Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper

“Mill labor was stigmatized, and artisans and farmers […] took their daughters and sons out of the mills. A widening flood of destitute migrants took their places, and the mill families became a separate and despised group of people.”

The economic and social distinction between farm laborers and mill laborers was important in 19th-century America. Sam Patch’s family demonstrates the difference between these groups: Although his father had been an independent farmer, bad investments and alcohol addiction forced their family into mill labor.

“Weston enjoyed relations of neighborly cooperation with other men and he was the head of a self-supporting household and an equal participant in neighborhood affairs. In eighteenth-century Massachusetts, these attributes constituted the social definition of adult manhood.”

Because the Patch family left few records, Johnson uses the journal of shoemaker James Weston to explore what the life of Greenleaf Patch might have been like. This passage identifies community, self-sufficiency, and civic participation as the hallmarks of manhood for men like Patch and Weston.

“Pawtucket was something new in America: a town where women and children supported men or lived without them, and where women reconstructed lives that had been damaged in the failure of their men.”

Johnson frames Abigail Patch’s financial stability after widowhood as a declaration of independence. However, he also describes the need for women and children to work as a failure on the part of men. In the case of the Patch family, Abigail and her children were forced to work in Pawtucket as a result of Greenleaf’s alcohol addiction and refusal to work.

“Pawtucket owed its growth to the technological conquest of a waterfall. The layout of the village and the placement of the bridge completed that conquest visually and emotionally.”

In the years when the Patch family was living in Pawtucket, the Slater mill and accompanying bridge blocked Pawtucket Falls from the view of the town. In this passage, Johnson suggests that this was a deliberate attempt on the part of builders to “conquer” the unruly Pawtucket Falls.

“The working people of Paterson valued the falls ground: it was a wild and beautiful spot that belonged to everyone and no one, unimproved private property that was open to free public use.”

Johnson frames the open space on the north bank of the Passaic Falls as a battleground for disputes between working-class people and industrialists in Paterson. Prior to the construction of the Forest Garden, the space was open to the public; after Crane constructed the park, it became a site that enriched only him.

“The word ‘art’ affirmed the intelligence, learning, and dexterity that went into building a house, making a shoe, or raising a field of wheat.”

Johnson argues that the transition from an agricultural-artisan economy (in which farmers and craftspeople supported themselves) to an industrial economy (in which people worked in factories for others) had an effect on the psyche of American workers. Patch’s self-identification as an artist reflects his desire to be seen as a skilled worker.

“Tourists on the Erie Canal enjoyed that triumph of utilitarian art, knowing all the while that it carried them to the natural wonders of Niagara Falls.”

In the 19th century, the popular view of nature changed dramatically as utilities like canals and railroads reshaped the American landscape. This passage highlights the irony of thousands of city-dwellers taking the canal, a man-made mode of transportation, to visit the untouched wonder of Niagara Falls.

“The plain people of Paterson, absent as usual from the ceremonies at the church and hotel, had been excluded from the planning, denied the civic fireworks show, denigrated in the parade, and ignored by the toastmasters. They marched in battalions to the falls to see Sam Patch.”

Johnson suggests that the people of Paterson gathered to watch Sam Patch’s Fourth of July jump as an act of protest against the city’s elitist leaders. Because they had been excluded from the city’s formal celebrations, they organized a celebration of their own, centered on Sam Patch and the falls.

“That controversy persisted for the remainder of Sam’s earthly and remembered life: popular interest in Sam’s ‘astonishing leaps’ versus editorial concerns about the physical danger and public corruption that attended them.”

Although newspapers promoted Patch’s jumps to eager readers, they also openly questioned the ethics of platforming such risky behavior. This tension echoes into the present day: Many newspapers choose not to name or publish photographs of mass shooters to dissuade those seeking publicity.

“People of means came to Niagara to live for a few days or weeks in perfect beauty—an experience that gave them profound and authentic pleasure, and that asserted their membership in an emerging cultural elite.”

Johnson argues that tourism to Niagara Falls surged in the early 19th century because elite New Yorkers longed to leave the city and experience the beauty of the natural world. A visit to Niagara also signaled membership among the exclusive group of aesthetic intellectuals who shaped the city’s culture.

“That perfect moment gave the journey to Niagara the transcendent qualities of a work of art, and it made an artist of every good tourist. The opportunity to make that moment was the principal commodity on sale at Niagara Falls.”

For the aesthetic-minded tourist, a trip to Niagara Falls inspired feelings of terror, wonder, and overwhelming beauty. Johnson argues that this emotional experience was valued because it turned the passive act of tourism into an act of creation as visitors wrote and painted their experiences. Developers at Niagara Falls intentionally created environments that allowed for these kinds of emotional experiences.

“To one who has an eye alive to the glorious works of the Creator, as manifested in this beautiful world, who has a heart to feel his power and goodness, and perceptions to admire and appreciate their vastness and magnificence, I can think of no other spectacle in nature more calculated to thrill the bosom.”

This elaborate and flowery passage, taken from Stone’s description of Niagara Falls, reveals his unique perspective on the sublimity of the natural world. Stone writes that the falls will move anyone with the capability of recognizing God’s power in nature, suggesting that some people are not capable of experiencing the sublime. This belief reflects his prejudice against uneducated working-class people, who he believes lack the necessary aesthetic knowledge to appreciate the falls.

“To the farmers and villagers who had fought in the militias of New York and Upper Canada or who had burned out of their homes […] the horrors of the border war lived on, unsoftened by the divine wonders that refined outsiders came to see.”

The importance of environmental history is a key theme throughout the book. This passage suggests that the border landscape around Niagara Falls cannot be separated from the historical violence experienced by the people there, including the War of 1812. This history was largely invisible to the wealthy Manhattan visitors who came to Niagara.

“Where genteel journalists found only mindless, suicidal bravado in Sam’s leaps, and where Hiriam Doolittle, Junior found only the butt of stage Yankee jokes, the Buffalo editor recognized skills and concentration honed over years, joined with physical courage and a firm sense of personal honor.”

This passage demonstrates the different ways contemporary writers used Sam Patch to their own advantage. Writers reflecting elite interests, such as Colonel Stone, portrayed Patch as a reckless and uneducated fool whose exploits should not be celebrated. Working-class writers celebrated his skills and courage, which they believed to be valuable traits.

“The grand objects of nature, which threatened to impede, have been made only to adorn, as we see in the striking spectacle which is at this moment presented to our enchanted eye.”

This quote reflects Changes in the American Landscape in the 19th Century. It comes from a speech delivered by the war hero Marquis de Lafayette on the Rochester aqueduct and reflects shifting perspectives on the natural world in 19th-century America. Lafayette believed that the aqueduct was evidence of human domination of nature and that these technological innovations transformed the forces of nature from obstacles to ornaments to human life.

“Their own building sites, mills, and workshops employed thousands of day laborers and journeymen craftsmen—young men who had fallen through the disintegrating grid of inheritance and into wage labor.”

Throughout the book, Johnson contextualizes Patch’s jumps within the changing economic landscape of early 19th-century America. A generation of young men entering adulthood without inherited land and money were forced to enter the workforce for the first time, changing labor dynamics.

“Truly, mills and steam-engines are wonderful things, and I know that men must live, but I wish it were not expedient to destroy what God had made so very beautiful, in order to make it useful.”

This quote from British actress Fanny Kemble reflects the European perspective on American expansion in cities like Rochester. Although Europeans acknowledged the importance of modern inventions like mills and steam engines (mostly English imports), they also mourned the loss of the American wilderness necessary to build these cities.

“From where Sam’s audience stood […] with the cracked limestone shelves on which the city stood clearly visible, and with the giddy disorder of the chasm at their feet, it was the landscape of progress that seemed somehow thoughtless and dangerously out of place.”

Throughout the book, Johnson highlights the growing social and economic divide between laborers and industrial elites. Here, a working-class audience can see the literal cracks in Rochester’s foundation, suggesting that workers had a clearer view of reality than the industrialists they worked for.

“Seconds and the minutes passed, and the curiosity and anticipation that had brought them to the falls curdled into horror and shame.”

Sam Patch’s death came as a shock to the assembled crowds in Rochester, New York, who quickly grew embarrassed that they had gathered to watch such violence. Johnson does not hint that this jump will be Patch’s last. Therefore, it also likely comes as a surprise to his readers, who may also feel shame at their voyeuristic engagement with Patch’s life. 

“Sam had been born into the unstable margins of a world governed by inheritance, fixed social rank, and ordained life courses—a world where people like Sam Patch did not become famous.”

One of Johnson’s central arguments is that 18th-century America was a time in which family money and connections were essential to success. Because Patch entered adulthood with neither, he would not have been expected to succeed. However, the early 19th century allowed for men like Patch to find fame and success in their own ways, without family ties.

“Cut loose from their pasts and picking their way through uncharted territory, Americans crafted themselves as their ancestors had crafted chairs and farm fields. Celebrities played a part in that: they dramatized the possibilities of individual self-making in the nineteenth century.”

Johnson examines The Uses and Ethical Problems of Celebrity Culture. He argues that Sam Patch was one of the first modern American celebrities: He came from nothing, wanted to be famous, and worked intentionally to make that happen. Americans were especially willing to celebrate men like Patch because the nation was undergoing a period of self-invention.

“Celebrity is one of the materials from which people in democratic, capitalist America make their folklore and themselves.”

In his final years, Sam Patch intentionally sought fame for his waterfall jumping, advertising his leaps across the Northeastern United States and into Canada. Johnson does not criticize Patch’s desire for celebrity but rather contextualizes it within 19th-century American cultural changes. He argues that Americans use celebrities in order to shape perceptions of themselves and others.

“Whigs denounced the rude and often silly democracy that made Sam Patch a celebrity. Democrats embraced it, had fun with it, and made much of their political culture out of it.”

The majority of the final chapter is dedicated to analyzing the differences in Whig and Democrat depictions of Sam Patch. Ultimately, Johnson argues that the difference lies in their attitude toward America’s new democracy. While the Whigs disliked the messiness of the new system, the Democrats reveled in it and used it to build and engage a diverse party.