Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1883 — Sam Patch’s Death. [ARTICLE]

Sam Patch’s Death.

The business or industry of going over water-falls and maelstroms was started in this country many years ago by a simple-minded fellow named Samuel Patch, who lived at Pawtucket, R. I. While at work on the roof of a high building that stood beside the Blackstone river, at the head of the Pawtucket falls, Patch slipped, and, seeing that he must go, jumped with all his might into the raging torrent. A few moments later he landed safely some distance below the cataract. There was a deal of talk about the exploit, then deemed a marvel, and Patch took it into his head that jumping falls would be a paying business. He tried it successfully in many places, but tried it once too often. An old ballad says: ’Twas at the falls of Genessee That Sam made his last dive; Headlong he plunged into the flood And ne er come out alive. But tradition records that Sam had partaken too ffeely of his favorite beverage, rum, before essaying the fatal leap, and that the responsibility of his failure belongs not to water, but to the popular stimulant which he so much affected. The mother of Samuel Patoph survived him many years, living at fairtucket in respectable widowhood,"Mid often relating to visitors the story oilier son’s strange career. Nebvousness, debility and exhausted vitality cured by using Brown’s Iron Bittern