April 14th Daniel Gumb (Birth)

Here lie I by the churchyard door
Here lie I because I'm poor
The further in, the more you pay
Yet here lie I as warm as they

Born on this day in 1703, Daniel Gumb, the son of stonecutters, was a studious but, apparently, an introverted person who showed great capability in mathematics and astronomy through his self – education from books borrowed from local parishioners.  Gumb decided to cut himself a home in the caves on Bodmin Moor and created a three-room home for himself and his family thus self creating the legend of the educated, cave-dwelling, hermit.  The claim that he was an introverted loner may be disputed by the facts of his three marriages and nine children but his mathematical skills are unarguable since as Wilkie Collins (January 8th) wrote ‘Daniel Gumb was a mathematician who loved to study.’ Gumb was absorbed by Euclidean geometry and carved, in granite, a puzzle in the form of the Pythagoras Theorem.

One of his most frequent visitors was William Cookworthy (April 12th) and Gumb may have guided the china clay entrepreneur to his discoveries.  Gumb’s home was partially destroyed when the quarry in which he had his cave was enlarged in the 1860s but the remains were moved to a nearby location.  There are many people surnamed Gumb in America and Australia who can trace their ancestry to Daniel and to one of his three wives again providing evidence that he was not quite the loner described.  The quotation above is his self-carved epitaph.



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