![]() ![]() The steam-power riding chair quickly transformed in his imagination into a steam-powered boat, and Fitch got right to work. Fitch suffered from rheumatism and fantasized about a steam-powered riding chair that might ease his commute. In 1785, on his four-mile walk home from Neshaminy Meeting, John Fitch had his great breakthrough. Another unsuccessful commerical venture, transporting flour from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, resulted in his capture by a Native American tribe! When freed in 1782, Fitch settled in Warminster. After the war Fitch was principally engaged in land surveying and sales in several states, but without much success. In his youth we worked as a clockmaker, farmer, and silversmith before joining the New Jersey militia as a gunsmith during the American Revolution. The John Fitch Steamboat Museum puts Fitch center-stage.įitch was born in Connecticut in 1743. Robert Fulton, whose commercial steamboat service operated years later but much more successfully than Fitch's, is given greater credit amongst the general population for his achievements. The John Fitch Steamboat Museum was created by members of the Craven Hall Historical Society in Warminster to tell John Fitch's story and attempt to reclaim his legacy as the inventor of the steamboat. ![]() (Although, even free beer, rum, and sausages could not entice enough customers to keep the operation viable.) Several years later, he ran the world's first commercial steamboat service in 1790, along the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Trenton. Did John Fitch start the transportation revolution in Warminster, Bucks County, Pennsylvania? The John Fitch Steamboat Museum argues that the answer to this question is a resounding "Yes!" After all, it was in Warminster in 1785 that Fitch invented the first American steam engine feasible for propelling a boat. ![]()
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