Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper

Sam Patch left Pawtucket in his mid-20s for unknown reasons, reappearing in the historical record as a boss spinner in Paterson, New Jersey. Paterson was built on Passaic Falls, the second largest falls on the East Coast, behind Niagara. For early visitors to Passaic Falls, the view was both beautiful and terrifying, a reminder of the sheer force of nature. In the early 19th century, factories and mills were built in Paterson to harness the power of the falls to support manufacturing. Sam Patch was one of thousands of industrial workers who moved to Paterson to fill the mills. Johnson suggests that Patch’s jumps in Paterson, which took place from 1827 to 1828, are connected to local controversies surrounding the falls and the mills.

In the late fall of 1827, a sawmill owner named Timothy Crane bought the north bank of Passaic Falls and turned it into a commercial park known as the Forest Garden. Crane transformed the dense, dramatic forest into manicured lawns, gardens, restaurants, and entertainment spaces. His crowning achievement was the Clinton Bridge, named after the man who presided over the construction of the Erie Canal. The tolled bridge crossed the falls and provided direct access from Paterson to the Forest Garden for the price of two cents. On the day of the bridge’s opening, crowds gathered to see the completed bridge rolled into place. Halfway through the process, a massive log fell from the bridge and into the river below. The workers regained control of the bridge, but their feat was overshadowed by Patch, who jumped 70 feet into the falls and dragged the log to the nearest riverbank. Before jumping, Patch told gathered spectators that Crane’s bridge was a great thing and that he planned to do another great thing.

Johnson argues that Patch’s attempt to distract from Crane’s bridge-building ceremony was more than mere vandalism, and reflects that there was real tension between the working-class people of Paterson and industrialists like Timothy Crane. Before the construction of Forest Garden, the north bank of Passaic Falls was used by the people of Paterson as an escape from the city. Although the dense woods and ravines were privately owned, the owners kept the land wild and did not prohibit their neighbors from using it recreationally. The construction of the Forest Garden took this space out of public hands and transformed it into a business-making venture that sought to exclude working-class people. Johnson argues that Patch’s jump was a reaffirmation of the freedom and wild nature of Passaic Falls, and a rebuke of Crane’s commercialization of the area.

Johnson suggests that Patch’s jump reflects competing conceptions of art in 19th-century America. When asked if his jump was an attempt to die by suicide, Patch replied that jumping from waterfalls was an art that he had practiced since childhood. In Patch’s usage, the word art describes a specific and learned skill by which a man could support his family. Describing waterfall-jumping as an art makes Patch not a vandal, but an artist and a skilled worker capable of things others are not.

In Patch’s eyes, his art made him a respectable man in society. The fact that he likely jumped in the uniform of his mule spinners’ guild suggests that Patch saw jumping as another kind of artistic occupation. For Crane, on the other hand, the term art was a synonym for the civilizing forces of the modern world and was set in opposition to nature. Crane visualized Forest Garden as the triumph of art (which was civilized, intentional, and rational) over the wild and unruly natural world. Crane’s customers relished his artful conquering of nature, which allowed them to escape industrialized city centers and enjoy the benefits of a landscape created exclusively for their needs.

The following summer, in July 1928, Patch performed two more daring jumps in Paterson. The first was on Independence Day, which was traditionally marked by a parade featuring labor guilds and ordinary citizens marching alongside civic leaders. In 1828, however, organizers canceled the parade and excluded ordinary citizens from celebrations. Patch’s jump offered an alternative celebration for Paterson’s citizens. Twelve days later, a majority of the mill owners in Paterson announced unilateral changes to workers’ schedules. The decision was deeply unpopular among workers, who quickly organized a strike for the following Monday. Patch announced that he would jump from Passaic Falls after work stopped. A crowd of between six and ten thousand people gathered to watch his jump, which Johnson describes as an act of protest. The mill workers’ strike lasted through the end of July. Although the mill owners ultimately reversed the unpopular schedule changes, they retaliated against the organizers of the strike. Evidence suggests that Patch was blacklisted among the mills in Paterson, and was unable to find work as a result of the July jumps.

By the time the strike ended, Patch was in Hoboken, New Jersey, jumping nearly 100 feet from a ship’s mast into the Hudson River. In the early 19th century, the city of Hoboken was extensively developed as a riverside retreat for Manhattanites by Colonel John Stevens. It was his son John Cox Stevens who developed the hotel, resort, and sporting center where Patch’s jump into the Hudson was featured entertainment. New York newspapers criticized Stevens’s decision to promote Patch’s jumping, calling it a dangerous example of arrogance and foolhardiness for the public. A crowd of 500 visiting New Yorkers gathered in Hoboken to watch Patch jump, including an artist named Walter M. Oddie, who drew the only known eyewitness portrait of Patch jumping. Patch’s successful jump in Hoboken made him a minor celebrity in the New York area. Johnson identifies this jump as his transition from Paterson’s local labor hero, jumping to amuse his neighbors and workmates, to an entertainer, jumping to earn money from strangers.