When I was a kid, I frequented and worked at a resort a few miles west of Ely. One of the neighbors was Sumner (Sam) Purvis.

Sam came to the Ely area around 1900 after serving in the Spanish American War and cut out a homestead of 160 acres near what is now Bearhead Lake State Park.

Sam had been a sailor in his earlier life and told me stories of sailing on clipper ships in his youth.

He came to the Ely area around 40 years of age and his homestead was about 5 miles walk from the nearest road.

Sam was a well known and charismatic character around Ely. He would hike out to the highway and hitchhike into Ely. I picked him up one time to take him into down and he showed me his 45 caliber pistol he kept in his pack. He told me he would never let the sheriff arrest him any more. I hoped he was just kidding, but I'm not sure.

Sam wasn't what I would call a hermit, but he only trusted a few people. If you hiked into Sam's cabin with a trusted friend, than he would welcome you with open arms. If you came to meet him on your own, you would be out of luck.

In the early years he had a partner, who eventually died. He also owned a pair of horses, but they eventually died off and Sam didn't think it was a good idea to get more due to his age.

I visited frequently with Sam as the owners of the resort where I worked were good, trusted friends of Sam. I knew Same in the early to mid 1960's when he was over 100 years old. His cabin was wall papered with old front pages of newspapers and Saturday Evening Post magazine covers.

Sam's cabin consisted of two rooms, a living, sleeping, dining room a a separate kitchen. In the floor of the kitchen was a trap door that led down to a root cellar. Sam had to retreat twice to spend the winter in the root cellar. Once he broke a leg and another time he came down with pneumonia.

Beside's his cabin, Sam had a barn, a workshop, a trout raising stream, a large garden and two outhouses. One for gentlemen and one for lady visitors.

Sam spent his last year of life in a nursing home in Ely and died in the late 1960's. Sam was not a wealthy man, but had an arrangement with the State of Minnesota. He was allowed to continue living on his homestead without paying property taxes, but upon his death the property returned to the State. His cabin was located approximately 1/4 mile south of Purvis Lake, which is north of Bearskin Lake and east of Eagles Nest Lake. There is a road to Purvis Lake now, but it's been many years since I've visited the cabin site.

Notice the newspaper wallpaper


This last photo is of me holding Sam's .22 rifle next to a tree clawed by a bear about 25 ft. from his cabin.

Thank you for sharing your memories.

That is a pretty amazing story about a very interesting character. And with photos too!

Thank you for sharing! I wish there were a book about Sam. I bet he had some great stories!

Here's an interesting little article from the Ely Echo from 1999 about Sam from a bush pilot who flew him from Ely back to his lake in 49-50.

I know Sam liked to make home brew because he shared a glass or two with me when I was a kid. As I recall, it was pretty good beer.

Sam Purvis

Thanks for the link and pics. I had never heard about him.

In 1965, I was the dock boy at the resort that our family friends owned. It was call Forest Glen Lodge and was located on Eagles Nest Lake #1.

The owner of the resort were Dick and Phyllis Day. Dick was also a pilot and taught flight training during WWII.

Dick owned a 1954 Cessna 180 aircraft on floats, which he kept in a boathouse/hangar at the resort. He would fly customers into remote lakes for fishing purposes.

Dick would take me with him and we would fly into see Sam Purvis every couple of weeks. I certainly remember the small lake on Sam's property but I don't recall that we ever had any problems landing or taking off.

We would always bring Sam some sort of treat every time we would check on him and his favorite was Karamel Korn, which we brought in a big tub.

One day Sam showed us, with a great deal of pride, a letter he had received from President Lyndon Johnson, congratulating Sam on his 100 birthday. We didn't have the heart to tell him that the White House sends those letters to everyone who turns 100. Lol

Where did you go to high school? When? Just curious as I am from Tower

GraniteCliffs: "Where did you go to high school? When? Just curious as I am from Tower"

At that time I lived in Rockford, Illinois and spent my summers at the resort on Eagles Nest Lake #1.

I found some more information on Sam Purvis, provided to me by the Iron Range Historical Society in McKinley, Mn.

In their files they had four articles about Sam, from a series of five, titled "The Legendary Sumner Purvis" written in the Ely Echo in 1985, by Walt McElderry.

Much of the information in the articles is derived from accounts of people, like myself, who knew Sam and visited with him at his cabin near Bearhead Lake State Park.

It appears that Charles Sumner Purvis was actually born James Jay MacDonald. This was found out after his death. He was born, according to his own stories, on April 3, 1867 near Flint, Michigan. He told one interviewer that his father was an Irish woodcutter, from from another writer he said his father was an officer worker.

Whatever his beginnings, Purvis said that his home life was unhappy and that the family moved a great deal. He studied through the third grade and left home at the age of 12 or 13.

He found work in lower Michigan as a blacksmith's helper in a lumber camp. He said that during the summer months when the lumber camps were idle he sailed the Great Lakes on lumber schooners and drove a three horse team towing barges on the Erie Canal.

He told one interviewer, a Gerald Vizenor, "In the 1890's I signed up on a slave ship out of London, bound for Calcutta, India. We sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. Loaded 720 slaves in Calcutta, India to work the big farms in the Fiji Islands."

"Then I was in the Navy in the Philippines when President McKinley was assassinated."

After his three year stint in the Navy, Sam served five years with the Army while still in the Philippines during the Spanish American War. When he was discharged from the Army Sam boarded a German steamer for Hong Kong where he worked on the Chinese-American Railroad Company along the Canton River.

More than one of Sam's friends in Ely confided the Purvis had spoken of killing a Chinese worker with a pick axe handle and some speculate that was the reason he changed his name.

One of his former friends said "I think he killed somebody else in the States, too, but he was usually vague about that."

According to Purvis, upon leaving Hong Kong, he returned to Manila and army life when the Russo Japanese war broke out and served in a horse ambulance unit for a year and then returned to the United States in 1905. By this time he was no longer James Jay MacDonald and had taken on the name of Purvis, for whatever reason.

He slowly worked his way east from San Francisco. He worked with logging camps in Michigan and Wisconsin, winding up in Virginia, Minnesota in 1907. He told Gerald Vizenor, "That's when a foreman in a lumber camp talked me into homesteading. I wasn't much for the idea at first, but I settled and he didn't."

In 1907, when Purvis was 40 years old he homesteaded four forties (160 acres) and later acquired another 160 acres by stone and timber claims making a total of 320 areas, near Bearhead Lake.

More to come later.

awbrown: "I found some more information on Sam Purvis, provided to me by the Iron Range Historical Society in McKinley, Mn.


In their files they had four articles about Sam, from a series of five, titled "The Legendary Sumner Purvis" written in the Ely Echo in 1985, by Walt McElderry.


Much of the information in the articles is derived from accounts of people, like myself, who knew Sam and visited with him at his cabin near Bearhead Lake State Park.


It appears that Charles Sumner Purvis was actually born James Jay MacDonald. This was found out after his death. He was born, according to his own stories, on April 3, 1867 near Flint, Michigan. He told one interviewer that his father was an Irish woodcutter, from from another writer he said his father was an officer worker.


Whatever his beginnings, Purvis said that his home life was unhappy and that the family moved a great deal. He studied through the third grade and left home at the age of 12 or 13.


He found work in lower Michigan as a blacksmith's helper in a lumber camp. He said that during the summer months when the lumber camps were idle he sailed the Great Lakes on lumber schooners and drove a three horse team towing barges on the Erie Canal.


He told one interviewer, a Gerald Vizenor, "In the 1890's I signed up on a slave ship out of London, bound for Calcutta, India. We sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. Loaded 720 slaves in Calcutta, India to work the big farms in the Fiji Islands."


"Then I was in the Navy in the Philippines when President McKinley was assassinated."


After his three year stint in the Navy, Sam served five years with the Army while still in the Philippines during the Spanish American War. When he was discharged from the Army Sam boarded a German steamer for Hong Kong where he worked on the Chinese-American Railroad Company along the Canton River.


More than one of Sam's friends in Ely confided the Purvis had spoken of killing a Chinese worker with a pick axe handle and some speculate that was the reason he changed his name.


One of his former friends said "I think he killed somebody else in the States, too, but he was usually vague about that."


According to Purvis, upon leaving Hong Kong, he returned to Manila and army life when the Russo Japanese war broke out and served in a horse ambulance unit for a year and then returned to the United States in 1905. By this time he was no longer James Jay MacDonald and had taken on the name of Purvis, for whatever reason.


He slowly worked his way east from San Francisco. He worked with logging camps in Michigan and Wisconsin, winding up in Virginia, Minnesota in 1907. He told Gerald Vizenor, "That's when a foreman in a lumber camp talked me into homesteading. I wasn't much for the idea at first, but I settled and he didn't."


In 1907, when Purvis was 40 years old he homesteaded four forties (160 acres) and later acquired another 160 acres by stone and timber claims making a total of 320 areas, near Bearhead Lake.


More to come later."

I love stuff like this...

From the Ely Echo, February 11, 1985--

People admired Sam's fierce independence, which is at the heart of homesteading and is synonymous with the pioneer spirit. For many of us today, Sam Purvis is a symbol of the American pioneer.

But probably Sam's greatest claim to fame was his amazing longevity. People heard stories of Sam shooting bears or getting into trouble with the authorities and were delighted when they discovered that he was 90 or 95 years old at the time.

His activity level was so inconsistent with what most of us think appropriate for one that old. Purvis acted as if he didn't believe in getting old, or figured it didn't apply to him.

Forester Howard Wagoner recalled, "I remember one time I walked in there and Sam was putting up a metal roof on his cabin and I said to him, 'Looks like a pretty good roof there Sumner.' He replied, 'Yeah, well I wanted to get one that would last--this one has a guarantee for forty years.'

I thought that pretty funny to be worried about how long your roof should last when a guy is 94 years old"

That's a great attitude. I think it's proof that your mindset plays a large role in our well being as we age. He probably never dwelled on getting older. I would love to see some videos with audio of him. It sure seems like he lived a full life.

As reported in the Ely Echo series of articles on Sam, written in 1985----

Joe Whiting suggested that Sam once dreamed of starting a kind of resort or hunting lodge at his place. The trail leading to Sam's used to be the old horse route between Tower and Ely and ended up right near the hospital in Ely. However, a road was never built following the horse path, but branched off toward Bear Island Lake.

Progress had passed Sam by and left him isolated in the back woods, but no matter, at 40 years of age, Sam finally lived in a home and on land that he owned and he was home for good. He had found what he called "my paradise."

Part of Sam's growing enthusiasm for this homesteading thing probably stemmed from the land itself since his place was a homesteader's dream. His parcel had an excellent stand of mixed hardwoods and virgin pines (which is still today one of the few remaining stands of virgin lumber in the area).

His land had rolling highland and lowland, good building sites with fine solar orientation and he had his own creek, river and lake. For a man who liked his seclusion, it was a long way from the prying eyes of civilization.

During the early years Sam busied himself with building a nice cabin with an attached kitchen and root cellar below, a smoke house, a "two holer" and a barn for his team of horses.

Sam's cabin was in a clearing which had been cleared of timber and was a perfect setting for building and for putting in a garden. Sam learned as much as he could about raising and putting up produce. He took advantage of free government pamphlets and experimented with growing fruit and nut trees uncommon in the area. Sam even tried growing peanuts at one time, but the climate is just too cold.

Sam occasionally pulled Northern Pike from his lake, but he had more interest in creating pools in the outflow of Purvis Lake which formed the stream that led past his cabin. In these pools he raised brook trout. In his later years he enjoyed showing visitors how tame the fish were by eating bread crumbs out of his hand.

Sam also raised bees for their honey and in growing hops for his home-brew. I remember as a teenager how much I enjoyed visiting at his place an quaffing a cup of his excellent home-brew.

During his early years on the homestead Sam needed to work away from home for some cash income, but in time he stopped outside work completely. Purvis told news reporters that from 1907 to 1937 he worked part of the winters at his old blacksmithing trade for local lumber camps and worked part time for railroad construction crews in the summer months.

Sam didn't like to admit it, but he did take advantage of county and state old age benefits and had a small pension from having fought in the Spanish American War.

It was also known that he worked as a blacksmith in Tower at one time. Gene Merrill recalled , "The only work that he ever done that I remember was that he worked in Tower for a guy named Andrew Bystrom who had a blacksmith shop. He could shoe horses too, he was good at that. But what I remember most was the big logging sleigh runners that he'd make out of birch, you know. Bystrom's used to sell 'em, 'cause there was a lot of logging around.

Joe Whiting laughed as he said, "Sam used to say, 'Look at them bas%&#$s on welfare. What do you and me get, Joe? Nothing! Them bloody freeloaders don't do nothing and get welfare.' ..........And Sam never worked a regular job for the last 70 years. I told him once, 'Sam you've been on welfare since 1937 when they started it."

Another interesting tale of Sam from the Ely Echo, February 11, 1985

Sam never allowed any logging on his property and confined his firewood harvest to picking up what he called 'squaw wood", yet he felt no moral qualm at setting slash piles ablaze at nearby logging sites to demonstrate his unhappiness at the loggers for being so close to Purvis Country.

Weino Wirtinen told an interesting tale about a run in with Sam that occurred while Weino was flying fire patrol one day when the fire danger was very high and he spotted smoke off in the distance in the area of Bear Head Lake near Sam's place.

"Well, I flew in for a closer look and saw somebody setting off slash piles with a torch and knew it was Sam Purvis. I quickly called the dispatcher and was ordered to pick up some water in the water tank under the plane and see what I could do. I went to Bear Island Lake, landed and picked up a load of water and then made the quick hop over to Purvis' place where he was busy going from one pile to another, setting them off.

Well, I had plenty of targets since by then there were several brush piles going. My first target was--you guessed it..the pile he was lighting. I scored a bullseye and hit him square with a thousand pounds of water. Well, the torch went one way and Same went the other---it flattened him right out.

Well, then he got up and was shaking his fist at me, madder than an old hen by that time. That didn't deter me a bit, I went back for some more water and putting' out those fires as fast as he could light them. I don't know why he didn't realize why I was putting them out. Certainly a man with his experience should have known better. Yeah, I got things pretty well under control and Sam was getting discouraged by then.

Later on I heard from Lori MacDonald that Purvis had said to him, 'Whoever that pilot was that flew that plane sure had an eagle's eye. That bugger--as soon as I'd get a fire going good he'd score a bullseye on it."

I had the privilege a couple of years ago to closely inspect one of the Forest Service Otters, based in Ely. This one might even be the one that bombed Sam.



The Forest Service purchase 3 of these in 1954-55 and they are still in service to this day.

Man, I love these stories. Someone needs to write a book about this man.

The legend continues with another tale from the Ely Echo series, The Legendary Sumner Purvis, February 11, 1985.

Gene Merrill recalled an occasion, "I can tell you a story that's the funniest thing you ever heard of. My dad, my sister and I walked to Purvis' and took a big chicken dinner with us to share with Sam.

"Well we were havin' dinner and the door was standin' open because it was summer time. My dad looks out the door and says, 'Sam, your bees are swarming. You see, that day the bees was startin' to swarm. The Queen leaves the hive because there's no more room in there and the other bees just follow her.

"Sam says to my dad, No, no, they're just exercisin' . 'Exercisin' hell....... hell--they're swarmin'.!!. Sam takes another look and says, 'Yeah, they are.'

"So we looked out and they were swarmed on a big spruce tree. A great big ball of bees, all of them swarmed around the queen bee. Well, Sam knew he had to catch them pretty quick, because the queen would fly off pretty soon to start a new hive maybe two or three miles away."

"So he gets out this long ladder and he put it up in that big spruce tree and he started crawling up that ladder with a bushel basket. When he got up there he started shaking the branches to try to get them to fall in the basket, but half of the bees landed on his head....you shoulda seen it!"

"So my dad and sister and I were standin there watching the circus, you know. Instead of coming down the ladder, he starts slidin down with these bees all over his head, and he says, 'They're stinging me."

"My dad says to my sister and me, 'run for the cabin and shut the door!' Now Sam used to keep a rain barrel by his door and when we looked back there was Purvis coming up the hill tryin to brush them bees away and he jumps into the rain barrel head first- up to his stomach."

"So after all the commotion he gives me his jackknife and he says to me, 'Pick out them stingers. I got a lot of stingers.' I said okay and started pulling them outa his head and then I give a good look and there's a thousand stingers in there. So I pulled out maybe fifty and I says, ' They're all out.'

"Well, then he got a little funny because the poison started hitting him a little and he was talking kind of funny, like mumbling. So that was that."

"When we got back home my ma was telling me about a time when she was a kid and a horse got stung by some bees and died. So she says, 'You'd better go back up there tomorrow and see if he's okay,' My dad started laughing and says, 'Hell, I seen bears, big bears and old Sam is tougher than any bear I ever seen.' We just laughed and didn't bother goin up there at all. We saw him three or four days later and he was just fine."

A few old pictures of Sam

Sam's cabin from behind. The kitchen is on the left. Photo is with Henry "Hank" Nicholson to the left and Sam Purvis to the right.


Sam's Barn circa 1939

A few more old photos

Sam Purvis 1942. I never saw Sam without a bandana.



Sam Purvis with guests Angela Takavitz and Mary Palcher Labernik 1939



Sam's workshop, 1967

awbrown: "A couple more old scanned photos


Sa Purvis 1942




Sam Purvis with guests Angela Takavitz and Mary Palcher Labernik 1939



Sam's workshop, 1967"

He was a handsome guy!

Another short story about Sam from the Ely Echo, February4, 1985

It appears that Sam would host several wealthy hunters from the Chicago area each fall during deer hunting season.

Gene Merrill recalled those days. "I used to go up to Purvis' place to help them fill out the licenses for a bunch of millionaires that used to come up from Chicago. One of them owned a newspaper and another was a doctor and one was a lawyer. Another one owned Cafe Bohemia in Chicago which was a pretty famous place, I guess. Now them guys that hunted from Chicago up there would bring a lot of grub and paid him good."

Dick Jewett remembered one fall when he was staying at Pearson's Resort and Purvis stopped by for a visit on his way home from Ely. "Anyway, he came by the cabin once complaining because his hunters from Chicago hadn't showed up. You know, he always had their deer shot for those guys, sometimes before they even got there. Hell, they'd sit there in that little cabin he called the "Hilton Hotel" (a small guest cabin Sam built especially for his "clients")





and they's sit in there playing poker and drinking.....they shot the damned roof out of it one year. They paid him for it of course.

"Well anyway, Sumner came back from town and he had a snootfull and it was a beautiful moonlit night and he was drunk. He complained about how the Chicago hunters hadn't showed up and he had a whole packsack full of groceries.and said he had to get home because his fire would be out and he was worried about his cats. So I said, 'Sam, why don't I walk back with you, I'll carry the packsack.'

"We had three miles to go and he had an old pair of Bean boots and they were all worn on the bottom and he must of fallen down I'll bet a hundred times....he was that drunk. We got back to his cabin and he kept telling me his boot cleats were worn. Well, I slept with him there that night in that damned bed.....he just had a stove, that bed and that's it. I'll never forget it, we woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning and the moon was out. It was beautiful."

One more little adventure with Sumner Purvis. from the Ely Echo series on the Legendary Sumner Purvis, February 11, 1985

"Even Sam's friends who knew him well tended to underestimate him sometimes. Joe Whiting laughed as he recalled one occasion when Sam took a 'swim.' "

"Sumner and Buster went netting one cold fall day and they were drinking some . They dumped over in the canoe and it started to snow. Buster figured he better take care of the old man so he wouldn't get sick. Buster built a heck of a big fire and stayed overnight."

" Well, Buster got sick standing there feeding the fire, but Sumner was just fine----that was when he was 97! He was a tough old bugger. I guess he was used to that- getting up at 10 below in his shack, you know."