John Fitch had a miserable life filled with despair, agony, and mourning. His mother died when he was four; his father was harsh and rigid. A sense of injustice and failure wreathed his life from the start. Pulled from school when he was eight and made to work on the hated family farm, he became, in his own words, "almost crazy after learning."

     In 1977 he married a wife who reacted to his manic-depressive extremes by raging at him. After fleeing from her he made a deal with an inn keeper. For 150 acres of land, the man agreed to put him up and give him a pint of whiskey every day while he drank himself to death. When that failed, Fitch put up another 150 acres to raise the dose to two pints a day. When that failed, Fitch finally gathered enough opium pills to kill himself. He may have invented the first successful steamboat, but he was only given credit on his gravestone ( which some one gave him a few years after his death) as a veteran of the American Revolutionary War. That is all!!