Annie Edson Taylor was an American schoolteacher who, on her 63rd birthday, October 24, 1901, became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Her motives were financial but she never made much money from her adventure.
Early life
Annie Edson Taylor was born on October 24, 1838, in Auburn, New York. She was one of eight children born to Merrick Edson and Lucretia Waring; her father owned a flour mill and died when she was 12 years old, leaving enough money to provide a comfortable living for the family. She became a schoolteacher. During her studies, she met David Taylor. They were married and had a son who died in infancy. Her husband died soon after. After she was widowed, she spent her working years in between jobs and locales. Eventually, she ended up in Bay City, Michigan, where she hoped to be a dance instructor. Since there were no dance schools in Bay City at that time, Taylor opened her own. She moved to Sault Ste. Marie in 1900 to teach music. From there, she traveled to San Antonio, Texas, then she and a friend went to Mexico City to find work. Unsuccessful, she returned to Bay City.
Niagara Falls
Desiring to secure her later years financially, she decided she would be the first person to ride over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Taylor used a custom-made barrel for her trip, constructed of oak and iron and padded with a mattress. Several delays occurred in the launching of the barrel, particularly because no one wanted to be part of potential suicide. Two days before Taylor's own attempt, a domestic cat was sent over the Horseshoe Falls in her barrel to test its strength to see if the barrel would break or not. Contrary to rumors at the time, the cat survived the plunge and seventeen minutes later, after she was found with a bleeding head, posed with Taylor in photographs. On October 24, 1901, her 63rd birthday, the barrel was put over the side of a rowboat, and Taylor climbed in, along with her lucky heart-shaped pillow. After screwing down the lid, friends used a bicycle tire pump to compress the air in the barrel. The hole used for this was plugged with a cork, and Taylor was set adrift near the American shore, south of Goat Island. The Niagara lake currents carried the barrel over the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, which has since been the site for all daredevil stunting at Niagara Falls. Rescuers reached her barrel shortly after the plunge. Taylor was discovered to be alive and relatively uninjured, except for a small gash on her head. The trip itself took less than twenty minutes, but it was some time before the barrel was actually opened. After the journey, Taylor told the press:
If it was with my dying breath, I would caution anyone against attempting the feat... I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces than make another trip over the Fall.
Later years
She briefly earned money speaking about her experience but was never able to build much wealth. She wrote a memoir and returned to Niagara Falls to sell it. Her manager, Frank M. Russell, ran away with her barrel, and most of her savings were used towards private detectives hired to find it. It was eventually located in Chicago, only to permanently disappear some time later. She spent her final years posing for photographs with tourists at her souvenir stand, attempting to earn money from the New York Stock Exchange, briefly talking about taking a second plunge over the cataracts in 1906, attempting to write a novel, re-constructing her 1901 plunge on film, working as a clairvoyant, and providing magnetic therapeutic treatments to local residents.
Nancy Kelly Allen published a children's book in 2013 called "Barreling Over Niagara Falls".
Annie is portrayed at Niagara Falls State Park by Kathleen Ordiway on the "Encounter Niagara" tour.
In TV Murdoch Mysteries 7-1 "Murdoch Ahoy", Annie is in Toronto for a speech, at the police station accusing her manager of stealing her barrel.
Her story also appears in "Niagara Falls Daredevil, Accidental Nuclear Bomb, Railroad Heroine", an episode of Mysteries at the Museum.
The poet John Wall Barger portrayed Annie Edson Taylor as the heroine/radiation victim of a fictitious movie in his 2014 poem "Chernobyl."
Joanne Murray wrote a long narrative poem- Queen of the Mist, published by Beacon Press in 1999.
She is also depicted in a National Geographic special "Conquering Niagara" where National Geographic documents all stunts attempted over the falls.
In the episode "Return of the Technodrome" of the 1987–1996 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, when the Turtleblimp glider is about to fall down the Niagara Falls, Raphael says that if they, after all, should fall down the Niagara Falls, they should have done it in a barrel.
