April 17, 2021 • 28 mins
This 2018 episode covers Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Taylor's whole barrel trip was part of a much bigger story of daredevils at this natural wonder, which is tied to its industrialization and commercialization
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. Since we had something of a daredevil story
in this week's episode on Sonora Webster Carver, we thought
we would stay in that theme for this week's classic.
It is Annie Edson Taylor, who was the first person
to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. This episode
originally came out July nine, two thousand eighteen, and enjoy
(00:26):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I went
on a trip just the other week that involved flying
into Buffalo, New York, and since we were so close
(00:47):
by Niagara Falls, we went to Niagara Falls. I had
never been there before, and it reminded me that way
back last summer, I had been planning to do a
podcast on people going over Niagara Falls in a barrel,
and then I stumbled across an article about Annett Kellerman
while I was doing the research for that. I got
completely distracted. I forgot totally about it. Having been reminded
(01:11):
by going to the actual waterfall, we are going to
get back to that today with Annie Edson Taylor, who
was the first person to go over Niagara Falls in
a barrel, and we're going to start off with a
little bit of a brief history of industrialization and commercialization
at Niagara because this whole barrel trip was part of
a much bigger story of tourism and Daredevil's at this
(01:35):
natural wonder So. Niagara Falls is a collection of three
waterfalls on the border between the United States and Canada,
Ontario on the Canadian side, and New York on the U.
S side, and they're on the Niagara River between Lake
Erie and Lake Ontario. The falls are the Horseshoe Falls,
the American Falls, and the Bridal Veil Falls. Sometimes Horseshoe
(01:57):
Falls is known as Canadian Falls. Most of the she
falls around the Canadian side of the border, while American
Falls and Bridal Veil Falls are both in the United States.
Horseshoe Falls is the biggest of the three. It's the
one that's shaped like a horseshoe, like its name suggests,
and it's what comes to mind for a lot of
people when you say Niagara Falls. Yeah, it's impressive in persons,
(02:20):
it's it does have sort of the iconic aspect to it.
The area around Niagara Falls has been home to a
number of Iroquois speaking indigenous people's leading up to the
seventeenth century. A confederation known as the Neutral lived on
what would become the Canadian side of the river, and
this name comes from the French describing them as neutral
(02:40):
in conflicts between other Iroquois nations and confederation. Uh So
this is a guess at pronunciation because we couldn't find
a clear one, but the uh when Roaring On or
when Row lived on the other side, and the Neutral
Confederation and the win Row were allies until sixteen thirty nine.
After that, a combination of wars, epidemics, and other factors
(03:03):
led to both of them being dispersed by and absorbed
into other Iroquois tribes and nations. Yeah, there are descendants
of these people surely living still today. But there's a
whole complicated history of all the various Iroquois peoples that
they were not a monolith, so some people wound up
going to completely different parts of the country. Others sort
(03:25):
of made their way into other tribes and nations. The
first European known to see the falls was probably Father
Louis Hennepin, who was a French priest in sixteen seventy eight,
and he wrote about it after he got back to France.
Although in his account he said that the falls were
six hundred feet tall, they are really about a hundred
(03:45):
and seventy feet or fifty two meters tall. The first
Europeans settlements in the area were started after the Revolutionary War.
It's hard to eyeball distance and scale, I understood, and
they are quite impressive. They are I could see where
you would you would think they were way bigger than
they actually are. The nearby city of Buffalo, New York,
(04:06):
started to grow dramatically after the completion of the Erie Canal,
which connected the Great Lakes to Albany, New York, and
then from all Many people could reach New York City
via the Hudson River, and as railroads started to expand
in the nineteenth century, Buffalo became a major railway hub.
Its proximity to Niagara Falls helped make the falls a
(04:27):
major tourist destination. In eighteen o one, Theodosia Burr and
Joseph Alston visited the falls as part of their honeymoon.
They were kind of the it couple at the time,
and that's this helps set the trend of Niagara as
a honeymoon destination, although sometimes people will give that credit
to Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Jerome, who also honeymooned there in
(04:47):
eighteen o four. It was another hundred years or so, though,
before Niagara Falls really started billing itself as the honeymoon
capital of the world. By the eighteen thirties, the tourist
industry was booming in Niagara Falls. Hotels and knickknack shops
and tourist attractions were popping up everywhere, and developers were
(05:08):
buying the prettiest vantage points along the river so that
they could charge people to take a look. And people
were already complaining that the area around the falls was
too commercial and too tacky. So complaints about commercialization at
Nagra not not new remotely, and it was much to
(05:28):
the chagrin of European visitors. And the words of Alexis
to Toqueville and a letter to a friend in one quote,
if you wish to see this place in its grandeur, hasten.
If you delay, your Niagara will have been spoiled for you.
Already the forest round it is being cleared. The Romans
are putting steeples on the pantheon. I don't give the
(05:50):
Americans ten years to establish a saw or flour mill
at the base of the cataract. This letter was president.
Industry also became a major part of the Niagara scene,
with mills and their water wheels dotting the river. Nicola
Tesla famously worked on a hydro power plant that started
operation on November six. Eventually, there were so many mills
(06:15):
that they physically affected the flow of the water over
the falls. Some of the tourist attractions that still exist
today date back to the nineteenth century. The Maid of
the Mist started operating in eighteen forty six. That's one
of the boats that will take you up to the
bottom of the falls and a little colorful poncho. At first,
(06:36):
the Mate of the Mist was a passenger vessel that
was carrying people across the river, so it was serving
a much more practical role. When a suspension bridge opened
across the river in eighteen forty eight, the Maid of
the Mist became a sightseeing vessel. By the eighteen sixties,
there was so much commercial activity and other development at
Niagara that people started calling for some kind of preservation effort.
(06:58):
A group of politicians and prominent public figures started the
Free Niagara movement to encourage the State of New York
to buy back some of the private land and restore
it as a public park. It was both about preserving
the natural beauty of the park and making it so
that people could view the falls for free, rather than
having to pay a mill owner for a peak at
(07:19):
a view that also included all of their industrial equipment.
This eventually led to the Niagara Reservation Act in eighteen
eighty three and the creation of Niagara Falls State Park,
established as Niagara Reservation in eighteen eighty five. The park
itself was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The Niagara Parks
(07:39):
Commission was established in Ontario in eighteen eighty five as well,
and on the Canadian side the area adjacent to the
falls as Queen Victoria Park today. Throughout all this time
of commercialization, industrialization, and preservation at Niagara, performers were also
working at the falls, trying to make a living by
entertaining to wrists, and in the days before TV and film,
(08:03):
daredevils were a huge draw. Sam Patch, also known as
the Yankee Leaper, jumped off a platform on Goat Island,
which is between Horseshoe and American Falls. On October seven nine,
he jumped from a height of eighty five feet it's
about twenty six ms, and he survived. He made another
(08:23):
jump from a height of a hundred and thirty feet
that's forty on October seventeen. He survived that one too,
although he died during a jump near Rochester less than
a month later. There was also a lot of wire
walking at the falls. Jean Francois Gravels, also known as
Charles Blondin, was the first person to cross the falls
(08:45):
on a tight rope on June fifty nine. About twenty
five thousand spectators gathered to watch him do this, and
then he went on to do a whole whole lot
of other wire walking stunts at Niagara, including carrying his
manager across on his back, and one time carrying a
stove to the halfway point and cooking breakfast on there,
(09:07):
and once he was done cooking this omelet or whatever,
he lowered it down to people on board the Maid
of the Mist on the river below. He kept doing
all of this Dare Devilry until eighteen six, and he
was the first of really many wire walkers at the falls.
That is a big old ball of nope for me. Yeah.
There well, and there's I mean, there is still wire
(09:29):
walking at the falls. Like I remember back in the
day when we were owned by Discovery, they were being
a much hyped wire walk at the falls that was
beyond TV. It's still a thing. Yeah, all of that
is a big note for me. Uh, Like, why would
you do that when you could sit on the boat.
I understand the impulse, I just it's not for me. Uh.
(09:52):
Steve Brody claimed that he went over the falls in
nothing but a padded rubber suit in eight but there
is no evidence that his feet ever actually happened. He
had also made a disputed claim to have jumped off
the Brooklyn Bridge and survived. One popular stunt was to
try to survive the extremely treacherous Niagara Whirlpool, which is
(10:13):
downstream from Niagara Falls at a point where the river
makes a sharp bend. People would try to make it
through this treacherous whirlpool in barrels or sometimes protected by
nothing other than a life preserver. On June sixth of
eighteen sixty one, Joel Robinson successfully took the Maid of
the Mists through the whirlpool after it was sold to
(10:34):
a company in Montreal that would only accept delivery on
Lake Ontario. Matthew Webb, who had been the first person
to swim across the English Channel, died trying to swim
that stretch of the river in eighty three. This is
just a sampling of all the dare devil stunting that
was going on at Niagara Falls leading up to the
turn of the twentieth century. But one thing all of
(10:57):
these dar devils had in common. Nearly all of them
were men. It was a very masculine world, which made
the first person to go over a falls in a
barrel even more of a novelty. And we're going to
talk about her after we paused for a sponsor break.
(11:22):
Annie Edson was born October eight near Auburn, New York.
Her parents were Merrick Edson and Lucretia Warren, and the
family was pretty well off. Merrick owned some milling interests
in the family spent their summers out in the country
and their winters in the city, and he also had
at least two older brothers. She had an adventurous streak
from the time she was quite young. She liked to
(11:44):
be outdoors and to read adventure stories, and she also
had a fondness for Roman history. Her father died when
she was ten, and at fourteen, she and her brothers
were sent to a private seminary to finish their educations.
Four years later and he married David S. Taylor. They
had one child together, although the baby didn't live past infancy.
(12:06):
David was killed while fighting in the Civil War, and
at first Annie still had enough money to live on,
but it soon became clear that that money was not
gonna last forever. Her seminary education also hadn't really set
her up for supporting herself, so she enrolled in a
state teaching college. After she finished her studies at the
teaching college, she spent a few years traveling to different
(12:29):
cities where she had friends and family working as a teacher.
It was, I mean, really, it was all over the
United States. She also went back to school again to
study dance and physical culture. If you remember from our
episode on Fort Shaw, Indian school, physical culture is a
combination of calisthenics and strength training in general health and
wellness that was really popular in the nineteenth century. She
(12:51):
started teaching dance and physical culture and even opening her
own school. Even though that school failed. Sometime around Taylor
her moved to Bay City, Michigan. By this point, she
was really unhappy with her prospects for her life. She
had gone from a comfortable childhood and youth to working
as an itinerant teacher. She had also had a series
(13:13):
of misfortunes in which she lost a lot of the
savings that she had, including living through both a robbery
and a fire. There were no pensions or retirement programs,
and she didn't want to be poor or live off
the charity of her friends, so she kept trying to
think of ways to earn money, enough money to be
self sufficient and comfortable again. According to some accounts, she
(13:36):
had heard about Steve Brodie's alleged stunt at Niagara Falls,
and she didn't think he had really done it. But
it's possible that having heard about that planted the seed
for her own stunt. Later on, in her words, quote,
two years I had been constantly studying, when not occupied
in teaching, what I could do to make money, to
(13:57):
make it honestly and quickly, All kinds of schemes ran
riot through my brain. Reading in a New York paper
about people going to the Pan American Exposition and from
there to Niagara Falls. The idea came to me like
a flash of light, go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
No one has ever accomplished this feat. I did not
(14:18):
think it wrong, as there was nothing immodest in the act,
nor did it involve the life of anyone but myself.
I believe in prayer and that God will answer if
only there is faith. As my motive was not a
selfish one, but to succor to friends, one who has
little children, the other indelicate health, and to aid myself financially.
I believed I would live. I was determined to live,
(14:41):
to vindicate to the world God's mercy and goodness. So
it was a side note the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo,
which she referenced there is where President William McKinley was assassinated.
He was shot on September one, and he died several
days later. It's not totally here where in the timeline
(15:02):
Taylor thought up this stunt, or whether the assassination affected
her plans at all. Regardless, though she knew that to
make this journey and survive, she would need the right barrel.
She started mocking up models, cutting them out of paper
and sewing them together with twine, and ultimately she designed
a custom made barrel that was about five ft or
(15:23):
one and a half meters tall, and it had a
twelve inch head, a twenty four inch middle, and a
fifteen inch foot, so that's thirty centimeters sixty centimeters and
thirty eight centimeters from head to foot. She selected white
Kentucky oak for the wood, with ten riveted metal hoops.
Taylor also planned for a ballast sometimes it's described as
(15:44):
an anvil that would be in the bottom of the barrel,
and she hoped this would make the barrel stay upright
while she floated down the river, rather than having it
just roll around every which way with her inside of it.
She looked for a cooper to make the barrel, and
once she found one, he refused to do it. He
thought this was way too dangerous a plan for any
(16:05):
person and that she would surely be killed if she
tried it, but she persisted and eventually he gave in.
The final barrel had the words Queen of the Mist
on the side. Going over the falls in a barrel
was just one step, and Taylor's plan for her future
prosperity from there. She was planning to go on a
lecture tour, so she hired a man named Frank M.
(16:27):
Russell to act as her manager. She decided on October
twenty three, nineteen o one, as the day for her plunge.
This was the day before her sixty third birthday. But
thinking that no one would want to come and see
a sixty something woman daredevil or on the lecture circuit,
she and Russell described her as being twenty years younger.
(16:47):
Everyone but Taylor, and maybe also Russell, thought this was
a terrible idea. Authorities thought it was so dangerous that
they told Russell they would charge him with manslaughter if
Taylor died in the attempt. But even as everyone she
encountered try to talk her out of it, Taylor insisted
that she would do it. She even did a trial
run by sending her cat over in a barrel on
(17:09):
the eighteenth of October. According to most reports, the cat
was frightened. But okay, it makes me like her very much, frankly,
but makes a lot of people not like her very much.
I understand the I own thing. I read one. Uh,
you know. There are a number of sort of retrospectives
(17:30):
in more recent years that people have written, and there
was one that I read that just was not charitable
in its read of her at all, and that was
one of the things the person was so mad about.
But on the twenty three, the day she had selected,
the weather was bad. High winds made the surface of
the already fast moving Niagara River incredibly choppy. She had
(17:52):
hired two men to assist her, Fred Trusdale and William
Holleran Truesdale and hollerand looked at the water and they
said there was no way that they could safely navigate
to the drop off point in those conditions. Taylor was crushed,
but she tried again. The next day, her sixty third birthday.
She was Dale and Holler and rode her out to
(18:13):
Grass Island, and there, away from the crowds of thousands
of people who had come to watch her do this,
she took off her hat and coat and overskirt and
got into this barrel. Inside she tied one strap around
her waist and another around her foot with the hope
of keeping her head from slamming into the top of
the barrel. The barrel was packed with cushioning, and once
(18:34):
the lid was on her assistance used a bicycle pump
to pump in more air. Sometimes this is described as
trying to pressurize it, but she was afraid of running
out of oxygen before getting to the falls. To avoid
being swept over the falls themselves, her assistance had to
cut her loose almost a mile away, so she had
a lengthy journey before even getting to the falls, followed
(18:56):
by a wait for someone to fish her out of
the water. One the air had been pumped in, Taylor
plugged the air hole with a cork almost immediately, though
it turned out that her fears of running out of air, uh,
we're maybe not totally founded it the barrel was not airtight.
It also was not watertight. It started leaking, and soon
her feet were in a pool of freezing water. At
(19:18):
about four in the afternoon, after rowing to the deepest
part of the river, Taylor's assistance cut her loose. And
that's where we're going to pause for a sponsor break.
(19:38):
Here's how Annie Edson Taylor described those first moments adrift
in the Niagara River. Quote, my heart swelled, and for
some moments I felt as though I were being suffocated,
but I determined to be brave by a supreme effort
of will. I calmed myself at once and began earnestly
to pray if it was God's will to spare my life,
if not give me an easy death. This reminds me
(20:01):
a little bit of Henry Box Brown's account of being
in the box while being shipped around. I'm gonna say
he has a much better reason to be put in
a box and sent somewhere. I wholly concur But just
that moment of like I'm trapped, I'm just gonna pray
and look like I'm either going to gut it out
or it's gonna end. The rapids on the Upper Niagara
turned out to not be all that bad. The water
(20:24):
in the barrel kept getting deeper, and there was the
constant tension and anticipation of when she would get to
the falls and whether she would survive going over, But
in terms of how rough the ride itself was, she
was pleasantly surprised. Then, at about four twenty three, the
barrel finally shot over the falls, and her words quote,
I thought, for a moment my senses were lost. The
(20:46):
feeling was one of absolute horror, But I still knew
when I struck the water of the lower river. The
shock was not so great, but I went down down
until the momentum had spent itself. For a few brief
moments she was completely underwater, but then the submerged barrel
came back up under the torrent, and that turned out
(21:07):
to be worse than the anticipation or the fall. She
described it as being whirled like a dasher in a churn.
After several terrifying minutes, constantly spinning and striking rocks, the
barrel finally popped out from under the cataract and Taylor
lost consciousness. But then the Maid of the Mist, which
had resumed operation in five, came to retrieve the barrel.
(21:31):
Chief Engineer John Ross was the person who opened the
barrel and exclaimed, the woman is very much alive, or
something similar. She replied something along the lines of yes,
she is, though much hurt and confused. I don't think
I would be that composed in my initial speech after
something like that, but probably mine would not be fit
(21:53):
to print. Taylor was bleeding from a head wound when
she was pulled out of the water, and she almost
certainly had a concussion, but other than that and some bruises,
she was unharmed. She had become the first person known
to go over Niagara Falls and survive. Like we said earlier,
thousands of people had come out to watch this stunt,
and it was covered in the Niagara area newspapers and
(22:15):
some other scattered newspapers as well, but it wasn't really
that big of a news sensation elsewhere. The Boston Daily
Globe had a small feature about it, for example, but
when I looked through the New York Times archive, I
didn't find anything about it. As it turned out, her
manager was incompetent of fraud or both. A lot of
other well publicized stunts at Niagara had been performed before
(22:39):
throngs of spectators who paid for a seat on bleachers
that had been put up just for the event. Russell
didn't arrange anything like that. The only thing he tried
to do to make money on the day was sell
signed photographs. He also didn't do a very good job
of getting her on her planned lecture tour. She did
appear at the Pan American Exposition, but the only engagements
(23:00):
that he lined up for her after that were at
Dime museums, which she thought those were beneath her. So
there's some accountability there on her too. He did line
up work for her that she did not want to do,
but like it also wasn't the work she had been
wanting to do. Taylor's decision to build herself as forty
three instead of sixty three also came back to bite
(23:22):
her because when people did come to see her, they
did not believe that this old woman could possibly be
the forty three year old Annie Edson Taylor that they
had heard about. I actually think the fact that she
was sixty three could be the selling point right like today,
it definitely could be the selling point. But no, she
didn't think that was gonna work. That was a poor
(23:45):
calculation on their part. The closest thing that Taylor ever
got to a lecture tour was a series of engagements
appearing in department store windows where she would pose with
her barrel, and then Frank Russell disappeared, taking that barrel
with him. She found a new manager who hired a
younger woman to impersonate her. Taylor never got her barrel back,
(24:09):
even after borrowing money to hire a private investigator to
go look for it. Eventually, she had a replica barrel
made and went back to Niagara Falls where she tried
to make ends meet by posing with this replica barrel
on the sidewalk and selling postcards. She also wrote a
brief autobiography in nineteen two. We have quoted from it.
(24:29):
It's probably embellished, especially in some of the places we
didn't quote from, so for example, it took a lot
of guts to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
But she also said that while being robbed at gunpoint,
she looked at a robber who had a gun to
her head and said, quote, blow away. I would as
soon be without brains as without money, And that as
(24:49):
a result is Robert let her live. That just seems
like an unbelievable presence of mind in the middle of
an armed robbery. But maybe that's just me. Yeah, I
don't know. I mean, to me, it seems impossible. I
couldn't pull that off. But I also would have said
a whole lot of expletives when I came out of
a barrel, So I clearly I am not of a
(25:10):
mind to handle either of these things in the commist
of manners. Annie Edson Taylor spent her last years at
the Niagara County Almshouse, and she died on April, at
the age of eighty three. She is buried at Oakwood
Cemetery in Niagara Falls, New York, in an area called
Stranger's Rest, which is the burial site of a number
(25:32):
of Niagara Daredevils. After Annie Edson Taylor survived her trip
over Niagara Falls, She's reported to have said, no one
ought to ever do that again, or, to be even
more direct, quote, I would sooner walk up to the
mouth of a cannon knowing it was going to blow
me to pieces than make another trip over the falls.
(25:52):
You know. She just seems like maybe she had like
a way with words, But in spite of these warnings,
she'd did start something of a trend. In addition to
people who have been swept over the falls by accident
or have intentionally gone over without intending to survive, at
least sixteen people have tried going over the falls in
(26:12):
a barrel or some other kind of barrel like device
since Annie Edson Taylor did it. Eleven of those people
have survived. The next person after Taylor was Bobby Leach.
He went over the falls on July eleven, so not
quite ten years later. Before his trip over the falls,
and a steel barrel. He had performed with Barnamon Bailey's
(26:33):
Circus as a diver and a stunt swimmer. He did
this stunt as part of a much hyped triple challenge
that also involved him parachuting off the upper suspension bridge
at Niagara and going through the whirlpool in a barrel.
He broke several bones and as he was going over
the falls, and then after he recovered, he went on
a speaking tour of the United States in Europe with
(26:55):
his barrel. He was on a four month speaking tour
of New Zealand when he slipped on an orange peel,
broke his leg and died of complications of gangreing on
a So while he did have more of a career
in showmanship than Any's Ads and Taylor did, this is
definitely a case of like him doing something she had
(27:16):
done ten years before, but becoming famous for it in
a way she had not been able to do. Yeah,
he kind of had exactly the career she had hoped
for right up until that orange peel incident. Yeah. Also,
don't go over Niagara in a barrel. It's dangerous and illegal.
We're not advocating going over Niagara in a barrel just
I mean I again, clearly, I am not a daredevil
(27:39):
in my heart, but I just don't get it. Sit
in a nice restaurant nearby and watched the falls and eat.
That's what we did at Niagara Falls. After walking around
Niagara Falls, we had a wonderful lunch at a lovely
restaurant where we sat there and watched the falls while
we ate. That sounds great, great, It was great. Thanks
(28:08):
so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
episode is out of the archive, if you heard an
email address or a Facebook U r L or something
similar over the course of the show, that could be
obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at
I heart radio dot com. Our old health stuff works
email address no longer works, and you can find us
(28:29):
all over social media at missed in History and you
can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts,
the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen
to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
(28:51):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday. Since we had something of a daredevil story
in this week's episode on Sonora Webster Carver, we thought
we would stay in that theme for this week's classic.
It is Annie Edson Taylor, who was the first person
to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. This episode
originally came out July nine, two thousand eighteen, and enjoy
(00:26):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I went
on a trip just the other week that involved flying
into Buffalo, New York, and since we were so close
(00:47):
by Niagara Falls, we went to Niagara Falls. I had
never been there before, and it reminded me that way
back last summer, I had been planning to do a
podcast on people going over Niagara Falls in a barrel,
and then I stumbled across an article about Annett Kellerman
while I was doing the research for that. I got
completely distracted. I forgot totally about it. Having been reminded
(01:11):
by going to the actual waterfall, we are going to
get back to that today with Annie Edson Taylor, who
was the first person to go over Niagara Falls in
a barrel, and we're going to start off with a
little bit of a brief history of industrialization and commercialization
at Niagara because this whole barrel trip was part of
a much bigger story of tourism and Daredevil's at this
(01:35):
natural wonder So. Niagara Falls is a collection of three
waterfalls on the border between the United States and Canada,
Ontario on the Canadian side, and New York on the U.
S side, and they're on the Niagara River between Lake
Erie and Lake Ontario. The falls are the Horseshoe Falls,
the American Falls, and the Bridal Veil Falls. Sometimes Horseshoe
(01:57):
Falls is known as Canadian Falls. Most of the she
falls around the Canadian side of the border, while American
Falls and Bridal Veil Falls are both in the United States.
Horseshoe Falls is the biggest of the three. It's the
one that's shaped like a horseshoe, like its name suggests,
and it's what comes to mind for a lot of
people when you say Niagara Falls. Yeah, it's impressive in persons,
(02:20):
it's it does have sort of the iconic aspect to it.
The area around Niagara Falls has been home to a
number of Iroquois speaking indigenous people's leading up to the
seventeenth century. A confederation known as the Neutral lived on
what would become the Canadian side of the river, and
this name comes from the French describing them as neutral
(02:40):
in conflicts between other Iroquois nations and confederation. Uh So
this is a guess at pronunciation because we couldn't find
a clear one, but the uh when Roaring On or
when Row lived on the other side, and the Neutral
Confederation and the win Row were allies until sixteen thirty nine.
After that, a combination of wars, epidemics, and other factors
(03:03):
led to both of them being dispersed by and absorbed
into other Iroquois tribes and nations. Yeah, there are descendants
of these people surely living still today. But there's a
whole complicated history of all the various Iroquois peoples that
they were not a monolith, so some people wound up
going to completely different parts of the country. Others sort
(03:25):
of made their way into other tribes and nations. The
first European known to see the falls was probably Father
Louis Hennepin, who was a French priest in sixteen seventy eight,
and he wrote about it after he got back to France.
Although in his account he said that the falls were
six hundred feet tall, they are really about a hundred
(03:45):
and seventy feet or fifty two meters tall. The first
Europeans settlements in the area were started after the Revolutionary War.
It's hard to eyeball distance and scale, I understood, and
they are quite impressive. They are I could see where
you would you would think they were way bigger than
they actually are. The nearby city of Buffalo, New York,
(04:06):
started to grow dramatically after the completion of the Erie Canal,
which connected the Great Lakes to Albany, New York, and
then from all Many people could reach New York City
via the Hudson River, and as railroads started to expand
in the nineteenth century, Buffalo became a major railway hub.
Its proximity to Niagara Falls helped make the falls a
(04:27):
major tourist destination. In eighteen o one, Theodosia Burr and
Joseph Alston visited the falls as part of their honeymoon.
They were kind of the it couple at the time,
and that's this helps set the trend of Niagara as
a honeymoon destination, although sometimes people will give that credit
to Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Jerome, who also honeymooned there in
(04:47):
eighteen o four. It was another hundred years or so, though,
before Niagara Falls really started billing itself as the honeymoon
capital of the world. By the eighteen thirties, the tourist
industry was booming in Niagara Falls. Hotels and knickknack shops
and tourist attractions were popping up everywhere, and developers were
(05:08):
buying the prettiest vantage points along the river so that
they could charge people to take a look. And people
were already complaining that the area around the falls was
too commercial and too tacky. So complaints about commercialization at
Nagra not not new remotely, and it was much to
(05:28):
the chagrin of European visitors. And the words of Alexis
to Toqueville and a letter to a friend in one quote,
if you wish to see this place in its grandeur, hasten.
If you delay, your Niagara will have been spoiled for you.
Already the forest round it is being cleared. The Romans
are putting steeples on the pantheon. I don't give the
(05:50):
Americans ten years to establish a saw or flour mill
at the base of the cataract. This letter was president.
Industry also became a major part of the Niagara scene,
with mills and their water wheels dotting the river. Nicola
Tesla famously worked on a hydro power plant that started
operation on November six. Eventually, there were so many mills
(06:15):
that they physically affected the flow of the water over
the falls. Some of the tourist attractions that still exist
today date back to the nineteenth century. The Maid of
the Mist started operating in eighteen forty six. That's one
of the boats that will take you up to the
bottom of the falls and a little colorful poncho. At first,
(06:36):
the Mate of the Mist was a passenger vessel that
was carrying people across the river, so it was serving
a much more practical role. When a suspension bridge opened
across the river in eighteen forty eight, the Maid of
the Mist became a sightseeing vessel. By the eighteen sixties,
there was so much commercial activity and other development at
Niagara that people started calling for some kind of preservation effort.
(06:58):
A group of politicians and prominent public figures started the
Free Niagara movement to encourage the State of New York
to buy back some of the private land and restore
it as a public park. It was both about preserving
the natural beauty of the park and making it so
that people could view the falls for free, rather than
having to pay a mill owner for a peak at
(07:19):
a view that also included all of their industrial equipment.
This eventually led to the Niagara Reservation Act in eighteen
eighty three and the creation of Niagara Falls State Park,
established as Niagara Reservation in eighteen eighty five. The park
itself was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The Niagara Parks
(07:39):
Commission was established in Ontario in eighteen eighty five as well,
and on the Canadian side the area adjacent to the
falls as Queen Victoria Park today. Throughout all this time
of commercialization, industrialization, and preservation at Niagara, performers were also
working at the falls, trying to make a living by
entertaining to wrists, and in the days before TV and film,
(08:03):
daredevils were a huge draw. Sam Patch, also known as
the Yankee Leaper, jumped off a platform on Goat Island,
which is between Horseshoe and American Falls. On October seven nine,
he jumped from a height of eighty five feet it's
about twenty six ms, and he survived. He made another
(08:23):
jump from a height of a hundred and thirty feet
that's forty on October seventeen. He survived that one too,
although he died during a jump near Rochester less than
a month later. There was also a lot of wire
walking at the falls. Jean Francois Gravels, also known as
Charles Blondin, was the first person to cross the falls
(08:45):
on a tight rope on June fifty nine. About twenty
five thousand spectators gathered to watch him do this, and
then he went on to do a whole whole lot
of other wire walking stunts at Niagara, including carrying his
manager across on his back, and one time carrying a
stove to the halfway point and cooking breakfast on there,
(09:07):
and once he was done cooking this omelet or whatever,
he lowered it down to people on board the Maid
of the Mist on the river below. He kept doing
all of this Dare Devilry until eighteen six, and he
was the first of really many wire walkers at the falls.
That is a big old ball of nope for me. Yeah.
There well, and there's I mean, there is still wire
(09:29):
walking at the falls. Like I remember back in the
day when we were owned by Discovery, they were being
a much hyped wire walk at the falls that was
beyond TV. It's still a thing. Yeah, all of that
is a big note for me. Uh, Like, why would
you do that when you could sit on the boat.
I understand the impulse, I just it's not for me. Uh.
(09:52):
Steve Brody claimed that he went over the falls in
nothing but a padded rubber suit in eight but there
is no evidence that his feet ever actually happened. He
had also made a disputed claim to have jumped off
the Brooklyn Bridge and survived. One popular stunt was to
try to survive the extremely treacherous Niagara Whirlpool, which is
(10:13):
downstream from Niagara Falls at a point where the river
makes a sharp bend. People would try to make it
through this treacherous whirlpool in barrels or sometimes protected by
nothing other than a life preserver. On June sixth of
eighteen sixty one, Joel Robinson successfully took the Maid of
the Mists through the whirlpool after it was sold to
(10:34):
a company in Montreal that would only accept delivery on
Lake Ontario. Matthew Webb, who had been the first person
to swim across the English Channel, died trying to swim
that stretch of the river in eighty three. This is
just a sampling of all the dare devil stunting that
was going on at Niagara Falls leading up to the
turn of the twentieth century. But one thing all of
(10:57):
these dar devils had in common. Nearly all of them
were men. It was a very masculine world, which made
the first person to go over a falls in a
barrel even more of a novelty. And we're going to
talk about her after we paused for a sponsor break.
(11:22):
Annie Edson was born October eight near Auburn, New York.
Her parents were Merrick Edson and Lucretia Warren, and the
family was pretty well off. Merrick owned some milling interests
in the family spent their summers out in the country
and their winters in the city, and he also had
at least two older brothers. She had an adventurous streak
from the time she was quite young. She liked to
(11:44):
be outdoors and to read adventure stories, and she also
had a fondness for Roman history. Her father died when
she was ten, and at fourteen, she and her brothers
were sent to a private seminary to finish their educations.
Four years later and he married David S. Taylor. They
had one child together, although the baby didn't live past infancy.
(12:06):
David was killed while fighting in the Civil War, and
at first Annie still had enough money to live on,
but it soon became clear that that money was not
gonna last forever. Her seminary education also hadn't really set
her up for supporting herself, so she enrolled in a
state teaching college. After she finished her studies at the
teaching college, she spent a few years traveling to different
(12:29):
cities where she had friends and family working as a teacher.
It was, I mean, really, it was all over the
United States. She also went back to school again to
study dance and physical culture. If you remember from our
episode on Fort Shaw, Indian school, physical culture is a
combination of calisthenics and strength training in general health and
wellness that was really popular in the nineteenth century. She
(12:51):
started teaching dance and physical culture and even opening her
own school. Even though that school failed. Sometime around Taylor
her moved to Bay City, Michigan. By this point, she
was really unhappy with her prospects for her life. She
had gone from a comfortable childhood and youth to working
as an itinerant teacher. She had also had a series
(13:13):
of misfortunes in which she lost a lot of the
savings that she had, including living through both a robbery
and a fire. There were no pensions or retirement programs,
and she didn't want to be poor or live off
the charity of her friends, so she kept trying to
think of ways to earn money, enough money to be
self sufficient and comfortable again. According to some accounts, she
(13:36):
had heard about Steve Brodie's alleged stunt at Niagara Falls,
and she didn't think he had really done it. But
it's possible that having heard about that planted the seed
for her own stunt. Later on, in her words, quote,
two years I had been constantly studying, when not occupied
in teaching, what I could do to make money, to
(13:57):
make it honestly and quickly, All kinds of schemes ran
riot through my brain. Reading in a New York paper
about people going to the Pan American Exposition and from
there to Niagara Falls. The idea came to me like
a flash of light, go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
No one has ever accomplished this feat. I did not
(14:18):
think it wrong, as there was nothing immodest in the act,
nor did it involve the life of anyone but myself.
I believe in prayer and that God will answer if
only there is faith. As my motive was not a
selfish one, but to succor to friends, one who has
little children, the other indelicate health, and to aid myself financially.
I believed I would live. I was determined to live,
(14:41):
to vindicate to the world God's mercy and goodness. So
it was a side note the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo,
which she referenced there is where President William McKinley was assassinated.
He was shot on September one, and he died several
days later. It's not totally here where in the timeline
(15:02):
Taylor thought up this stunt, or whether the assassination affected
her plans at all. Regardless, though she knew that to
make this journey and survive, she would need the right barrel.
She started mocking up models, cutting them out of paper
and sewing them together with twine, and ultimately she designed
a custom made barrel that was about five ft or
(15:23):
one and a half meters tall, and it had a
twelve inch head, a twenty four inch middle, and a
fifteen inch foot, so that's thirty centimeters sixty centimeters and
thirty eight centimeters from head to foot. She selected white
Kentucky oak for the wood, with ten riveted metal hoops.
Taylor also planned for a ballast sometimes it's described as
(15:44):
an anvil that would be in the bottom of the barrel,
and she hoped this would make the barrel stay upright
while she floated down the river, rather than having it
just roll around every which way with her inside of it.
She looked for a cooper to make the barrel, and
once she found one, he refused to do it. He
thought this was way too dangerous a plan for any
(16:05):
person and that she would surely be killed if she
tried it, but she persisted and eventually he gave in.
The final barrel had the words Queen of the Mist
on the side. Going over the falls in a barrel
was just one step, and Taylor's plan for her future
prosperity from there. She was planning to go on a
lecture tour, so she hired a man named Frank M.
(16:27):
Russell to act as her manager. She decided on October
twenty three, nineteen o one, as the day for her plunge.
This was the day before her sixty third birthday. But
thinking that no one would want to come and see
a sixty something woman daredevil or on the lecture circuit,
she and Russell described her as being twenty years younger.
(16:47):
Everyone but Taylor, and maybe also Russell, thought this was
a terrible idea. Authorities thought it was so dangerous that
they told Russell they would charge him with manslaughter if
Taylor died in the attempt. But even as everyone she
encountered try to talk her out of it, Taylor insisted
that she would do it. She even did a trial
run by sending her cat over in a barrel on
(17:09):
the eighteenth of October. According to most reports, the cat
was frightened. But okay, it makes me like her very much, frankly,
but makes a lot of people not like her very much.
I understand the I own thing. I read one. Uh,
you know. There are a number of sort of retrospectives
(17:30):
in more recent years that people have written, and there
was one that I read that just was not charitable
in its read of her at all, and that was
one of the things the person was so mad about.
But on the twenty three, the day she had selected,
the weather was bad. High winds made the surface of
the already fast moving Niagara River incredibly choppy. She had
(17:52):
hired two men to assist her, Fred Trusdale and William
Holleran Truesdale and hollerand looked at the water and they
said there was no way that they could safely navigate
to the drop off point in those conditions. Taylor was crushed,
but she tried again. The next day, her sixty third birthday.
She was Dale and Holler and rode her out to
(18:13):
Grass Island, and there, away from the crowds of thousands
of people who had come to watch her do this,
she took off her hat and coat and overskirt and
got into this barrel. Inside she tied one strap around
her waist and another around her foot with the hope
of keeping her head from slamming into the top of
the barrel. The barrel was packed with cushioning, and once
(18:34):
the lid was on her assistance used a bicycle pump
to pump in more air. Sometimes this is described as
trying to pressurize it, but she was afraid of running
out of oxygen before getting to the falls. To avoid
being swept over the falls themselves, her assistance had to
cut her loose almost a mile away, so she had
a lengthy journey before even getting to the falls, followed
(18:56):
by a wait for someone to fish her out of
the water. One the air had been pumped in, Taylor
plugged the air hole with a cork almost immediately, though
it turned out that her fears of running out of air, uh,
we're maybe not totally founded it the barrel was not airtight.
It also was not watertight. It started leaking, and soon
her feet were in a pool of freezing water. At
(19:18):
about four in the afternoon, after rowing to the deepest
part of the river, Taylor's assistance cut her loose. And
that's where we're going to pause for a sponsor break.
(19:38):
Here's how Annie Edson Taylor described those first moments adrift
in the Niagara River. Quote, my heart swelled, and for
some moments I felt as though I were being suffocated,
but I determined to be brave by a supreme effort
of will. I calmed myself at once and began earnestly
to pray if it was God's will to spare my life,
if not give me an easy death. This reminds me
(20:01):
a little bit of Henry Box Brown's account of being
in the box while being shipped around. I'm gonna say
he has a much better reason to be put in
a box and sent somewhere. I wholly concur But just
that moment of like I'm trapped, I'm just gonna pray
and look like I'm either going to gut it out
or it's gonna end. The rapids on the Upper Niagara
turned out to not be all that bad. The water
(20:24):
in the barrel kept getting deeper, and there was the
constant tension and anticipation of when she would get to
the falls and whether she would survive going over, But
in terms of how rough the ride itself was, she
was pleasantly surprised. Then, at about four twenty three, the
barrel finally shot over the falls, and her words quote,
I thought, for a moment my senses were lost. The
(20:46):
feeling was one of absolute horror, But I still knew
when I struck the water of the lower river. The
shock was not so great, but I went down down
until the momentum had spent itself. For a few brief
moments she was completely underwater, but then the submerged barrel
came back up under the torrent, and that turned out
(21:07):
to be worse than the anticipation or the fall. She
described it as being whirled like a dasher in a churn.
After several terrifying minutes, constantly spinning and striking rocks, the
barrel finally popped out from under the cataract and Taylor
lost consciousness. But then the Maid of the Mist, which
had resumed operation in five, came to retrieve the barrel.
(21:31):
Chief Engineer John Ross was the person who opened the
barrel and exclaimed, the woman is very much alive, or
something similar. She replied something along the lines of yes,
she is, though much hurt and confused. I don't think
I would be that composed in my initial speech after
something like that, but probably mine would not be fit
(21:53):
to print. Taylor was bleeding from a head wound when
she was pulled out of the water, and she almost
certainly had a concussion, but other than that and some bruises,
she was unharmed. She had become the first person known
to go over Niagara Falls and survive. Like we said earlier,
thousands of people had come out to watch this stunt,
and it was covered in the Niagara area newspapers and
(22:15):
some other scattered newspapers as well, but it wasn't really
that big of a news sensation elsewhere. The Boston Daily
Globe had a small feature about it, for example, but
when I looked through the New York Times archive, I
didn't find anything about it. As it turned out, her
manager was incompetent of fraud or both. A lot of
other well publicized stunts at Niagara had been performed before
(22:39):
throngs of spectators who paid for a seat on bleachers
that had been put up just for the event. Russell
didn't arrange anything like that. The only thing he tried
to do to make money on the day was sell
signed photographs. He also didn't do a very good job
of getting her on her planned lecture tour. She did
appear at the Pan American Exposition, but the only engagements
(23:00):
that he lined up for her after that were at
Dime museums, which she thought those were beneath her. So
there's some accountability there on her too. He did line
up work for her that she did not want to do,
but like it also wasn't the work she had been
wanting to do. Taylor's decision to build herself as forty
three instead of sixty three also came back to bite
(23:22):
her because when people did come to see her, they
did not believe that this old woman could possibly be
the forty three year old Annie Edson Taylor that they
had heard about. I actually think the fact that she
was sixty three could be the selling point right like today,
it definitely could be the selling point. But no, she
didn't think that was gonna work. That was a poor
(23:45):
calculation on their part. The closest thing that Taylor ever
got to a lecture tour was a series of engagements
appearing in department store windows where she would pose with
her barrel, and then Frank Russell disappeared, taking that barrel
with him. She found a new manager who hired a
younger woman to impersonate her. Taylor never got her barrel back,
(24:09):
even after borrowing money to hire a private investigator to
go look for it. Eventually, she had a replica barrel
made and went back to Niagara Falls where she tried
to make ends meet by posing with this replica barrel
on the sidewalk and selling postcards. She also wrote a
brief autobiography in nineteen two. We have quoted from it.
(24:29):
It's probably embellished, especially in some of the places we
didn't quote from, so for example, it took a lot
of guts to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
But she also said that while being robbed at gunpoint,
she looked at a robber who had a gun to
her head and said, quote, blow away. I would as
soon be without brains as without money, And that as
(24:49):
a result is Robert let her live. That just seems
like an unbelievable presence of mind in the middle of
an armed robbery. But maybe that's just me. Yeah, I
don't know. I mean, to me, it seems impossible. I
couldn't pull that off. But I also would have said
a whole lot of expletives when I came out of
a barrel, So I clearly I am not of a
(25:10):
mind to handle either of these things in the commist
of manners. Annie Edson Taylor spent her last years at
the Niagara County Almshouse, and she died on April, at
the age of eighty three. She is buried at Oakwood
Cemetery in Niagara Falls, New York, in an area called
Stranger's Rest, which is the burial site of a number
(25:32):
of Niagara Daredevils. After Annie Edson Taylor survived her trip
over Niagara Falls, She's reported to have said, no one
ought to ever do that again, or, to be even
more direct, quote, I would sooner walk up to the
mouth of a cannon knowing it was going to blow
me to pieces than make another trip over the falls.
(25:52):
You know. She just seems like maybe she had like
a way with words, But in spite of these warnings,
she'd did start something of a trend. In addition to
people who have been swept over the falls by accident
or have intentionally gone over without intending to survive, at
least sixteen people have tried going over the falls in
(26:12):
a barrel or some other kind of barrel like device
since Annie Edson Taylor did it. Eleven of those people
have survived. The next person after Taylor was Bobby Leach.
He went over the falls on July eleven, so not
quite ten years later. Before his trip over the falls,
and a steel barrel. He had performed with Barnamon Bailey's
(26:33):
Circus as a diver and a stunt swimmer. He did
this stunt as part of a much hyped triple challenge
that also involved him parachuting off the upper suspension bridge
at Niagara and going through the whirlpool in a barrel.
He broke several bones and as he was going over
the falls, and then after he recovered, he went on
a speaking tour of the United States in Europe with
(26:55):
his barrel. He was on a four month speaking tour
of New Zealand when he slipped on an orange peel,
broke his leg and died of complications of gangreing on
a So while he did have more of a career
in showmanship than Any's Ads and Taylor did, this is
definitely a case of like him doing something she had
(27:16):
done ten years before, but becoming famous for it in
a way she had not been able to do. Yeah,
he kind of had exactly the career she had hoped
for right up until that orange peel incident. Yeah. Also,
don't go over Niagara in a barrel. It's dangerous and illegal.
We're not advocating going over Niagara in a barrel just
I mean I again, clearly, I am not a daredevil
(27:39):
in my heart, but I just don't get it. Sit
in a nice restaurant nearby and watched the falls and eat.
That's what we did at Niagara Falls. After walking around
Niagara Falls, we had a wonderful lunch at a lovely
restaurant where we sat there and watched the falls while
we ate. That sounds great, great, It was great. Thanks
(28:08):
so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
episode is out of the archive, if you heard an
email address or a Facebook U r L or something
similar over the course of the show, that could be
obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at
I heart radio dot com. Our old health stuff works
email address no longer works, and you can find us
(28:29):
all over social media at missed in History and you
can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts,
the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen
to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
(28:51):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.