HENRY WHARTON SHOEMAKER

A historian debunks the works of a 20th-century folklorist in this biography.

Henry Wharton Shoemaker was a man who wore many hats. Born in New York City to a railroad magnate and financier, Shoemaker in his adult life was tied closely to Pennsylvania, where he served as one of the state’s leading conservationists, historians, and folklorists throughout the first half of the 20th century. He was also, according to Graybill, one of the great “facile liars” in America’s “literary legions.” Indeed, the author’s motivations for writing this biography are explicitly to “debunk Shoemaker’s work” and expose his “lack of integrity and his willingness to stray as far as he wished from the honest presentation of Pennsylvania’s history.” While providing a succinct overview of Shoemaker’s life, the book focuses on his written record and efforts to popularize Pennsylvania’s folklore. Through a careful consideration of reputable scholarship on the Keystone State’s history and an examination of the dubious sources listed in the folklorist’s writings, this book systematically and convincingly exposes Shoemaker’s unsavory narratives. Particularly egregious was Shoemaker’s proclivity to falsify Indigenous history, creating stories about Native American princesses, chiefs, and wars that were imaginary. So brazen was the folklorist that many of his writings defied science in his claims of nonexistent underwater rivers and impossibly large wolf packs. A former history teacher and author of multiple books on Pennsylvania history, Graybill does not hold back in his critiques of Shoemaker, whose shoddy scholarship is rightfully treated as an affront to the profession and the state. In doing so, the author also offers readers an engaging, scholarly approach to the state’s history that is complemented by an ample assortment of photographs, paintings, and newspaper clippings germane to Shoemaker’s life and lore. In addition to discrediting Shoemaker, the book adds to readers’ historical understanding of his life by utilizing private archival materials now possessed by the folklorist’s distant cousins. The volume’s appendix contains a heretofore unpublished work, perhaps “Shoemaker’s last literary effort,” that, unsurprisingly, revels in sex, gore, and Native American ghosts.

A concise yet thorough repudiation of the history and folklore written by a Pennsylvania luminary.