When people picture the first daredevil to ride a barrel over Niagara Falls, they often imagine a burly showman in a striped circus outfit. That's what makes the real story so delightful. The first person to survive the plunge was a widowed schoolteacher, and she did it on her birthday.
Her name was Annie Edson Taylor. On October 24, 1901, her 63rd birthday, she became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel. The first man to do it, a former circus performer named Bobby Leach, didn't follow until 1911.
A Desperate Plan
Taylor was born in Auburn, New York, in 1838 and trained as a schoolteacher. By 1900 she had fallen on hard times. Her home had burned, and she had lost money she'd invested with a clergyman. Hoping to secure her later years, she decided she would become famous, and well paid, as the first person to go over the falls in a barrel.
She also shaved a few years off her age. Taylor claimed to be just 42, believing that a younger woman could make money more easily. In the 1900 census, she listed her birth year as 1860.
A Cat Went First
Taylor had a custom barrel built from oak and iron and padded with a mattress. Two days before her own attempt, a house cat was sent over the Horseshoe Falls in the barrel to test whether it would hold. Contrary to rumors at the time, the cat survived, and it later posed for photographs with Taylor.
On the big day, Taylor climbed into the barrel with her lucky heart-shaped pillow. Friends screwed down the lid, used a bicycle pump to pressurize the air inside, and plugged the hole with a cork. Then she was set adrift near the American shore.
The current carried her over the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. Rescuers reached the barrel soon after, and Taylor was alive and relatively unhurt, apart from a small gash on her head. Her advice to the press was blunt. She said she would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon than make another trip over the falls.
Fame, but No Fortune
Sadly, the stunt never made her rich. She earned some money giving talks about her adventure and wrote a memoir. Then her manager ran off with her famous barrel. She spent most of her savings on private detectives to track it down, only for it to be stolen again by a new manager.
Taylor died in 1921 at age 82. She had so little money that public donations helped pay for her funeral. She was buried in the "Stunter's Rest" section of Oakwood Cemetery in Niagara Falls, New York.
And the First Man?
Bobby Leach had performed with the Barnum and Bailey Circus and used to boast to customers at his restaurant that anything Annie could do, he could do better. On July 25, 1911, he went over the falls in a steel barrel. He survived, but spent six months in the hospital with two broken kneecaps and a fractured jaw.
His end was an odd twist of fate. In 1926, on a publicity tour in New Zealand, Leach slipped on an orange peel and hurt his leg. It became infected, and he died of complications two months later.
So the next time someone mentions the man who conquered Niagara in a barrel, you can smile and set the record straight. A determined schoolteacher with a lucky pillow got there first.
