[74] John Fitch, who was a remarkable genius, was born in Connecticut, U.S., on the 21st January, 1743. His father, a small farmer, who could not afford to give him more than a limited education, bound him apprentice to a watch and clock maker. Afterwards he became a silversmith at Trenton, New Jersey, and, during the early part of the Revolutionary War, he was appointed by the “Committee of Safety” armourer to that State. Dislodged by the approach of the British, he fled to Bucks County, Pennsylvania; subsequently, he became a sutler, and supplied the American camp at Valley Forge with goods and provisions: he was also a land surveyor, and, in that capacity, the idea first suggested itself to him (as, curiously enough, it had done to Symington, in Scotland, about the same time) of propelling carriages by steam, but he soon abandoned it on account of the roughness of the roads in America, and turned his attention to propelling vessels by that power on the rivers. In a sketch of his life, which appeared in the “Philadelphia Dispatch” of the 9th February, 1873, the writer, in describing the difficulties Fitch had to encounter in raising money to finish his second steam-boat, remarks: “In a letter to David Rettenhouse, when asking an advance of fifty pounds to finish the boat, he says, ‘This, sir, whether I bring it to perfection or not, will be the mode of crossing the Atlantic in time for packets and armed vessels.’ But everything failed, and the poor projector loitered about the city for some months, a despised, unfortunate, heart-broken man. ‘Often have I seen him,’ said Thomas P. Cope, many years afterward, ‘stalking about like a troubled spectre, with downcast eyes and lowering countenance, his coarse soiled linen peeping through the elbows of a tattered garment.’ Speaking of a visit he once paid to John Wilson, his boat builder, and Peter Brown, his blacksmith, in which, as usual, he held forth upon his hobby, Mr. Cope says: ‘After indulging himself for some time in this never-failing topic of deep excitement, he concluded with these memorable words, “Well, gentlemen, although I shall not live to see the time, you will, when steam-boats will be preferred to all other means of conveyance, and especially for passengers; and they will be particularly useful in the navigation of the river Mississippi.” He then retired, on which Brown, turning to Wilson, exclaimed, in a tone of deep sympathy, ‘Poor fellow! What a pity he is crazy!’” The same writer states that Fitch, in 1796, after his return from France, built, under the patronage of Chancellor Livingston, at New York, “a yawl, which he moved by steam with a _screw-propeller_, on the Collect Pond.” Poor Fitch died by his own hands in 1798. See also “Life of John Fitch,” by Thompson Westcott, published by J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1857. [75] “New York Magazine” for 1790, p. 493. [76] “History of Philadelphia,” by Thompson Westcott.