A society where everyone does exactly what is expected of them would be a grim place.
Although the world often doesn’t know what to do with those who choose the lesser-traveled paths, it needs them: the oddballs, the eccentrics, the entertainers and artists. They are the ones who give color, pleasure, and meaning to the daily trudge of life.
As I’ve been researching the infamous Mansfield character Phoebe Wise for an upcoming book, I’ve been looking at some of the region’s earlier eccentrics to get a better understanding of how such people function in society. (And, speaking as an eccentric writer, I’m … um … trying to figure this out for a friend. Yeah, that’s it.)
In our modern, corporate-driven world of systems and rules, I’m afraid we’re getting worse at dealing with deviation from the norm, even though those are the very people that shed the most light on our world.
Long before Phoebe Wise stalked the streets of Mansfield in an ancient ball gown, cussing out anyone who gave her a funny look, there was a musician known throughout the region for his melodious fiddling.
Orrin Pharris would travel town to town from Norwalk to Newark, playing for barn dances, formal balls, and other social occasions. He was taken to heart by these communities as one of Ohio’s treasures, no matter how eccentric he became.
According to surviving accounts, Orrin Pharris was born in New York around 1790. He made his way to Ohio around 1815, making him one of the early settlers of the area, considering that Mansfield wasn’t even officially platted as a village until the 1820s.
In his early years, Pharris was perceived by his fellow pioneers as reasonably normal person, a tailor who loved playing music in his spare time. He was known for being good looking, well dressed, musical, and unmarried, though one source claims that in his early years in Ohio, Pharris declared his love for a young woman in Newark.
According to this source, a Mansfield Semi-Weekly News reminiscence from 1899 written by Mathias Day, Pharris lived and played music for a spell at Cully’s Hotel in Newark. He fell in love with a local young lady, but she did not return his interest. Brooding over this rejection began the process of unbalancing young Orrin’s mind, which gradually accelerated over the years.
Pharris was known to be talkative in his younger years, sometimes running on at great length on subjects which caught his interest, but always with such pleasant charm that people accepted it as part of his ebullient personality. His playing was praised extensively by those in the know.
One listener, quoted by A. J. Baughman in his “History of Richland County” in 1908, compared him with the most famous concert violinist of the day, the world-touring master Ole Bull, from Norway: “Ole Bull could not draw a smoother bow, nor produce sweeter melody upon the violin than did Orrin Pharris.”
Playing in the early 1800s, it is likely that Pharris’ dance repertory consisted of schottisches and reels. It’s unlikely he would have played waltzes, as the waltz craze was just firing up in Europe in the 1820s, and would not yet have reached rural Ohio.
When not playing dances, he played hymns. Mathias Day’s written recollections said that “his hymns were always sung as if his soul went out in them.” Such an expressive musician was much in demand.
But Pharris met with disaster at a dance in Granville in the 1832. A young man by the name of Cuppy, son of a prominent Newark landlord, had been pounding down alcohol all evening. He then grabbed an attractive girl and drunkenly informed her that she was going to dance with him.
The girl was terrified of Cuppy’s aggression, but he would not relent. The crowd of dancers around them dropped silent.
Cuppy shouted at Orrin Pharris to play them a fiddle tune so they could dance. Pharris was appalled at the youth’s behavior. The musician stood silently, avoiding eye contact with the belligerent drunk. Even after the young man threatened him, Orrin Pharris would not raise his bow. Suddenly, Cuppy grabbed a bottle of liquor and poured it all over Pharris’ hair and beard.
“I will set that on fire if you don’t play!” Cuppy bellowed.
Pharris silently refused. Cuppy grabbed a candle and set the fiddler’s hair on fire before anyone could stop him. Other partygoers saved Pharris’ life by quenching the flames, but the burns were extensive. Pharris’ recovery took a long time, and it left him permanently disfigured.
Though he continued playing, Pharris very rarely spoke the rest of his life, brooding over his misfortune. He eventually stopped working completely, and turned to drink and begging. Only music kept him tied to this world.
He would travel throughout the area, playing for food and a place to sleep. If he encountered a stray kitten, he would carry it in his coat as he traveled.
In his later years, he would often be seen walking the streets of area towns, playing the fiddle and singing in a fine, tenor voice. Groups of boys would follow him, taunting him until either he played a tune for them, or raised his walking stick and shouted at them, “Go off, you varmints!”
If he had his cat with him, he’d threaten to “set this Bengal tiger on you” as well, suggesting he retained a sense of humor, even after all his misfortune.
Around 1860, he trekked to Shelby to play at an event. He collapsed that evening, and lacking a better place to take him, the doctor who was summoned took Pharris to the Richland County Infirmary on Olivesburg Road. It was there that he was recorded on the 1860 census, described as “insane.”
It wasn’t long before he was stricken by a further attack. Orrin Pharris’ alleged last words were a quote from his favorite hymn, “Take and save a trembling sinner, Lord.”
Pharris was buried in the indigent patient’s cemetery nearby on Franklin Church Road. The infirmary later burned down, losing any record of Pharris’ exact location in the cemetery. The rebuilt infirmary, today Dayspring Assisted Living, can be seen across the fields in the distance.
As I stood at the old cemetery, I thought of that fine old fiddler, one of many unusual characters who have thrived in this area despite haters and hardships, and said a little prayer of thanks for the richness that the people who have traveled the fringe paths have brought to this area, from Orrin Pharris, to Phoebe Wise, to her protégé Louis Bromfield, and beyond.
All the headlines these days are full of excitement about the vapid copy being churned out by AI and chatbots. But such devices will never have the shrewd point of view given to us by those who travel on the fringes of society.
It is only those people, the outsiders and the artists, who will tell us the truth about life and our tangling with it, and we need to hear what they have to say.
Author’s note: Many thanks to Mary McKinley at the John Sherman Room of the Mansfield/Richland County Library for tracking down a copy of the original etching of Orrin Pharris.
