Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1888 — SAM PATCH. [ARTICLE]

SAM PATCH.

. The One© Celebrated Jumper—His First and Last Leaps «A grizzled old farmer named William -P. Brown was in town the other day, says a Middletown letter to. the New York Times, and fell to giving reminiscences of Paterson as he* remembered the place sixty years ago. “I was born bn Manhattan inland,” he said, “when all the upper part was nothing but farm lands, and I went to work in a cottonspinning factory in Paterson as sweeper and errand boy when I was 11 years old. Paterson was a small afair too, but one of the owners was Sam Patch, who afterward became famous as a high jumper. Isaw him make his first bigjumpat Passaic falls. “The story of the jump is this: Sam Patch and a man named Brannigan were partners in the factory and theyfailed in business. Sam was a Cape Cod man by birth and had been a sailor from a boy up till he came to Paterson. He was a daring aud reckless fellow and could swim like a duck. It was said thjit while he was a sailor he often exhibited his skill and daring by jumping from the high masts of ships into the sea. After the failure Sam Patch hung around Paterson with nothing to do until he was pretty hard up. Then, I suppose, the thought occurred to him that he could make a raise by jumping off the rocks at Passaic falls. Ho notice was given that

at a certain day and hour Ham Patch would jump off the cliff at the falls into -the river below, a distance of about eighty feet, for a purse of SSO, made up by some of the sports of the town. Few people believed that he would make the jump, but there was a big crowd on hand to see it all the same. “Sam came to the falls stripped to his undershirt and drawers. He showed no fear or nervousness, but his face was flushed, as I thought, by drink. He took a couple of small stones in his hands and went to the brink of the cliff and dropped them off one after the other,and watched where they struck the water down below. Then he walked back a few yards and turned and took a little run to the brink of the cliff and jumped off, clearing the rocks about ten feet. He went down feet first, but with his body inclining considerably to one side, and in this shape he struck the water and disappeared. A few seconds later his head bobbed up at a point down stream, and he began paddling for the shore. Then the crowd gave him a big cheer. “Ham’s jump at the Passaic falls was considered a maryelous feat in t£ose days and made him famous the country over. Ho he took to jumping for money from the masts of ships and 'from bridges and other high places, and went about the country giving exhibi-

tions. Unfortunately for him, too, he '. took up another practice that soon cut his career short. I didn’t seeliim make his last jump at the Genesee faffs, at Rochester, Nov. 13,1829, but, but those who did see the tragedy tell me that when he approached the brink to make the leap of 125 feet into the seething pool below he was dazed and unsteady from drink. He made the jump so bungingly that he struck the water flatwise instead of feet first, the concussion •crushing in his breast and sending Tfls dead body to the bottom like a stone.”