Sarah Bishop

Sarah Bishop ( – ) was an affluent American woman who was forced to become a female pirate during the years of 1778–1780. She escaped from the ship, swam to shore, and lived in a cave as a hermit for about thirty years until she froze to death.

Sarah Bishop became the wife of the captain, which put her off-limits to the crew. Eventually, the captain was killed in an engagement with an American privateer. Bishop took six months to make an escape plan, waiting for an opportune moment, and around 1780, she went overboard through the side of the ship and swam towards the shore at Stamford, Connecticut.

Life as a hermit A woman peering into the cave of Sarah Bishop. Photographed in 1900 by Marie Hartig Kendall. Sarah Bishop was a legendary figure. Some sources say she lived between North Salem and South Salem in New York. According to Betty Roberts, the Town Historian of South Salem, s a mystery and I guess that makes her a bit romantic."

Lifestyle Described as mentally sound and deeply devoted to her faith, her few possessions included an old pewter basin and a gourd shell for cooking. She slept on a solid rock with scattered old rags, and when a reporter visited her in 1804, her cave had no signs of food or an active fire though she had a fireplace in the corner. She had not left the cave since the snowfall.

The land around her cave was a treeless patch covered in grass, with peach trees and beans, cucumbers, potatoes, and grapevines which extended into the nearby woods. Next to the cave was a fountain with mountain water.

Another report says that she was found in the spring or summer standing upright, feet trapped in a frozen marsh, According to John Warner Barber, Bishop's death occurred in 1810 in Ridgefield. This is recorded in his book Connecticut Historical Collections, published in 1837.

Memorials and historical analysis Her cave in the mountains became a tourist attraction in the late nineteenth century. In 2000, North Salem's Town Historian, Dick Yakman, oversaw the installation of a memorial stone in June Road Cemetery. He is quoted as saying "The stone is dedicated to her memory as a compassionate woman who, with unwavering determination, faced the challenges of nature and society, living the life she chose in accordance with her convictions. May her soul be blessed by God."

The poem about Bishop, titled "The Hermitess," was written by Samuel Griswold Goodrich and appeared in the Connecticut Mirror on August 25, 1823, approximately 15 years after Bishop's death. The poem reads as the following:For many a year the mountain hag Was a theme of village wonder; For she lived in a cave of the dizzy craig, Where the eagle bore his plunder. Up the beetling cliff she was seen at night, Like a ghost to glide away; And she same again at the morning light, From the forest wild and grey. And when winter came with its shrieking blast, Old Sarah no more was seen, Till the snow wreath away from the mountain passed, And the forests were waving in green. Her face was wrinkl'd, but passionless seem'd As her bosom were withered and dead; And her colorless eye like an icicle gleam'd, But no sorrow nor sympathy shed. Her long snowy locks, like the winter drift, On the wind were back ward east; And her crippl'd form glided by so swift, You had said 'twere a ghost that passed. And her house was a cave in the giddy rock, That o'erhung a sullen veil; And 'twas deeply scarred by the lightning's shock And swept by the vengeful gale. As alone on the cliff she musingly sate, The fox at her fingers would snap: The raven would sit on her snow-white pate, And the rattle-snake coil in her lap; And the vulture look'd down with a welcoming eye, As he stooped in his airy swing; And the haughty eagle hovered so nigh, As to fan her long locks with his wing. But when winter rolled dark its sullen wave From the west with gusty shock—Old Sarah, deserted, crept cold to her cave, And stept without bed in her rock. No fire illum'd her dismal den: Yet a tattered Bible she red; For she saw in the dark with a wizzard ken—And talked with the troubled dead, And 'twas said that she mutter'd a foreign name, With curses too fearful to tell; And a tale of perfidy, madness, and shame, She told to the walls of her cell. Years—years passed a way, and a stranger came To the village, with age all white—He gloomily listened to tales of the dame, And went to her desolate height. He saw her—she stood on the jutting cliff—Her hair on the wild winds breath—Yet a statue she seem'd, for her limbs were stiff, and pale in the palsy of death. Like a desolate ruin she stood on the brink, With a writhed hp and a glaring eye; And her cold clay with horror seem'd to shrink, As the stranger came shuddering nigh. He approach'd--but the hurrying gust swept on, And bore her away from his sight; And high on the craig the wild eagle alone, Attended her funeral rite.