Sam Patch, the Jersey Leaper, was the earliest of the well-known daredevils of Niagara Falls, but little is told locally about his fate in nearby Rochester.
Patch leaped 190 feet from a hastily constructed ladder into the swirling waters of the Niagara River near the Bridal Veil Falls in October, 1829, his second such successful leap.
Then he moved on to Rochester for another engagement to jump into the water below the 92-foot high cataract on the Genesee River in the heart of Rochester. And this proved to be his downfall.
No one has ever researched a biography on Sam Patch, so there is much legend and myth surrounding his background. He has variously been described as an ignorant, loutish showoff or as a mild-mannered athlete. Some stories even brand him a drunk.
He was in his late teens when he gained local fame as a daredevil by jumping feet first into the Blackstone River from the top of a high building in Pawtucket, R.I. Then he made similar leaps in New Jersey, thus attaining the name Jersey Leaper.
Sam Patch started on a tour of likely jumping places, which included both the Niagara River and the Genesee River. An artful showman, he traveled with a bear on a chain and a pet fox on a rope.
After his Niagara leaps, he hurried to Rochester to fulfill his jumping commitment before the water froze. The Rochester Daily Advertiser made note of Patch's favorite saying, "Some things can be done as well as others."
The daredevil was quoted as saying, "There's no mistake about Sam Patch. He goes the whole hog and, unlike too many politicians, he turns no somersets in his progress. He goes straight as an arrow."
Sam Patch made his successful Rochester leap on Nov. 6, 1829. Although the crowd of onlookers was large, the collections were small. Needing more money, he decided to make a second leap, but this time 25 feet higher from a platform built atop the falls.
His handbills proclaimed "Higher Yet!" and "Sam's Last Leap." Flouting superstition, or perhaps making a showman's use of it for publicity, he chose to make his second leap on Friday the 13th, or Nov. 13, 1829.
This apparently worked, because the second crowd of onlookers swelled into the thousands.
News accounts later said Sam Patch did not appear to be himself on that day and many thought he was seriously hungover or about half-drunk. Dressed in a jacket, white pantaloons and with a red sash around his waist, he climbed up to the platform. He took a few minutes to address the crowd.
Sam Patch reportedly said, "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 nations, but he couldn't jump the Genesee Falls. That was left for me to do, and I can do it, and will."
Sam Patch usually had great control of his body and his many feet-first jumps were, as he claimed, straight as an arrow with his arms close to his sides and his feet together.
But something went awry this day.
On the way down, his balance was off, he flapped his arms and his legs were apart. He entered the cold November water at an angle. The throng waited, almost breathlessly, for him to bob to the surface, but they waited in vain.
Sam Patch never surfaced. For a few months after that, rumors were rife that he was alive and was seen at various locations in the Rochester area. But the rumors were false. In the spring, when the ice had thawed, his body was recovered near the mouth of the Genesee River.
He was buried in the Charlotte Cemetery in Rochester and a bronze plaque on a boulder marks the spot.
One Rochester historian, Blake McKelvey, noted, "Rochester gained wide fame from Sam's last jump. Patch became the subject of much doggerel verse and won a place in the folklore of the young Republic."
McKelvey also credits Patch's purported drinking as a boost to the temperance movement sweeping the state at that period.
He wrote that "curiously enough, it was the foolhardy leap of Sam Patch that touched off the emotional powder keg (of the temperance movement) in Rochester."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 22 2003 |