambrose, to struggle financially until the day he died.
CHAPTER 3Ambrose and Sallie Gray
Just think, dear. I have never had a friend, except my mother, who died thirteen years ago.— Alice Gray
Although most accounts of Alice's family describe her father, Ambrose Gray, as a successful physician, he simply was not. This refutes, among other misconceptions, the notion that the Gray family was wealthy and that Alice left behind a privileged background when she settled in the Indiana sand hills. The mistake likely occurred decades ago when someone checked the Chicago directories and noted the listing of a physician by the name of Allen Gray. Because reporters harped on her impressive education and refined manner, the first researchers may have concluded Alice's father was this Allen Gray, not "A." Gray, the resident listed as a "laborer."
In fact, the Grays lived on a sparse income. A tragic accident befell Ambrose when Alice was fourteen years old. The episode created additional economic hardships for the family.
Ambrose Beardsley Gray was born in 1842, in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he lived until he left home to seek his own fortune. Because it would plague him the rest of his life, one particular story survives from Ambrose's childhood. In later years, he would relate this incident to a U.S. Pension Board medical examiner: "My eye and ear were hurt. When I was a boy, a log of wood rolled over me. ... On my left eye I see every object double. This eye is now no good to me at all."
He also suffered permanent, partial deafness resulting from the same accident.
As a young man, Ambrose was an early settler of Brown County, Indiana. He had served as an apprentice to a spectacles maker in Connecticut and followed his employer, George Staples, to Indiana to establish a new factory.
In 1865, at the age of twenty-four, Ambrose enlisted in the Civil War in Columbus, Indiana, identifying his occupation as a "spectacle maker" in Bean Blossom, Indiana. The enlistment record describes him as darkhaired and standing five feet, eight inches; he had hazel-colored eyes and a dark complexion.
Gray became a private in Company E of the 145 Indiana Regiment. His Union regiment first guarded the railroad in Dalton, Georgia, and then was assigned to Marietta, Georgia. In the fall of 1865, it was ordered to Cuthbert, Georgia. Having served the final year of the Civil War, this group of soldiers mustered out at Macon, Georgia, in January of 1866.
Four months after he returned to Indiana, Gray married Sallie Gray. (Gray was also her maiden name, which provided some early, puzzling hurdles during genealogical searches.) Sallie was born in Indiana in 1844, although her parents originally came from North Carolina.
The couple married April 4, 1866, in Brown County. Three children — Leonora, Nannie and Hugh — were born in this first home. The family moved to Chicago in July of 1873.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Diana of the Dunes"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Janet Zenke Edwards.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword 9
Acknowledgements 11
Introduction 17
Ghost Story: Diana of the Dunes 23
Chicago Childhood 25
Ambrose and Sallie Gray 31
Phi Beta Kappa 37
From the USNO to Germany 41
Leaving Chicago 47
Driftwood 51
Surfacing in the Dunes 63
Diana of the Dunes 67
Fullerton Hall 75
Paul Wilson: Caveman 79
Murder in the Dunes 87
A Case of Libel 95
In the End 99
Afterword 105
Appendix A. Siblings 109