Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper

the long version

"In the 1820s, there was a fellow named Sam Patch who worked (when he wasn't drinking) in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, as a mill hand for one of America's new textile companies. He made a name for himself one day by jumping nearly one hundred feet into the tumultuous waters below Pawtucket Falls. When in 1827 he repeated the stunt in Paterson, New Jersey, another mill town, an even larger audience gathered to cheer on the daredevil they would call the "Jersey Jumper." Inevitably, he went to Niagara Falls, where in 1829 he jumped not once but twice in front of thousands who had paid for a good view." "Paul E. Johnson here gives this deceptively simple story all its deserved richness, revealing in its characters and social settings a virtual microcosm of Jacksonian America. He also relates the real jumper to the mythic Sam Patch, a folk hero who turned up as a daring moral hero in the works of Hawthorne and Melville, in London plays and pantomimes, and in the spotlight with Davy Crockett - a Sam Patch who became the namesake of Andrew Jackson's favorite horse."--BOOK JACKET.