Poor Fitch! He, in common with many others of the day who did and did not give their ideas to the world, was on the right track, but could not put them into practical and practicable shape. He was really a man of remarkable genius. The son of a Connecticut farmer, he had been apprenticed to a watch and clock maker, where doubtless he increased his knowledge of the mechanical arts. During the early part of the Revolutionary War, he was armourer to the State of New Jersey, and later, became a land surveyor. While acting in that capacity, the idea first suggested itself to him, as it did almost simultaneously to Symington in Scotland, of propelling carriages by steam, but he soon abandoned it on account of the roughness of the American roads. After that he turned his attention almost exclusively to the propulsion of vessels by steam, visiting England and France, but obtaining no pecuniary advantage from the experiments he proposed or consummated. In a sketch of his life, which appeared a few years since,(26) the writer describes Fitch’s difficulties in raising the money to finish his second steam-boat: “In a letter to David Roltenhouse, when asking an advance of £50 to finish the boat, he says, ‘This, sir, whether I bring it to perfection or not, will be the mode of crossing the Atlantic 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 afterwards, ‘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!”’” Fitch, reduced to utter poverty and despair, threw himself into the Alleghany in 1798, and thus terminated his chequered life.