45 pages • 1 hour read
Paul E. JohnsonSam Patch, the Famous Jumper
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Preface-Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Preface Summary
The preface introduces Sam Patch, an American factory worker who became a professional daredevil in the 1820s. Johnson notes that the book is not a biography in the traditional sense: Patch’s obscurity before he became a famous jumper means that the resources of a typical biography are not available. Instead, he offers a series of fragmented stories detailing Patch’s family history, celebrity, and death. Johnson suggests that Patch’s celebrity was connected to important industrial and labor movements in 19th-century New York and that his jumps changed the way Americans thought about the great waterfalls at Rochester and Niagara.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Pawtucket”
Sam Patch’s story begins in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the small milling town where his family moved when he was seven years old. Pawtucket was the site of the first water-frame cotton-spinning mill in America, founded in 1790 by Samuel Slater. Slater had promised residents that the mill would be small, hiring only the wives and children of local farmers, but the labor needs of the mill soon grew, and impoverished families from beyond Pawtucket began to crowd the town. Sam Patch’s family were among these newcomers.
Patch’s father, Greenleaf Patch, came from an established New England family. Greenleaf was born on a farm owned jointly by his father Timothy and his uncle. Although the two families were prosperous, both men knew that they could not further divide the property for future generations. Timothy Patch tried to buy more land to leave to his 10 children, but bad investments and growing debts meant that he died in poverty, leaving his youngest son Greenleaf with nothing. At the age of 21, Greenleaf left his home for Reading, Massachusetts, a town where he knew no one. In a society based on inherited property and kinship ties, Greenleaf was at a serious disadvantage.
In Reading, Greenleaf met and married Abigail McIntire, a pregnant 17-year-old girl from a wealthy family. Her father, Archelaus McIntire, agreed to let the newlyweds raise their family on his property, loaning Greenleaf the cost of a shoemaking shop and a small house. As a homeowner, farmer, and businessman, Greenleaf gained respect in his community and within his new family. His marriage to Abigail unequivocally improved his circumstances.
When Abigail’s father died, Greenleaf was made executor of his estate and began to prey on the family’s resources. Evidence from tax and court records suggests that Greenleaf took property from Abigail’s widowed mother in order to enrich himself. He may have also had a hand in the wedding of Abigail’s brother—the heir to the McIntire estate—to his half-sister Nancy Barker. As a result of his overinvolvement in the McIntire estate, Greenleaf began to grow unpopular among the family.
By 1798, Greenleaf and Abigail had been evicted from her family’s land. They took their four children—including young Sam Patch—to Danvers, Massachusetts. In Danvers, the Patches rented a farm and made shoes, but owned no personal property, and Greenleaf struggled to rebuild his life for his family. In 1802, Greenleaf’s half-brother died in the fishing town of Marblehead, leaving him one-fifth of his estate. Greenleaf moved the family to Marblehead and began shoemaking. By 1805, Greenleaf had racked up massive debts, and the home was seized. Like hundreds of other impoverished families, the Patch family moved to a mill town to find work.
Greenleaf did not work in Pawtucket. He developed a severe alcohol addiction, and he frequently stole the money earned by his wife and children. In 1812, he abandoned the family; Abigail sued for divorce six years later. For the first time in her life, Abigail was fully independent. Greenleaf had dominated their marriage: They had lived with her family, but Greenleaf insisted they name their children after his family.
Although she was religious, Abigail stopped going to church when she married Greenleaf, and their children were not baptized. As a single woman, Abigail became a member of her community’s church, and her daughters took new names in honor of her mother’s family. Abigail was able to buy a home, where she lived with her oldest daughter Mary until the end of her life. Despite her husband’s financial ruin, Abigail Patch established a respectable life for her daughter and granddaughters. Her granddaughter’s memories of their family reflect how Abigail tried to rehabilitate her late husband’s image. Her granddaughters were raised believing that their grandfather was a farmer who had died in Massachusetts before the family came to Pawtucket.
Sam Patch began working at Samuel Slater’s mill soon after the family arrived in Pawtucket, when he was seven or eight. The mill was primarily worked by children, who operated several fast-moving, dangerous machines. Although children in Slater’s mill seem to have been well taken care of, the monotony of the work and the constant roar of the waterfalls would have taken a mental toll. As a teenager, Patch was described as melancholy, and he may have started drinking at a young age. After several years, Patch became a boss spinner, a specialized worker who operated the spinning mule at the heart of the mill. In the early days of American manufacturing, boss spinners were usually English immigrants whose experiences in factory towns made them valuable assets. Patch was one of the first American-born boss spinners to work in Massachusetts.
The Slater mill largely hid the Pawtucket Falls from public view. From inside the mill, the workers had a direct view of the falls. Young men frequently met on the falls after work. As Slater’s mills grew, boys—including Patch—began to jump from higher and higher points, drawing small crowds and some criticism. Patch’s reputation as a boss spinner and falls jumper began to grow in Pawtucket.
Preface-Chapter 1 Analysis
In the introduction, Johnson frames his book as an act of recovery, rather than a traditional biography. Johnson tells the extraordinary story of an ordinary man. He explains that the research process was difficult because “the Patches were not important people: they did not keep diaries or write memoirs, they did not appear in newspapers, and no one bothered to save their mail” (1). As a result, Johnson was forced to find traces of the family “in vital records, tax lists, church records, wills and deeds, records of town governments, court records, and other scattered genealogical sources” (1). This exhaustive list of historical archives demonstrates the value Johnson places on Patch’s story: Although Patch is not historically significant, Johnson has dedicated significant time searching archives to recover his life story.
The resulting narrative is “fragmentary and too often speculative” (1). However, Johnson supplements Patch’s life with “social, cultural, and ecological histories of the waterfalls where they took place” (1). He also examines Economic Change and Class Conflict in 19th-Century America and The Uses and Ethical Problems of Celebrity Culture. By situating Patch’s story within larger historical and environmental narratives, Johnson suggests that history should not only be a record of famous people; it should investigate the lives of ordinary citizens. This perspective on history and the value of ordinary lives echoes throughout the book.
The first chapter reflects Johnson’s exploration of how it is difficult to break generational patterns. Johnson’s review of the historical record suggests that Greenleaf Patch repeated many of the financial and personal mistakes of his father, Timothy Patch. As a young man, Timothy inherited a substantial estate from his father at a time when land ownership “conferred not only economic security but personal and moral independence” (5). Despite this privileged beginning, Timothy made several bad business and investment decisions, and was ultimately forced to sell his entire estate to “pay debts and court costs” (7).
Timothy’s wife and 10 children, including the newborn Greenleaf Patch, were left to fend for themselves. Although Greenleaf was born with nothing, he married into a wealthy family, and his father-in-law gifted him a new home. Johnson’s description of these events echoes his description of Timothy’s life: As a new homeowner, “Greenleaf Patch was endowed with family connections and economic independence” (10). Despite this, Greenleaf ultimately made the same mistakes as his father, and “in succeeding years bad luck and moral failings would cost him everything he had gained” (12). Like his father, Greenleaf abandoned his wife and children when the family was in a dire financial position. Timothy Patch and Greenleaf Patch acquired land and prestige, lost them through debts, and abandoned their families, suggesting that destructive patterns can be repeated across generations.
Johnson’s depiction of Greenleaf Patch implies that Greenleaf’s marriage to Abigail Patch may have been coerced. Greenleaf’s wife Abigail was “seventeen and pregnant” when they married; he was 22 (8). Although this age difference would not have been unusual at the time, Johnson’s repeated description of Abigail as Greenleaf’s “pregnant young bride” presents her as uniquely vulnerable (9). Johnson does not explicitly accuse Greenleaf of manipulating Abigail. However, when discussing Abigail’s brother’s hasty marriage to Greenleaf’s half-sister, Johnson notes that young people would have known “that they could acquire property or the use of it through seduction and the hurried marriages that often followed” (14). This implies that Greenleaf may have intentionally seduced Abigail to coerce her into marriage for financial gain.
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