Though the stalwart pioneers, dressed in their primitive suits of deerskin or homespun, pushed farther and farther into Kentucky, stopping not for privation or peril, danger or disaster, climbing cliffs, fording streams, fighting savages, yet they were not all merely unlettered backwoodsmen hunters and fighters. Though the education of nearly all was more or less limited, a number of these early courageous Kentuckians have made unusual contributions to the useful sciences. If not the birthplace, Kentucky was the home and the burial place of a trio who can claim priority in the invention of the steamboat.

In 1778 there came to Kentucky from Connecticut a man of vigorous intellect and remarkable powers of perseverance, John Fitch. He had formerly been a silversmith, clock maker, and lieutenant in the Revolutionary forces from New Jersey. Though made captive by the Indians and held prisoner for a year, yet in 1780, as he gazed upon the beautiful Ohio, he had the first conception of overcoming currents by a new mode of navigation. Retiring to his surveyor's camp he pondered, and, remembering the work of Watt with steam, concluded that boats could be propelled by the same power.

The story of his struggles, in petitions and disappointments, reminds one of Columbus, as he so long in vain sought aid to make his first voyage to America. In 1787, 1788, and 1789, Fitch built several boats, that made from four to seven and one half miles per hour between Philadelphia and Burlington. He petitioned the legislatures of a number of states as well as England, France, and Spain, and obtained not money, but the exclusive privileges of navigating certain streams by boats propelled by fire or steam. He became discouraged and finally despaired; he died at Bardstown, 1798, where his remains rest.

A pathetic circumstance connected with his invention is related. He wrote three volumes of manuscript, sealed them, and placed them in the Philadelphia Library to be opened thirty years after his death. When opened, they touchingly related his disappointments, brilliantly foretold the perfection of his plans, and sorrowfully and bitterly said, "The day will come when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from my invention; but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention."

By a coincidence two others, who chose Kentucky as their home, James Rumsey and Edward West, also were pioneers in this work. Both Fitch and Rumsey in 1784 exhibited their plans to General Washington. While Rumsey made his project public first, by means of a model, Fitch successfully plied a boat on the Delaware in 1785 and Rumsey on the Potomac the following year. Fitch claimed that he told Rumsey of his own plans to effect navigation by steam. In 1794, in the presence of hundreds of citizens, a miniature boat invented by Edward West, who had removed from Virginia to Lexington in 1785, proudly moved through the waters of the town branch of the Elkhorn, which had been dammed up near the center of the city.

In 1802 Mr. West secured a patent not only for his steamboat invention, but for a gun lock and a nail cutting and heading machine, the first invention of the kind in the world, reputed to cut five thousand three hundred and twenty pounds of nails in twelve hours. The patent of it sold for $10,000 and its operation enabled Lexington to export nails of her own manufacture to Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh.

So, while it remained for Robert Fulton in 1807 to gain honor from his invention, yet when in 1813 he brought suit to establish his claims as the inventor of steam navigation, he was defeated by a pamphlet of John Fitch's, which proved conclusively there were inventions that antedated the Clermont.