The first famous American daredevil got his start leaping from Pawtucket Falls.
The first famous American daredevil got his start leaping from Pawtucket Falls.
Episode Source Material
A little boy named Samuel was only 7 or 8 years old when he started working in a Pawtucket mill created by another Samuel. Both would be remembered some day. But little Sam Patch didn’t know it at the time. His days started early. He and the other children would head to the mill before sunrise and they’d get right to work. Some would take raw cotton that had been cleansed of dirt and twigs by other children and they’d feed it into carding machines that acted like giant combs, brushing and straightening the fibers until they were parallel. More children tended roving machines that would take the thick ropes of fibers that had been carded and further stretch and thin them down and twist them into longer and tighter ropes. And then those roves of fibers would be carried upstairs to the spinning room, where the skilled laborers, the adult men, worked spinning mules as children scavenged below the machines, picking lint and dust off the threads and the floor and the moving machinery. Fibers clung to their clothing, floated through the air, settled in their lungs. The children worked six days a week, 12 or more hours a day. And all day long, wheels turned, gears made their revolutions, machinery hummed and clattered, and outside the Blackstone River roared by.
In the winter, the mill was bitterly cold. And in the summer, it was sticky and humid and unbearably hot. On those days, the rush of the river must have been like a siren song to Sam Patch. In his free hours, maybe even during lunch breaks, he played at the water’s edge with the other children, dipping in to cool off and splash around. Nearby, some of the older men fished, or took small boats into the whirling pools at the bottom of the falls. Others, the bravest and most foolish of the group, would goad one another into making daring leaps off the bridge into the water. Sam wanted to join them.
Maybe he made small leaps at first, from the river’s edge or rocky outcroppings, to learn the skill of jumping correctly before taking on higher jumps. He saw the way other boys did it, leaping into the air, pulling their knees to their chest, and then snapping their legs down into a straight line to enter the water feet first, like a pencil. Getting it right was important, because it was a 50 foot drop from the bridge to the water, and the bottom of the falls were rocky and dangerous. Except in this one spot near the east bank, where the crashing water had carved a hole that the boys called “the pot.” The young men would leap directly into the pot’s aerated, bubbling water that one journalist described as “nearly as soft as an ocean of feathers.” A good jump required precision, control. It was an art. And Sam Patch would become one of the best.
He likely made that 50 foot leap from the bridge into the falls many times in his youth, alongside other rowdy and courageous young men. And then maybe he graduated to making the 80 foot leap from the roof of Slater’s Yellow Mill into the water below. Fewer men were known to have made that jump. And when Sam was 14 years old, a new mill was built just below the bridge, the six story Stone Mill. And in the years following, it was said that a fearless few young men would make a running leap from its flat roof into the pot, 100 feet below. We don’t know for sure that’s something that Sam did, but we do know this. Sam Patch would make greater and greater leaps, rising from obscurity to an unprecedented fame. He would be called the “The Daring Yankee,” and “The Yankee Leaper,” and go down in history as the first famous American daredevil.
I’m Sara and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each episode, I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And this week, I’m going to tell you the story of Sam Patch, an American daredevil who got his start leaping from Pawtucket Falls.
Sam Patch spent most of his life as an ordinary enough man, defined, more than anything, by his job as a millworker. He spent only two short years of his life as a celebrity. And in those years, he didn’t talk about his family or his childhood. He told one friend he was an orphan, another that he had been a sailor (29). He spoke like a showman, and let his personal history remain in the past. But his childhood, and his family’s story, were that of a changing American life.
Sam Patch moved to Pawtucket in 1807, at the age of 7 or 8, along with his mother, his father and his four brothers and sisters. Before Pawtucket, the family had lived in the fishing village of Marblehead, MA. And before that, his parents and siblings had lived on farms barely large enough to provide for the family. But they’d suffered the kinds of misfortunes that would befall many families. Post Revolutionary America was undergoing changes, but it was still largely rural, and owning land was incredibly important, economically, socially and politically. Those who didn’t own land didn’t have the right to vote. Sam’s father, a man with the unusual name of Mayo Greenleaf Patch, was the youngest of 10 children and his father didn’t have enough land to pass down to all of his kids. Mayo Greenleaf tried to improve his prospects through marriage and through speculative land purchases. At one point he inherited a bit of property, but it wasn’t enough. Mayo Greenleaf Patch accumulated debts, missed mortgage payments, and in 1807 he and his family made a transition that many other families would be forced to make–from the farm to the factory. They moved to Pawtucket, where mill owners employed entire families to work together. That included children, and little Sam Patch likely worked in Slater’s White Mill from a very young age. And he was shaped by his experience of growing up in mills.
There he acquired new ideals, new heroes. At home, things were tough. His father drank and threatened violence, and eventually abandoned his wife and children. But in the mill, Sam found a community. He likely looked up to the Boss Spinners, who were the most highly skilled and best-compensated workers. And eventually, he would become one of them. He learned the value of his work, that while the mill owners seemed to hold all the power, workers were needed to get the job done. Sam may have witnessed the first wage workers’ strike in the United States, led by women textile workers who walked out of Pawtucket mills in the spring of 1824, causing them to shut down. And, no less important, Sam learned that leaping into the water in increasingly daring and foolish and striking ways could bring people together, could entertain them, and it could help him make a name for himself.
In his mid-20s, Sam Patch left Pawtucket and reappeared in Paterson, NJ. Paterson was another important factory town. In the 1790s, Alexander Hamilton planned for it to be the center of American industrialism, though that didn’t really take off until after the War of 1812, when demand for American-made goods exploded. That’s when Paterson grew into a thriving manufacturing town that attracted workers from around the world. And the town was situated around one of the United States’ largest waterfalls–an over 70 foot drop along the Passaic River. It’s here that Sam Patch would first make his mark.
His first famous jump, took place on September 30th, 1827. That day, an exhibition was taking place. A local businessman was installing a bridge over Passaic Falls. The structure, which was already built, would be set on log rollers and heaved into place across the chasm. The whole town was invited out to witness the impressive feat. And Sam Patch planned to steal the show.
It wasn’t just that Patch saw an opportunity to take advantage of a built-in audience. He would be making a statement on behalf of the everyday people in the town of Paterson. Because the bridge that was being installed was not well regarded. It would provide access to the north bank of Passaic Falls, which had previously been public land enjoyed by all. But was now being monetized and commercialized, by local business owner Timothy Crane, as a retreat for the wealthier citizens. Crane was going to charge a toll to cross the bridge in order to turn a profit and keep out the “lazy, idle, drunken vagabonds” he feared would drive all the “decent people” away. (50).
A working class man in a working town, Sam Patch didn’t appreciate the characterization or the widening divide between the laborers and the aristocratic business owners. So he intended to spoil the show.
Despite the efforts of local law enforcement to keep the outspoken and, likely, inebriated Patch away, he dodged the constables and made his way towards the bridge just as it was being hoisted into place. The crowd’s attention was rapt as, for a moment, the structure lurched dangerously as though it would fall, and one of the log rollers slipped out from beneath it, plunging over the cliff. The crowd gasped, and then heaved a sigh of relief as the laborers regained control and completed the task of settling the bridge into its spot. But then murmurs drew the crowd’s attention away from the bridge and towards the man who had appeared on a crag on the southern face of the falls. It was, of course, Sam Patch and though only those nearest could hear, he began to speak. Some heard him say something about how “Crane had done a great thing, and he meant to do another.” And then Patch leapt from the cliff, falling 70 feet into the water where the log roller floated below. And when he bobbed back up to the surface, alive and well, he emerged a star. And Crane’s bridge was an afterthought.
This wasn’t the end of Patch’s rivalry with Timothy Crane, though. Nearly a year later, on the 4th of July in 1828, Crane advertised a display of fireworks at his Forest Garden on the north bank of the Passaic. And so Patch advertised an event of his own–another leap from the falls. A local newspaper estimated something like 3-5 thousand people lined the cliffs to watch the feat of skill and daring. And while little was remembered of what Patch said to the crowd that day before jumping, the newspaper reported that, for the first time, he’d recited a line that would become his motto. “Some things can be done as well as others.” It was a refinement of what he’d said before that previous jump. Sam Patch didn’t have Timothy Crane’s money, his status, his political power–but he had a power of his own, which he described as “nothing more than an art of which I have both the knowledge and courage to perform.” And Patch continued to insist that both he and the people he represented be taken seriously.
His next jump, just weeks later, would make that message even more clear. Only July 16th, Paterson textile manufacturers announced that they would be changing the lunch hour at the mills from 12pm to 1pm. The workers surprised the mill owners by issuing a response. They demanded that the mills reinstate the noon lunch and that they decrease the working day by an hour. Until their demands were met, the workers would go on strike.
Sam Patch announced that he would make his next leap on Saturday, after the factories closed for the week, rallying the town’s workforce together before the conflict that would ensue the following week. And according to one account, somewhere between 6 and 10k people showed up–possibly the entire town. That following Monday, the new lunch hour went into effect in the mills. And instead of honoring the change, the textile workers stopped what they were doing at noon and walked out on strike. They were joined by local mechanics, in what may have been the earliest sympathy strike recorded in the United States. While this was a pivotal moment in the history of labor disputes, the strike itself was unsuccessful. In August, newspapers announced that the effort had come to an end. “The children have yielded their position,” one paper wrote, “and most of the mechanics returned quietly to work, to take their dinner at one o’clock.. The children are now perfectly docile and appear sorry for their misconduct.” Not long after, the lunch hour was quietly changed back to noon, but many of the leaders of the strike found themselves without jobs.
This event marked the end of one chapter in Sam Patch’s story, and the beginning of another. In Paterson, Sam leveraged his unique talents to rally people together, to make a statement. But as the strike came to a close, Patch left Paterson and the mills behind. And began to make more of a name for himself as a true entertainer. His next big leap was a flashy drop of 90 or so feet from a ship’s mast into the Hudson River at a wildly popular park called Elysian Fields. From there, Patch spent the summer of 1828 traveling around NJ and NY, growing as a showman and gaining popularity.
In the fall of 1829, Sam Patch received the invite that would confirm his place in history books. He was asked to be part of an exhibition to be held at Niagara Falls. Today, the Falls are synonymous with tourism and with daredevils. But that wasn’t exactly the case at the time. They had just begun to be seen as a significant tourist destination, following the War of 1812 and the completion of the Erie Canal in the mid 1820s. But the natural wonder hadn’t yet been claimed by daredevils willing to test their mettle against the forces of nature. Sam Patch’s leap would be recorded as a first.
The organizers of the event had a variety of exciting activities planned. They would explode rocks off the cliff face, sail a ship over the falls. There would be strolling players and food and drinks and wrestling matches, and Sam Patch would make a daring leap from the cliffs of the island that sits in the middle of Niagara Falls.
On the morning of October 6th, crowds gathered to watch as men planted explosives along the rocks that were going to be blown up. One reporter described the workers as “brave fellows, who like insects seemed to hang upon the beetling cliffs..” But when the explosives were set off later that morning, their power was overshadowed by the roar of the falls. That same reporter described the sound of the explosions as “a volley of popguns interfering with the thunder of Jupitor.” And then the next event went awry. The organizers of the exhibition had purchased an old schooner which they planned to sail over the falls in a show of magnificent destruction. But when the ship was set adrift on the river’s current, it was carried into a whirlpool where it spun onto a large smooth rock and keeled over. To layer on a third disappointment for those who had traveled into town, Sam Patch didn’t even jump that day. He had shown up too late on the previous day, and hadn’t been afforded enough time to inspect the spot where he planned to make his leap. So the jump was rescheduled for the following afternoon.
October 7th was dreary and rainy. Many of the spectators had gone home. But Sam Patch was determined to jump anyway. The plan was that Patch would leap from an 80 foot ladder that leaned against the base of Goat Island, which separates the Canadian and American Falls. After a slight mishap with the ladder and more rain, Sam Patch finally began his ascent, 80 feet up. The crowd that remained cheered and shouted as he reached the top. He perched there for a moment before standing to bow to the men and blow a kiss to the ladies. And then, he stepped off the edge.
The crowd held their breath as Patch fell, straight as an arrow, and pierced the bubbling churning water below. They continued to hold their breath as they waited and waited for him to come up. A boat circled near the entry point, but he didn’t appear. People began to murmur worriedly, convinced the worst had happened. And then, a roar went up from the crowd as Sam Patch was spotted, dripping wet, but alive and triumphant, climbing up onto the shore.
That day, Sam Patch became the first recorded daredevil to make a leap at Niagara Falls. But that accomplishment wasn’t enough. Disappointed by the small crowd, Patch announced he would repeat the performance a second time 10 days later. And this time, he would jump from an even greater height - from over 120 feet. On October 17th, thousands gathered to watch him make good on that promise. And this jump secured Patch nationwide fame. Newspapers all over the country carried the story. Sam Patch became a household name, and his slogan, “Some things can be done as well as others,” became a popular expression in a nation where old hierarchies were beginning to crumble. In the years to come, his daring leap would not only inspire others to challenge death at Niagara Falls but also embody the bold, defiant energy of an America on the brink of transformation.
Still high off his success, and determined to close out the year with a bang, Sam Patch quickly scheduled another leap in Rochester, NY. It seems the young man had embraced his role as a true entertainer, a showman. He was flashier, he’d learned a bit more about how to drum up financial support for his leaps–by leaving subscription papers at taverns where patrons were encouraged to leave money. And he’d even acquired a pet bear who made the trip from Buffalo to Rochester with Patch and apparently lodged with him in a saloon called the Rochester Recess. Patch ran an ad in the Rochester Daily Advertiser that proclaimed, “Sam Patch… has determined to convince the citizens of Rochester that he is the real Simon Pure by jumping off the falls in this village, from the rocky point in the middle of the Genesee River.”
And on the afternoon of November 6th, he did just that. It’s said some 6-8k people came out to watch. They crowded on the banks on both sides of the Genesee Falls, which plunged 96 feet into a high-walled chasm. Those who didn’t get a good spot beside the falls stood on the roofs of factories or leaned out of windows to get a view. With that many people there to see the jump, you’d think it would be well documented and clear what happened. But there are conflicting accounts of that day. One newspaper claimed that at the advertised time of 2:00, Sam Patch was nowhere to be found. That, instead, another man came from the crowd and crouched to leap. But when he sprang up, he leapt backwards, away from the falls, instead.
Another newspaper reported that Patch was there on time, but that he didn’t make the first jump. This account suggested that Patch took his position at the falls side by side with his pet bear. And that he took the bear by the collar and pushed it over the falls before following behind with a leap of his own. Personally, I was relieved to read that, today, historians think that story might be apocryphal. But whether it happened or not, the bear’s leap became a part of the mythos of Sam Patch.
What everyone seemed to agree on that day is that Patch’s jump, when he finally made it, was perfect. That he entered the water with nearly no splash. That he bobbed quickly to the surface before paddling to shore.
But, despite his technical prowess, Sam Patch wasn’t satisfied. He hadn’t raised enough money to get him through the winter, so he advertised one final jump for the year, though he made an ominous choice in language. “Higher Yet! Sam’s Last Jump,” the ads read. This time, Patch would leap from staging that raised the height to 125 feet. This jump would take place a week later, on November 13th. Friday, November 13th. If you haven’t gotten the hints about where this is going, brace yourself.
This time, even more people gathered to witness the event. Something like 12K were said to be there, along the shores, on roofs, even sitting on the branches of trees. Patch spent the morning at the saloon before parading to the falls. And when he got there, he stepped to the rear of the platform and gave a speech that most couldn’t hear, though a friend recalled it went something like this: “Napoleon was a great man and a great general. He conquered armies and he conquered nations. But he couldn’t jump the Genesee Falls. Wellington was a great man and a great soldier. He conquered armies and he conquered Napoleon, but he couldn’t jump the Genesee Falls. That was left for me to do, and I can do it and will!” Then Sam stripped off his hat and jacket and he lept.
As he fell, it became clear that something was wrong. A third of the way down, Sam lost his characteristic form. His head dropped to his chest and his body tilted sideways. His legs drifted apart and his arms flailed. He hit the water badly. And people waited and waited for him to come back up. Boats moved over the water, looking for signs of the young man. Spectators searched the crowd, convinced he had snuck to shore. That it was all a trick. But minutes passed, and still Patch didn’t appear. Then the minutes turned to hours. Hours to days. Days to weeks.
But, still, some didn’t believe that Sam Patch was really gone. Throughout that winter, rumors spread that Patch had staged the whole thing. That he had hid behind the waterfall and escaped, unnoticed, through the crowd, reveling in the drama he’d created. There were reports of people who had supposedly spotted him in various towns throughout NY. Newspapers even ran a letter that was supposedly written by the showman, which claimed that it had all been a “capital hoax.” The writer assured everyone that the jumper was actually a “man of straw.” But in the spring, his body was found some 7 or so miles downriver. “Sam’s Last Jump,” it turns out, was a prophetic headline.
Or, was it? Because though Sam Patch’s life was cut tragically short, the show, unexpectedly, went on. First, in newspapers and magazines, which continued to write tales of his heroic leaps. Then, in poetry. In sermons. In novels. And on the stage. Then-popular actor Dan Marble brought Patch to audiences around the country, even across the sea. His performances included daring on-stage leaps of Marble’s own, and over the years the representation of Patch matured into this truly All-American hero. A little bit Yankee, a little bit cowboy. The character was bold, unafraid, he was crudely funny, unopposed to righteous violence, and he spoke with a western twang. The phrase, “What the Sam Patch,” became a popular curse. And Sam’s slogan, “Some things can be done as well as others,” continued to resonate with Americans.
When I did my first cursory reading on Sam Patch, I did not understand his catch phrase. Taken from a 21st century point of view, I found it kind of.. Vague and uninspiring. And truthfully you could look at his whole life and see him simply as a reckless young man who got drunk and jumped off cliffs. But so much of Sam Patch’s story comes down to context, to the moment he was living through.
Sam Patch’s rise to fame coincided with the successful 1828 presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson, who was a war hero and, in the minds of many, a representative of the common man, particularly because he was the first American president not born to an elite family. Jackson championed universal white male suffrage and promised to limit the influence of the wealthy elite, striking a chord with laborers who saw their own struggles reflected in his rise.
Likewise, Patch resonated with working-class Americans in that cultural moment, particularly those caught in the widening divide between labor and industry. His slogan—'Some things can be done as well as others'—suggested that skill and determination, rather than birthright, could shape a person’s fate. By hurling himself from waterfalls—natural forces that industrialists sought to control—Patch made an intentional statement: he asserted the presence and power of working class Americans in spaces increasingly dominated by business owners. And by perfecting this physical art, he showed that he alone had command over his body. In this sense, Patch can be seen as a kind of folk hero for organized labor, embodying the idea that the working class had its own strength, its own skill, and deserved recognition.
But, the media also shaped how Sam Patch was remembered, turning him into a broader symbol of Jacksonian democracy—a movement that both expanded political participation for white men and reinforced racism and laid the groundwork for more volatile, personality-driven politics. Jackson himself was so taken with the vision of the daredevil that the media presented, he named his horse Sam Patch. It was this broader political legacy that I got hung up on as I struggled to close out this episode.
Jackson's presidency was celebrated as a triumph for the common man, but it also carried darker implications: the displacement of Native Americans, the entrenchment of slavery, and an aggressive form of populism that inflamed divisions and targeted marginalized groups. That legacy is what makes Jackson such a complicated figure today—his rise signaled greater democracy for some, but at the cost of others. In the present moment, that dichotomy feels particularly relevant and troubling.
This brings us back to Sam Patch. Was he a defiant labor hero, standing up for the working class? Or was he a media creation, his image reshaped to fit a broader political movement? The answer might be both. His story reflects the power of the people—but also how easily that power can be channeled, for better or worse, by those who shape the national narrative. In times of political upheaval, figures like Patch—and the movements they become tied to—can take on meanings far beyond their own actions. And perhaps that’s the lesson: the symbols we embrace, and the histories we tell ourselves, matter deeply in shaping what comes next.
Thank you so much for listening. This episode would not have been possible without the incredible research done by Paul E. Johnson for his book Sam Patch: The Famous Jumper. Check out the book for even more on Sam Patch and his place in American history. This episode was written and researched by me, Sara Corben Harwood. If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could share it with your family or friends, or you can send me a note at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com or on IG at Weird Island Podcast. See you next time as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island.