Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 04.djvu/127

 FITCH

FITCH

ship at the Rush medical college, Chicago, 1844- 49; was a presidential elector in 1844, 1848 and 1856; represented his district in the 31st and 32d congresses, 1849-53; and was U.S. senator from Indiana from Dec. 3, 1855, to March 3, 1861. At the opening of the civil war he organized the 46th Indiana volunteers and was made colonel. He commanded the Indiana brigade constituting the land forces at the capture of Fort Pillow, June 4, 1863; and at St. Charles, Ark., he destroyed a Confederate battery, June 17, 1862, with a loss of 200 men killed by an explosion on board the Mound City, a Federal gunboat. He resigned his commission in November, 1862, and retired from the army on account of injuries received in liattle. He was a delegate to the Democratic national convention in 1868. He was professor of the art and science of surgery in the Indiana medical college, 1878-83. He died in Logansport, Ind., Nov. 29, 1892.

FITCH, John, inventor, was born in East Wind.sor, Conn., Jan. 21, 1743. He received a limited school training; was apprenticed to a watchmaker ; contracted an luifortunate mar- riage, and left his home about 1769, settling in Trenton, N.J., where he worked at his trade. The necessities of arms for the American army led him to take up the business of a gunsmith, but wlien the British occupied Trenton in Decem- ber, 1776, they destroyed his shop and stock. He thereupon joined the New Jersey troops and passed the winter with Washington's army at Valley Forge. He afterward became an itiner- ant clockmaker, and in the spring of 1780 was made a deputy surveyor for Virginia of the ter- ritory between the Kentucky and Green rivers. Returning to Pliiladelphia in the autumn of 1781 he purchased a stock of goods and set out for the west to trade with the pioneer settlers. The Indians killed two of his companions, cap- tured nine others and destroyed his goods. He was a prisoner for two years, escajiing in 1783 and reaching Warminster. Pa., where he settled and in Aijril, 1785, built a model of a steamboat propelled by side-wheels, which he changed in July, 1786, to a small skiff moved with paddles,

projielled by '7 / /. ■ . u iv-^ a three -inch

cylinder steam- ' engine, which - is believed to ^ ocean liut he was

considered insane. He finally resorted to the sale of a map of the North Western territory which he constructed and engraved with his own hand, and printed on a cider-press and by this expedient procured §800. With this simi he began in February, 1787, the construction of a second boat of sixty tons, forty-five feet long and twelve feet beam, with six paddles on each side and a twelve-inch cylinder steam-engine. This craft made a satisfactory trial trip on the Delaware river Aug. 22, 1787, in the presence of the delegates convened to frame the Federal constitution. This publicity and the fact that New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Virginia had granted him exclusive privilege of steam-navigation on their waters for fourteen years greatly encouraged the inventor and he constructed another boat in October, 1788, and still another in April, 1790^ the Perseverance, which latter ran an entire summer, carrying passengers between Philadelphia and Burlington, and maintaining an average speed of eight miles an hour, covering eighty miles in one day. The company, which he had formed in February, 1787, then built a steamboat to carry both freight and passengers on the Mississippi river under a charter from Virginia for the exclusive right of steam-navigation on "the Ohio river and its tributaries." This vessel was so damaged in a storm as to require rejiairs that extended beyond the time named in a default clause in the con- tract, and the stockholders abandoned the iiro- ject. In 1791 he received a 4)atent for liis inventions in the United States, from which be gained no benefit. The steamboat company sent him to France in 1793, where their purpose was to build a steamboat, but the plans were frust- rated by the Revolution. He deposited his planii and specifications with Aaron Vail, the Ameri- can consul at L'Orient, who was greatly inter- ested in the project and who furnished him means to visit London, England. Tlie consul during his absence exhibited and loaned the drawings to Robert Fulton who had them in liis possession in Paris for several months. Fitch returned to America in 1794, having been obliged to ship as a sailor for Boston to gain passage home. He went to liis farm at Bardstown. Kj'., which he found in the possession of straiigers, and returned east locating in Sharon, Conn. He went to New York city in 1790 where lie con- structed a steamboat, using for the craft a sliip's yawl with a screw-propeller moved by a ,«mall high-pressure engine. This he successfully exhib- itel on Collect Pond in New York city, after- ward the site of the city pri.son. In 1798 he returned to Bardstown. Ky.. where he built a three foot model steamboat which lie tried on a small stream. He lived at this time in a small