Fitch, JOHN

Fitch, JOHN, inventor, was born in what is now South Windsor, Connecticut, in 1743, and after a short, unhappy, married life, and a period of wandering, settled at Trenton, New Jersey. At the outbreak of the revolution he became a gunsmith for the American troops, with whom he wintered at Valley Forge. He next made surveying and trading tours in the West, and after escaping from captivity among the Indians returned to Pennsylvania, where in 1785 he completed his first model of a steamboat; this had wheels at the sides, which were replaced in the following year with paddles or oars. In the face of discouragement and neglect he succeeded in constructing a vessel, 45 feet long and 12 feet beam, with an engine of 12-inch cylinder, which made a successful trial-trip on the Delaware, at Philadelphia, 22d August 1787. Larger vessels were built in 1788 and 1790, the latter being run as a passenger-boat, at eight miles an hour, to Bur- lington (20 miles) throughout the summer. Misfortune, however, dogged 'poor John Fitch's' steps; his supporters fell away; and in 1793 he went to France to construct a steamboat, only to find his project frustrated by the Revolution there. It is said that his plans and specifications were deposited with the American consul at L'Orient, who for several months entrusted them to Robert Fulton (q.v.); and the latter's steamboat certainly was in 1817 declared by a committee of the New York legislature to be 'in substance the invention patented by John Fitch in 1791.' Penniless and dejected, Fitch worked his passage back to America, where in the summer of 1798 he is said to have committed suicide in a tavern at Bardstown, Kentucky.