Walking Man: The Life and Times of a 19th Century Superstar Who Defied the Limits of Human Endurance

By Steve F. Cottrell

 James Kennovan was a rebellious youth who went to sea as a teenager and later walked the rugged streets of the Bowery as a New York City cop. Then, in 1849, he answered the siren's call and sailed to California intending to fill a gunnysack with gold nuggets and return East. But that's not what happened.

Although prone to

• Language: English
• Publisher: E.C. Lily Media
• Release date: Jul 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088194331

Book preview

Walking Man

The Life and Times of a 19th Century Superstar

Who Defied the Limits of Human Endurance

Steve F. Cottrell

Copyright © 2023 Steve F. Cottrell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

Title: Walking Man

Author: Steve F. Cottrell

Digital distribution | 2023

Paperback | 2023

First Published 2023 by E. C. Lily Media

[e-mail]

Manufactured in the United States of America

The information in this book is true and complete to the best of the author’s knowledge.

Published in the United States by New Book Authors Publishing

Dedication

To my old friends who have already joined

James Kennovan at Fiddler’s Green –– I miss you

and look forward to our reunion...but not today

The extent of abuse that humans will voluntarily choose to put

themselves through can be amazing and difficult to rationalize.

Martin D. Hoffman, MD, FACSM

University of California – Davis

Accolades

"In Walking Man, journalist/historian Steve Cottrell chronicles the wild adventures of Jimmy Kennovan, world champion brawler, adventurer, and professional pedestrian extraordinaire. As one of the first sports heroes in the U.S., Kennovan’s unbelievable feats of long-distance walking pushed the limits of human endurance and earned him an honored place among America’s pioneering athletes. Cottrell’s lively prose and deep research evokes the long-forgotten spectacle of the world’s first extreme sport: you can almost smell the sawdust on the saloon floor."

David Davis, author of Wheels of Courage: How Paralyzed Veterans from World War II Invented Wheelchair Sports, Lobbied for Disability Rights, and Inspired a Nation.

"Always demanding sensational performances and yearning for records, audiences at 21st century sporting events rarely ask about the sport’s origin.  But by using James Kennnovan’s example, Steve Cottrell provides readers with fresh insight into the early days of pedestrianism and modern spectator sports, leaving us to imagine how today’s media coverage would have benefitted a man like Uncle Jimmy.  Cottrell digs deep into 19th century history and describes the social environment which made Kennovan’s success possible, conveying important insight into the early days of spectator sport as cultural entertainment.  It should find a broad readership from those interested in history, sports and human endurance -- even beyond the United States.

Werner Kurz — Hanau, Germany

Award-Winning Cultural Historian, Journalist and Author

"Steve Cottrell brilliantly brings to life the forgotten story of James Kennovan, one of America’s first elite endurance athletes. Kennovan was a cop, a firefighter, a sailor, a mercenary, and an unlikely advocate for temperance, but he made his fame as a competitive walker, a professional pedestrian, primarily in post-gold rush California, performing feats of endurance that boggle the mind even today. Walking Man is a hugely entertaining book and a rollicking ride through the middle decades of the nineteenth century."

Matthew Algeo, author of Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America’s Favorite Spectator Sport

"Prior to Walking Man, I had never heard of pedestrianism, but thanks to Steve Cottrell’s vivid account of James Kennovan’s unfathomable achievements, I now understand why it was once America’s most popular spectator sport. Walking Man is a riveting biography of a 19th century ultra-athlete affectionately known as Uncle Jimmy –– an Iron Man in a state known for its glittering gold. It captures the life of a long-forgotten San Francisco character and an unbelievably grueling sport. Fascinating read."

Joe Harrington, Internationally Published Author, including Death of an AngelandErin

"Walking Man is a book waiting to become a movie."

Joany Kane, Award-Winning Screenwriter

"The diminutive, eccentric and hard-as-nails Jimmy Kennovan — a New York City cop who sailed to San Francisco in 1849 — was a star athlete on America’s West Coast during and after the Gold Rush. The gutsy pedestrian’s feet, stamina, and will-to-win — at all costs — propelled him to fame in a cutthroat sport where a fistful of gold coins drove men (and some women) to subject their bodies to mental and physical torture beyond belief. In Walking Man, Steve Cottrell expertly guides readers through an unimaginable stranger-than-fiction world of corruption, gambling, violence, elation and drunken despair."

Paul S. Marshall, editor/author King of the Peds

Contents

Walking Man

Dedication

Accolades

Introduction

Author’s Note

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Introduction

B

oston-born James Kennovan was a champion competitive walker in the 1850s and ‘60s –– a professional pedestrian –– during an era when pedestrianism was emerging as America’s favorite spectator sport. What follows was written in 1879 by San Francisco newspaper editor Clay Greene, recounting Kennovan’s first walk in excess of one hundred hours without rest or sleep, conducted in San Francisco in November 1855. It is a graphic description of a sometimes-brutal test of human endurance –– a nineteenth century sport and amusement that captivated the nation:

––––––––

"The first walking match I ever witnessed, and which was probably the first San Francisco ever saw of this absurdly fascinating pastime, for which no sane man can find a sensible reason, was when old Jimmy Kennovan first walked one hundred and six hours without rest or sleep.

"The feat was not performed on a perfect track of cinders and sawdust, which constant raking, rolling and sprinkling rendered as comfortable as possible for blistered feet and aching shin bones; it was not in a gaily decorated pavilion, where every few laps the pedestrian could enter a fanciful tent, amid the perfume of flowers, and be rubbed down with Mexican mustang liniment, on a comfortable bed; but it was in a close, dingy barroom on Montgomery Street, where the air was foul enough to stifle a rhinoceros.

"The track was a two-inch plank, not much more than a foot and a half in width, raised about three feet from the floor, across the end of the room, with a man-rope on either side for the pedestrian to steady himself when fatigue had rendered him almost lifeless. I was present when this wonderful little man stepped upon this frail structure, which he was not to leave for four entire days.

"He was attired in velvet knee-breeches, a shirt of puffs and ruffles, and a black velvet cap. The applause which greeted him was something tremendous, but a great deal of it was the encouragement usually accorded to one who is commencing what is deemed to be an impossible feat. The knowing ones smiled incredulously and staked their money against Jimmy. As usual, they were wrong. During the long, tedious hours of the day, and the doubly tiresome hours of the night, for four days, this plucky little fellow plodded on.

"At first he walked briskly, and turned at each end of the plank. Occasionally, when the wretched trio of fiends, called a band, would strike up a lively air, he relieved the monotony with a jig. It was not a wonderful exhibition of terpsichorean art, but nevertheless it was what he was pleased to call a jig, and nobody disputed him.

"After a couple of days the terrible strain upon his muscles and nerves began to show itself; he lost his briskness and steadiness, made use of the rope, and instead of turning at the end of the plank he walked backwards one way. He seemed to be asleep, but always knew when he reached the end of his narrow track.

"On the last day his condition was most pitiful; his eyes and cheeks were sunken, his face wore the hue of death; he could no longer tell when he reached the end of the plank, but was stopped and shoved backward when it became necessary to move in the other direction. His hands no longer had the strength to grasp the rope, and he was supported by attendants who constantly pinched him, punched him, and howled in his ears. They were assisted by drums, fifes, and the yells in the audience, and the awful din made in the effort to prevent him from lapsing into the unconsciousness was like pandemonium let loose.

"Toward the end even this noise had no effect upon him, and several times he sank, apparently exhausted. Placed again upon his feet, he was shaken and punched afresh, and the calves of his legs whipped with cowhides. At first these cutting strokes caused him to wince, but his lips brought forth no sound of complaint, and soon he did not seem to feel them.

This brutal treatment was kept up incessantly for hours, and when the hands on the dial indicated the one hundred and sixth hour the attendants let this little bundle of nerve and pluck fall back into their arms insensible, and carried him to an inner room amidst the wild hurrahs of his admirers.

Clay Greene

San Francisco, California

November 1879

Author’s Note

T

hree years ago, while researching a history article describing the life and times of California Gold Rush pioneer and Chinese-rights advocate Frederick Bee, I happened upon an issue of the March 22, 1889 Daily Alta California, published in San Fransisco from 1849 until 1891. The article about Bee wasn’t all that helpful, but a nearby headline grabbed my attention: JIMMY KENNOVAN DEAD –– A Well-Known Pioneer Character Dies in the Almshouse.

As a journalist, I know the obituary section as the Irish Sports Page, usually with inside placement. But Kennovan’s lengthy death notice was on Page One, above the fold –– a spot typically reserved for porkbarrel politicians, wealthy mine owners, major entertainers, and other high-profile individuals, not for someone who died in the poorhouse. Then I read, Everyone seems to have a kind word for old Jimmy’s memory, and his demise removes from our streets a landmark almost as well-known as was Emperor Norton, a beloved San Francisco oddball who dressed in flashy, bedecked military garb with golden epaulettes and hung out in whichever bars and restaurants were willing to accept his worthless, self-issued script as payment.

My curiosity aroused, I checked the March 22, 1889 San Francisco Examiner and found that Kennovan’s death was big news there as well. The headline announced, END OF HIS LAST LAP –– Jimmy Kennovan, the Pedestrian, Dies at the Almshouse, and theobituary began, Uncle Jimmy Kennovan, the noted pedestrian, gave up his long race yesterday. As I was about to learn, Kennovan’s death was not only big news in San Francisco, it was noted in newspapers across the country, prompting me to wonder: Who the heck was James Kennovan? Why was he referred to as a pedestrian? Why did he die in the poorhouse? And why was he being compared to Joshua Abraham Norton –– self-anointed Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I of San Francisco?

Soon, my interest shifted from Frederick Bee to James Kennovan. His uneven life warranted telling and I knew I was just the guy to do it. But first I had to learn more about pedestrianism. Other than modern racewalking, conducted with stringent rules at the Olympic Games and other track and field meets, nineteenth century pedestrianism –– sometimes against time, sometimes for distance, sometimes for longevity –– was new to me, even though my start in journalism came as a sportswriter.

Matthew Algeo, folklorist and award-winning author noted for his accounts of unusual events and offbeat people, explored competitive walking in his 2014 book Pedestrianism. He wrote that during its height of popularity in the nineteenth century, Watching people walk was America’s favorite spectator sport, as well as a favorite sport for wagering.

As the nineteenth century walking craze grew, Kennovan became the most prominent pedestrian west of the Mississippi River. And for entertainment-starved miners, drifters and even some San Francisco swells living in their mansions on Nob Hill, grueling pedestrian contests were immensely popular.

While reading Walking Man you may find some of Kennovan’s feats of endurance to have been impossible, if not at least highly improbable. But this is not a nineteenth century dime novel filled with fanciful tales; it is the biography of a former seaman, mercenary and New York City fireman and beat cop who came to California during the Gold Rush and discovered that he could walk for days at a time, without rest or sleep, and win thousands of dollars in prize money –– provided he could conquer his internal demons as handily as he defeated his opponents.

This is the story of a man who fell through the cracks of history; a story of human endurance and grit beyond anything portrayed in books and movies like They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? or Raging Bull.  The challenge for me has been to make the unbelievable believable.

My resources have included nineteenth century newspapers and periodicals; memoirs by people who saw Kennovan perform; a biography published in 1863 that included his twenty-two rules of exercise; documents from the Library of Congress and California State Library; biographies of other San Francisco characters during Kennovan’s glory years; books and historical accounts of pedestrianism; assistance in matching 19th century sea captains with sailing ships; and input from modern-day ultra-endurance athletes and medical professionals familiar with both the physical and psychological effects of extreme exhaustion and sleep deprivation. And the more I learned about James Kennovan’s stamina and the bygone sport of pedestrianism, the more I marveled at what he accomplished.

In the fall of 1855, with little or no training, James Kennovan took on his first opponent in a San Francisco bar, where, as Clay Greene later wrote, the air was foul enough to stifle a rhinoceros. He won, collected the $1,000 purse, (more than $30,000 in today’s buying power), and launched a career that later found him performing in front of thousands of roaring (and, in some cases, roaring drunk) spectators.

For the most part, we know what James Kennovan did and when he did it, but do we know what he said at any one of several San Francisco saloons, his loyal poodle curled up at his feet, bragging about how, as a New York City cop in 1845, he tangled with convicted felon and bare-knuckle prizefighter Yankee Sullivan and cuffed the notorious Tammany Hall political agitator? No, and I didn’t try to guess. Instead, I let the historical record speak for him.

It’s a biographer’s responsibility to chronicle a person’s life based on the best available evidence, especially when it involves someone who’s been dead for more than 130 years, unable to respond to inaccuracies. We owe it to the person whose life we’re documenting, as well as to you, the reader, and I have held true to that aim from the first word to the last.

How did Jimmy Kennovan, son of Irish emigrants, get lost to history? During his prime years as a professional pedestrian, (1855-1870), whatever happened west of the Appalachian Mountains was of little interest to many Easterners. Prior to the transcontinental railroad’s completion in 1869, Chicago and St. Louis were considered the West, not San Francisco, so major-market newspapers and other periodicals focused on pedestrians competing in New York City, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and other Eastern and Southern metropolitan areas. Rarely were Kennovan’s victories chronicled in Eastern papers.

In the 1850s and ‘60s, California was the hinterland, growing fast but still in its infancy, considered by some an undesirable place to plant roots and raise a family. Many Easterners and Southerners believed California was a lawless frontier populated with grubby miners, gun-happy outlaws, diseased prostitutes, smooth-talkin’ gamblers, occasional earthquakes, and, especially in San Francisco’s case in 1851, and again in 1856, disproportionate authority exercised by the powerful Committee of Vigilance –– an organization that administered vigilante justice apart from the courts and, because of its power, held considerable sway at City Hall and inside California’s Capitol Building.

For two years, with several twists, turns and frustrating dead-end paths along the way, I vicariously traveled with Uncle Jimmy as he took me on sailing adventures around the world; dodged bullets as a mercenary soldier in Chile; responded to emergencies as a fireman and policeman; dipped his pan in search of elusive gold nuggets; enjoyed occasional months of clear-headed sobriety, but many bouts of drunkenness and bar brawls; performed feats of endurance that left me breathless; and showed me –– as he will surely show you –– why trying to understand or quantify his stamina, spirit and willpower is simply not possible.

To be clear, Walking Man didn’t happen because I knew about James Kennovan and wanted to chronicle his life. That’s often the case with biographies, but this was different. Very different. This book was born by accident when I noticed and read an 1889 obituary unrelated to the topic I was researching. Or maybe Jimmy gently tapped me on the shoulder that day and whispered, Psst!  Boy, do I have a story for you.

Is that how it happened? I’m not sure, but at this point I think Uncle Jimmy would be capable of anything, even talking to me from his perch on a barstool at mythical Fiddler’s Green –– an afterlife maritime home where the beer is free, fiddle music fills the air, and sprightly Irish jigs never end.

This, then, is the story of James Kennovan –– the walking man.

Chapter One

1812 to 1849

Prelude to a Grand Adventure

Y

oung Jimmy Kennovan was an unapologetic rapscallion –– a hellion –– a free-spirited kid who defied authority and sometimes took painful thrashings for it. But in 1825, only thirteen, he managed to stow away on a merchant ship that plied ports along the Florida coast, Cuba and Caribbean Sea, and northern ports in South America; an area known as the Spanish Main.

The initial voyage was a desperate escape from a bad situation, a risky decision that led to two decades at sea –– an unplanned odyssey that would take Kennovan to exotic, distant lands he had fantasized about as a child growing up in New York City.

Over the next two decades, Kennovan would sail around the world, settle for a few years back in New York City –– first as a fireman, later as a member of its first professional police department. Then, in 1849-50, he sailed ‘round the Horn to San Francisco.

James Kennovan was thirty-eight when the schooner Excel sailed through the Golden Gate six months after it had departed the docks of Lower Manhattan. San Francisco attorney Joseph Woodson, who in 1863 wrote an account of Kennovan’s life, noted, The voyage was very unpleasant; the craft being so small the (seven-member) crew were kept almost continuously wet.

Woodson, born in Indiana in 1837, arrived in San Francisco in 1858 and four years later was admitted to the California Bar.  In 1872, with a growing client list and impressive court decisions to his credit, he founded the Pacific Law Reporter and the following year became the law and literary editor for the Sacramento Daily Record. When he wrote Kennovan’s short biography in 1863, he paid for its publication by selling seven pages of commercial advertising –– a common practice in the nineteenth century.

Like tens of thousands of other adventurers who came to California at that time, Kennovan hoped to fill a gunnysack or two with gold nuggets then return to the East with enough money to buy a house, start a business, get married, raise a family, and, naturally, live happily ever after. But that’s not what happened.

Kennovan’s Irish parents, who had arrived in Boston in 1811, relocated to New York City shortly after Jimmy’s birth, where his