John Fitch ( inventor ) John Fitch ( January 21 , 1743 – July 2 , 1798 ) was an American inventor , clockmaker , entrepreneur and engineer . He was most famous for constructing the first steamboat in the United States . 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 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 . Steam - powered boat . By 1785 , Fitch was done with surveying and settled in Southampton , Pennsylvania where he began working on his ideas for a steam - powered boat . Unable to raise funds from the Continental Congress , he persuaded various state legislatures to award him a 14 - year monopoly for steamboat traffic on their inland waterways . With these monopolies he was able to secure funding from businessmen and professional citizens in Philadelphia . Fitch had seen a drawing of an early British Newcomen steam engine in an encyclopedia , but Newcomen engines were huge structures designed to pump water out of mines . He had somehow heard about the smaller and more efficient steam engine developed by James Watt in Scotland in the late 1770s , but there was not a single Watt engine in America at that time , nor would there be for many years ( Fulton ' s exported model in his 1807 steamboat , Clermont , would be one of the first ) because Britain would not allow the export of new technology to its former colony . Therefore , Fitch attempted to design his own version of a steam engine . He moved to Philadelphia and engaged the clockmaker and inventor Henry Voigt , to help him build a working model and place it on a boat . The first successful trial run of his steamboat " Perseverance " was made on the Delaware River on August 22 , 1787 , in the presence of delegates from the Constitutional Convention . It was propelled by a bank of oars on either side of the boat . During the next few years , Fitch and Voigt worked to develop better designs , and in June 1790 launched a boat powered by a steam engine driving several stern mounted oars . These oars paddled in a manner similar to the motion of a swimming duck ' s feet . With this boat he carried up to thirty paying passengers on numerous round - trip voyages between Philadelphia and Burlington , New Jersey during the summer of 1790 . Estimates of miles traveled that summer range from 1 , 300 to 3 , 000 miles , and Fitch claimed that the boat often went for 500 miles without mechanical problems . Estimated speeds were of a minimum 6 miles per hour under unfavorable conditions , to a maximum of 7 or 8 miles per hour . Fitch was granted a patent on August 26 , 1791 , after a battle with James Rumsey , who had also invented a steam - powered boat . Unfortunately , the newly created Patent Commission did not award the broad monopoly patent that Fitch had asked for , but a patent of the modern kind , for the new design of Fitch ' s steamboat . It also awarded steam - engine - related patents dated that same day to Rumsey , Nathan Read , and John Stevens . The loss of a monopoly due to these same - day patent awards led many of Fitch ' s investors to leave his company . While his boats were mechanically successful , Fitch no longer had the financial resources to carry on . Fitch ' s idea would be turned profitable by Robert Fulton two decades later . Though Fulton was able to obtain a monopoly in the state of New York , because of the powerful influence of his partner Robert Livingston , he was unable to gain a US patent largely because the originality of Fulton ' s designs could not be demonstrated ; it didn ' t help that because an original member of Fitch ' s company , William Thornton , had become head of the newly created Patent Office and made the application process even more difficult for Fulton . Fitch had also received a patent in 1791 from France , and in 1793 , having given up hope of building a steamboat in the United States , left for France , where an American investor , Aaron Vail , had promised to help him build a boat there . As his luck would have it , Fitch arrived just as the Reign of Terror was beginning , and his plans had to be abandoned . He made his way to London to make an attempt there , but that also failed . He returned to the United States in 1794 and made a few more tries to build a steamboat . Failing once again , he moved to Bardstown , Kentucky , in 1797 , where he hoped to sell some of the lands he had acquired there in the early 1780s and use the proceeds to build a steamboat for use on the Ohio or Mississippi River . He arrived to find settlers occupying his properties , with the result that legal disputes occupied him until his death in 1798 . Steam locomotive . While living in Kentucky , Fitch continued to work on steam engine ideas . He built two models , one of which was lost in a fire in Bardstown . The other was found in the attic of his daughter ' s house in Ohio in 1849 . The model still exists at the Ohio Historical Society Museum in Columbus . In the 1950s , experts from the Smithsonian Museum examined it and concluded that it was " the prototype of a practical land - operating steam engine , " meant to operate on tracks – in other words , a steam locomotive . In 1802 , the Englishman Richard Trevithick invented a full - size steam locomotive that , in 1804 , hauled the world ' s first locomotive - hauled railway train , and within a short time the British invention led to the development of actual railways . Americans began importing English locomotives and copying them . Legacy . His legal dispute over state monopoly rights with fellow steamboat inventor James Rumsey and others helped bring about the enactment of the first Patent Act of 1790 . He is mentioned in the personal letters of several historical figures including George Washington , Benjamin Franklin , Thomas Jefferson , and James Madison . Memorials . Despite his obscurity among other American inventors and engineering pioneers such as Fulton and Peter Cooper , Fitch ' s contributions have not been forgotten and has been remembered with a number of memorials and namesakes . The John Fitch Steamboat Museum on the grounds of Craven Hall in Warminster , Pennsylvania includes a one tenth scale ( - long ) , model of Fitch ' s original steamboat . Other remembrances include :