A closer look

Sam Patch’s Waterfall Leaps

How did workers use spectacle and collective action to reveal inequalities in early industrialized America?

by Peter Mabli, American Social History Project, The Graduate Center, CUNY

An Early American Daredevil

On July 28, 1828, a man named Sam Patch stood at the edge of the Passaic Falls in Paterson, New Jersey. A large crowd gathered near the basin of the roaring waterfall and watched as he leapt off the cliff and disappeared into the mist. After a few anxious seconds, Patch emerged from the water to the relief and cheers of the crowd.

Sam Patch had been a textile spinner by trade, but he was known for his daring waterfall jumps. Throughout his life, Patch had performed dozens of similar stunts, including a jump off Niagara Falls. But his jump in Paterson was the first to afford Patch national attention and, at times, derision. Newspapers throughout the country dismissed Patch as “a crazy chap” and a “maniac.” To his admirers, however, Patch was celebrated.

Many of those who flocked to witness his jumps were working-class people like Patch. These laborers and their families were part of a nascent class of Americans in the early Republic essential to the nation’s efforts at widespread industrialization. In the context of early industrial society, Patch’s daredevil leaps were actions associated with and symbolic of the growing class differences and labor disputes of the era.

The S.U.M. of All Fears

The newly industrialized world that Patch inhabited had not come about by accident. Calculated efforts to improve the manufacturing sector on a national scale had begun soon after the formation of the U.S. federal government. In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton presented a detailed justification for the development of a new national industrialized economic system. These efforts, he argued, were vital to the economic independence and longevity of the nation. But Hamilton’s plan faced strong opposition from anti-Federalists who advocated for a more agrarian lifestyle and national economic development, and who warned that subsidizing industrialization would create an elite class or group of powerful and wealthy industrialists.

In spite of the opposition, Hamilton devised a project to create a government-funded manufacturing town. The plan was implemented by an organization called the Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures (S.U.M.). S.U.M. chose a six-mile plot on the Passaic River in northern New Jersey as the site for its new industrial center and renamed it Paterson, after the state’s governor, William Paterson.

Paterson offered a host of benefits for manufacturing. The town was located only fifteen miles from New York Harbor, making both raw materials and manufactured goods easy to acquire, transport, and sell. But more important, the town included the Passaic Falls, a waterfall whose forceful surge could help power future mills and factories along the Passaic River.

Over the following decades, Paterson grew into one of the largest industrialized centers in the Northeast. But the concerns outlined by anti-Federalists decades prior remained: by 1820, a small group of wealthy businessmen controlled nearly all the land and factories in Paterson. In the ensuing decade, the divide between the powerful business class and the growing working class widened significantly, leading to a number of labor conflicts.

Leaps and Walkouts

Sam Patch––who by the late 1820s was employed as a mule spinner at the Hamilton cotton mill in Paterson––also became a local hero by equating his waterfall leaps with the plight of his fellow working-class factory workers. In one such instance, Patch leapt over the Passaic Falls during a scheduled Fourth of July fireworks show to oppose the development of a nearby exclusive private park. Paterson’s elite derided Patch for the jump and insisted he was a drunkard and a madman. In an effort to clear his name, Patch proclaimed he was “perfectly sober and in possession of [his] proper faculties” before announcing another leap over the falls, scheduled for the following Monday at noon.

While there is no direct statement of Patch’s further intent at the falls, some historians believe (based on the timeline of events in Paterson and his previous actions) the date and time of his next jump was not arbitrary. (1) The same day Patch announced his jump, Paterson’s business leaders had collectively agreed to alter factory workers’ lunch schedules. The city’s laborers were all ordered to take half hour breakfast and lunch breaks instead of their traditional hour breaks, and to move their lunch break from noon to one p.m. Incensed by the seemingly arbitrary and unnecessary shift of their workday hours without negotiation or their consent, mechanics from the town’s factories met to renounce the factory owners and demand a return to their earlier schedule. They threatened a general strike if their demands were not met. Seizing upon the opportunity, Patch scheduled his jump at noon on the first Monday of the walkout.

By noon on Monday, July 28, a crowd of thousands had formed at the base of the Passaic Falls. Patch appeared at the edge of the cliff a few minutes past noon, made a short speech about the democratization of labor, and jumped yet again over the waterfall to the cheers of the crowd.

Workers continued their general strike into August before the factory owners capitulated and reinstated the original work schedule. But the organizers of the walkouts were fired and blacklisted from any job in a Paterson factory. Workers’ demands had been met, but the organizational structure that allowed Paterson’s factory owners to wield enormous influence over their workers remained intact for years to come.

1. Historian Paul Johnson makes this claim in Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), chap. 2: Paterson.

What Happened to Sam Patch

Aware of his growing popularity and lured by the promise of a lucrative career, Patch left Paterson soon after his jump in late July 1828. He traveled around the Northeast for the next year, leaping from ship masts, cliffs, and waterfalls to the delight of his numerous fans. His career was short-lived, however. On November 6, 1829, Patch jumped over the Genovese Falls in Rochester, New York, and did not resurface. His body was found downriver months later, after the spring thaw.

Patch had grown to near mythic status in this short time period: writers penned odes to his life, songs were sung about his daredevil exploits, and illustrated books regaled children with the waterfall leaps of “The Jersey Jumper.” In retellings, the exciting details of Patch’s stunts often took precedence over contextualizing his actions within the class and labor issues inherent in early American industrialized society. But remnants of Patch’s intent and influence continued years after his death, as did those of his fellow factory workers in Paterson. Labor disputes persisted in Paterson for decades (including one of the largest and most influential industrial labor actions, the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike) and continued into the city’s postindustrial decline in the mid-twentieth century.

Reflection Questions

How did conflicting notions of “progress” influence the growth and development of industrial cities like Paterson?

What methods did laborers in Paterson use to articulate their grievances and change their circumstances?

How was Sam Patch and his waterfall jumps emblematic of early nineteenth century working class societ

Additional Reading

Gutman, Herbert. “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815–1919.” American Historical Review 78, no. 3 (1973): 531–88.

Johnson, Paul. Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004).

Johnson, Paul. “‘Art’ and the Language of Progress in Early-Industrial Paterson: Sam Patch at Clinton Bridge.” American Quarterly 40, no. 4 (1988): 433–49.

Rice, Stephen P. Minding the Machine: Languages of Class in Early Industrial America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).

Rockman, Seth "Class and the History of Working People in the Early Republic." Journal of the Early Republic 25, no. 4 (2005): 527–35.

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