Paul E. Johnson is a professor emeritus of American history at the University of South Carolina. His work focuses primarily on charismatic figures and social movements in American history, especially in the 19th century. He was born in Los Angeles, California in 1942 and received a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1975. In 1995, he was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for his research in American history. He taught at Princeton University, Yale University, and the University of Utah before ending his career at the University of South Carolina. In addition to Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper, he is the author of A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester New York, 1815-1837 (1978) and The Kingdom of Matthias: Sex and Salvation in in 19th Century America (1994). He lives in Columbia, South Carolina.

Sam Patch is the protagonist of Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper, with the structure of the book closely following the circuit of his famous waterfall jumps. A contemporary of Patch’s described him as “slight, but well made […] and of a temperament as indicated by his dark countenance, rather inclining to melancholy and too fond of drink” (122).