Early Life
Fitch was born to Joseph Fitch and Sarah Shaler in Windsor, Connecticut on January 21, 1743, on a farm that is part of present-day South Windsor, Connecticut. He received little formal schooling and eventually apprenticed himself to a clockmaker, during time Fitch was not allowed to learn or even observe watchmaking (he later taught himself how to repair clocks and watches). He married Lucy Roberts December 29, 1767. Following this apprenticeship in Hartford, he opened an unsuccessful brass foundry in East Windsor, Connecticut and then a brass and silversmith business in Trenton, New Jersey which succeeded for eight years but was destroyed by British troops during the American Revolution.
He served briefly during the Revolution, mostly as a gunsmith working for the New Jersey militia; he left his unit after a dispute over a promotion but continued his work repairing and refitting arms in Trenton. In the fall of 1777, Fitch provided beer and tobacco to the Continental Army in Philadelphia. During the following winter and spring, he provided beer, rum, and other supplies to troops at Valley Forge. In 1780, he began work as a surveyor in Kentucky where he recorded a land claim of 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) for himself. In the spring of 1782, surveying in the Northwest Territory he was captured by Indians and turned over to the British who eventually released him.
Read more about this topic: John Fitch (inventor)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyanswhich is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The truth is, I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it; and, out of my observation that most men that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it.”
—Samuel Pepys (16331703)