John Wise and the Birth of American Ballooning

The Lancaster aeronaut who chased the jet stream, carried America’s first airmail, and vanished over Lake Michigan

On September 28, 1879, a 71-year-old balloonist named John Wise climbed into the basket of a balloon called Pathfinder and lifted off from East St. Louis, Illinois. With him was a passenger, George Burr, a young bank teller eager for an adventure in the sky.

Wise had spent more than four decades studying the air. He had crossed rivers, drifted over towns, survived crashes, explosions, storms, and near disasters. He had flown when ballooning was still less a profession than a public spectacle, half science and half daredevil performance. By then, he had made hundreds of ascensions and earned a reputation as one of the most important aeronauts in American history.

But this flight would be his last.

The balloon was seen drifting northeast toward Lake Michigan. Some time later, Burr’s body was recovered from the water. John Wise and the balloon were never found. Lancaster’s greatest aeronaut had vanished into the sky and lake, leaving behind one of the most unusual endings in American aviation history.

Wise’s story began far from Lake Michigan. He was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on February 24, 1808, the fourth of eight children of William and Mary Trey Weiss. The family later anglicized the name to Wise. As a boy, he became fascinated by flight after reading about ballooning in a newspaper. At age fourteen, he began experimenting with small balloons and kites, dreaming of the day when he might rise above the rooftops of Lancaster himself.

Like many young men of his era, Wise first learned a practical trade. At sixteen, he apprenticed as a cabinetmaker, a skill that would later serve him well when building balloon cars, hoops, and other equipment. He also worked briefly as a piano maker. But his imagination belonged to the air.

In 1835, at age twenty-seven, Wise built his own hydrogen-filled balloon and made his first ascent from Philadelphia. The materials were homemade and imperfect, but the flight succeeded. It was enough. Wise abandoned ordinary work and devoted himself to ballooning.

That same year, he brought his dream home to Lancaster at 128 North Lime. On October 1, 1835, Wise attempted an ascension from his hometown, but disaster struck before the voyage properly began. As the balloon rose, he was thrown from the car and knocked unconscious. The balloon sailed upward without him.

It was not an encouraging homecoming, but Wise was not easily discouraged.

On May 7, 1836, he tried again in Lancaster. This time, he successfully lifted off and traveled about seventy-five miles before landing in Harford County, Maryland. Then, while unloading the balloon car, the unstable hydrogen gas exploded. Wise was severely burned.

For most people, two such experiences might have ended any interest in ballooning. For Wise, they became part of the education. He studied what went wrong, adjusted his methods, and kept flying.

Wise was no mere showman, although balloon ascensions in the nineteenth century often drew large crowds. He approached the air as a laboratory. During his flights, he studied atmospheric pressure, wind currents, temperature, clouds, and the behavior of gases. He lectured to spectators before and after ascensions, explaining the principles of flight to people who had never seen the world from above.

One of his most important contributions was a safety design that allowed a damaged balloon to act like a parachute. In 1838, Wise developed a balloon that could collapse into a parachute shape if it ruptured or lost gas while aloft. The idea was tested dramatically during a flight from Easton, Pennsylvania, when his balloon was punctured at great height. The gas escaped in seconds, but the balloon descended in a way that slowed the fall. Wise survived.

He also helped popularize the rip panel, a controlled method for deflating a balloon upon landing. Before such improvements, balloons could drag across the ground after landing, placing aeronauts in serious danger. Wise’s innovations helped make ballooning less deadly, even if it remained far from safe.

Perhaps his most remarkable observation came in 1842. During his flights, Wise noticed a powerful current of air high above the earth that moved consistently from west to east. He believed this “great river of air” could one day carry balloons across the country and even across the Atlantic Ocean. Today, we recognize this phenomenon as the jet stream.

Wise understood its promise long before aviation caught up with his imagination. In 1843, he approached Congress seeking support for experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of long-distance balloon travel. The idea was too bold for its time. Congress did not fund it.

Still, Wise kept pushing the limits.

On August 17, 1859, he made history with the balloon Jupiter. Launching from Lafayette, Indiana, Wise carried 123 letters in what is generally recognized as the first official local airmail delivery by balloon in the United States. His intended destination was far more ambitious, possibly New York City or Philadelphia, but the winds did not cooperate. After five hours, he landed near Crawfordsville, Indiana, about thirty miles away. The mailbag continued its journey by train.

It was not the grand aerial mail route Wise had envisioned, but it was a beginning. Long before airplanes carried letters across the continent, a Lancaster-born aeronaut had lifted the U.S. mail into the sky.

That same year, Wise also pursued one of his great dreams: a long-distance flight from St. Louis toward the East Coast in a balloon called Atlantic. The craft was enormous for its day, measuring about fifty feet in diameter and sixty feet high. Wise and his companions traveled through the night, crossed multiple states, passed near the Great Lakes, and eventually crashed in Henderson, New York, after roughly nineteen hours in the air. No one was killed. The flight became one of the most celebrated balloon voyages of the era and held a distance record for decades.

Wise believed the Atlantic proved that long-distance air travel was possible. He still dreamed of crossing the ocean.

Then came the Civil War.

When war broke out in 1861, military ballooning suddenly seemed practical. Balloons could rise above the battlefield and give commanders a view of enemy positions. Wise, already one of America’s best-known aeronauts, saw the opportunity. So did his rivals.

In July 1861, the Lancaster Intelligencer reported that “the celebrated aeronaut, Prof. Wise,” along with his son Charley, had left for the seat of war with a newly constructed war balloon intended for government service. The newspaper proudly described the Lancaster man’s equipment in detail, from the raw India silk and Irish linen envelope to the hickory hoops and bullet-resistant car. The paper declared Wise “the right man in the right place.”

The army was less certain.

At the First Battle of Bull Run, Wise found himself in competition with Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, another ambitious aeronaut who would soon become far better known for Civil War ballooning. When Wise arrived with government papers authorizing his role, he demanded that Lowe step aside. But as Wise hurried to get his own balloon into action, it became entangled in trees and was disabled.

The mishap effectively ended Wise’s Civil War balloon career. Lowe went on to lead the Union Army Balloon Corps. Wise returned to his private experiments and public ascensions.

Even in old age, he remained committed to the sky. In 1873, he published Through the Air, a book recounting his decades of aeronautical experiences. By then, he had become a living link between the earliest age of balloon spectacle and the future of scientific aviation.

His final flight came six years later.

On September 28, 1879, Wise and George Burr launched from East St. Louis in the Pathfinder. Reports suggest the balloon was caught in high winds and carried toward Lake Michigan. The balloon was last seen drifting northeast. Burr’s body was later found in the lake, but Wise disappeared completely. No wreckage of the balloon was ever definitively recovered.

It was a haunting end, but perhaps fitting for a man who had spent his life chasing invisible rivers of air.

Today, John Wise is remembered in Lancaster at Musser Park, near North Lime and East Marion streets, close to where he lived much of his life. A monument placed by the Lancaster County Historical Society honors him as a “famous pioneer aeronaut of America” and records that he completed hundreds of balloon ascensions during his lifetime.

The marker also offers one of the stranger epitaphs in Lancaster history: “John Wise lies in Lake Michigan where his balloon fell.”

He was a craftsman, inventor, scientist, showman, author, and adventurer. He helped imagine military aviation, carried the mail into the clouds, identified the promise of the jet stream, and believed that the sky could become a highway.

Before airplanes, before airports, before air mail became ordinary, John Wise of Lancaster looked up and saw the future.

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Uncharted Lancaster Podcast

Take an even deeper dive into the story with the Uncharted Lancaster Podcast in this episode about John Wise.

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Research

• Restoring John Wise’s Velocipede
• Celebrated Lancaster ‘aeronaut’ John Wise made a splash in the Civil War
• Monument to John Wise
• John Wise (balloonist)
• The Grand Ascensions of Aeronaut John Wise
• The Runaway Balloon
• The Greatest Balloon Voyage Ever Made
• John Wise preparing to go aloft in his balloon at Penn Square