On This Day: Annie Taylor goes over Niagara Falls, 1901

Annie Edson Taylor, a 63-year-old former schoolteacher from the United States, became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive on Oct. 24, 1901, when her padded oak barrel dropped over the Canadian Horseshoe Falls in what is now Niagara Falls, Ont.

Taylor made the plunge on her birthday. According to Radio Canada International, a rowboat towed her barrel into the current from the American side and cut it loose. At 4:30 p.m. the barrel was seen bobbing at the lip of the Horseshoe Falls, and about a minute later it appeared below them. Guinness World Records recognizes her as the first person to survive the drop.

Taylor was born in Auburn, N.Y., in 1838 and had worked as a teacher and dance instructor before money troubles set in. She was widowed early and, by most accounts, hoped a feat of daring would secure her a comfortable old age. The Pan-American Exposition was drawing crowds to nearby Buffalo, N.Y., that year, and she reasoned that a spectacle at the falls would draw an audience and a paying lecture circuit.

She prepared carefully. The barrel was custom built of oak and iron and padded with a mattress. Two days before her own attempt, a domestic cat was sent over the Horseshoe Falls in it. Contrary to rumours that the animal had died, Wikipedia’s account of her life says the cat survived and later posed with Taylor for photographs. Radio Canada International says the cat came away with a gash on its head.

On the day, friends sealed the lid, pumped air into the barrel with a bicycle tire pump and plugged the hole with a cork, according to Wikipedia. The journey took about 20 minutes from the time she was set adrift. Rescuers pulled the barrel to shore on the Canadian side below the falls. When the lid came off, she was alive and, apart from a small head wound, unhurt. Wikipedia says Carlisle Graham, an earlier daredevil who had run the rapids below the falls, helped her out.

Her reaction was not the triumph her promoters had hoped for. Taylor told reporters she would caution anyone against attempting the stunt, and said she would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon than repeat it, Radio Canada International reported.

The fortune never came. Her manager, Frank M. Russell, ran off with the barrel, and she spent much of her savings on detectives to track it down. The barrel was found in Chicago and then stolen again. Taylor sold souvenirs and posed for tourist photographs at the falls, and later worked as a clairvoyant and offered magnetic therapy. She wrote a memoir and talked of a second plunge, but never made one.

She died in poverty in Lockport, N.Y., in 1921. Sources disagree on the exact day. Radio Canada International gives April 21, while Wikipedia gives April 29. Wikipedia says she was buried in the Stunter’s Rest section of Oakwood Cemetery in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and that public donations paid for her funeral.

The Horseshoe Falls, which straddle the Ontario and New York boundary, became the setting for the successful stunts that followed hers. History.com says 15 people went over the falls between 1901 and 1995, and 10 survived.

Her ride added to the reputation of Niagara Falls as a place of spectacle as well as scenery. Her warning to others, delivered while shaken from her ordeal, has proved the more lasting advice.

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