John Fitch, born at South Windsor, Connecticut, on January 21, 1743, and died at Bardstown, Kentucky, on July 2, 1798, was a soldier and inventor whose remains are interred beneath this monument. At the outbreak of the American Revolution, he was appointed a lieutenant in a New Jersey company of the First Regiment and later served as armorer for the troops under the Committee of Safety for the Province of New Jersey. In the fall of 1785, he presented drawings of a proposed steamboat to the American Philosophical Society and sought support for his experiments by selling maps of his explorations and petitioning the assemblies of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. On the Delaware River on August 22, 1787, he launched and successfully operated a steamboat before a distinguished gathering that included the framers of the American Constitution then in session. During 1786 and 1787, several states enacted laws granting him exclusive rights to navigate by steam. On July 26, 1788, he launched another steamboat using a stern paddle wheel, and on April 16, 1790, his steamboat established and maintained scheduled sailings on the Delaware. Congress granted him a patent on August 26, 1791, signed by President George Washington, and King Louis of France granted him a patent on November 20 of the same year. In 1796, Fitch constructed another steamboat using a form of screw propeller. He gained neither profit nor glory from inventions that contributed toward the revolution of navigation.