The name Annie Edson Taylor probably doesn’t mean anything to you. However, she helped inspire a long line of people who have attempted completely insane feats for fame and fortune. In 1901, Taylor, a former charm school teacher, elected to climb into a wooden barrel and fall the hundreds of death-defying feet over Niagara Falls.

A scant few daredevils ever reach their end game of notoriety like Evel Knievel or Houdini. Unfortunately, Taylor’s dream of financial security and widespread acclaim never came to fruition. Nevertheless, her tale of challenging Niagara Falls in a pickle barrel remains an incredible one.

The Thrill Of Danger

While the pinnacle of Taylor’s story came in 1901, her fearless ways began much earlier. After a brief unhappy marriage that ended with the death of her husband in the Civil War, Taylor canvassed the country. Apparently, she was “fueled by an insatiable thirst for adventure stories.”

During her travels, she survived a house fire, an earthquake, and being held up at gunpoint during a stagecoach robbery. Reportedly, when the thieves placed a gun to her temple, she replied, “Blow away, I would as soon be without my brains as without money.” Incredibly, she said that while staring death in the face and harboring some $800 hidden in her dress.

A Struggling Charm School Instructor

Eventually, she settled in Michigan near the turn of the century, teaching young girls how to attract a viable mate. Sadly, charm school failed to pay her bills and Taylor soon fell into poverty. One day while she was reading about the growing fanfare of two massive waterfalls in upstate New York, “The idea came to me like a flash of light: Go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.” Obviously, it takes a very deranged - well, let’s say - special person for that to be their first thought.

All For The Benjamins

How Taylor dreamed up the idea that falling over a massive waterfall would “aid myself financially” will remain a mystery. However, she wasn’t the only one to think of borderline suicide at Niagara Falls. In 1829, Sam Patch AKA the Yankee Leaper survived his “jump” down the 175-foot Horseshoe Falls section of the Niagara River. You won’t believe this but no one decided to copy the Yankee Leaper until Taylor’s Barrel bonanza over 70 years later!

Preparations

For her completely insane endeavor, Taylor designed her own barrel. Her five-foot high and three-foot-wide coffin also featured an anvil to keep it upright as she bobbed toward her seemingly inevitable demise. Her only protection during her foolhardy fall? A leather harness and a number of pillows packed in with her. As her assistants wedged her in, she “felt as though I were being suffocated, but I determined to be brave.”

The Plunge

As she later wrote in her memoir, “As I reached the brink the barrel did what I predicted it would do, paused for a moment, and then made the awful plunge.” After a few seconds that must have felt like ages, she hit the water and “like an arrow from a bow” rocketed back to the surface. Fellow daredevil Carlisle Graham who flocked to Niagara Falls with thousands to essentially witness a suicide was the first to reach her barrel. Once he pried it open he cried, “Good God! She’s alive!”

Immediately, she became a national celebrity and was dubbed the “Goddess of Water.” Regrettably, after a short whirlwind of photo ops and speaking engagements, her prominence waned. Taylor did manage to sell a smattering of her book titled, “The Lady Who Conquered Niagara,” but she fell well short of her dream of fame and fortune. Nevertheless, over the next century, at least 15 people attempted to match her daring deed. Shockingly, only 5 of those people died including Jesse Sharp who made the drop on a kayak, and Robert Overcracker who elected to use a jet ski. Taylor for her part insisted to her dying day that “I would rather face a cannon than go over the Falls again.”