Did You Know: Original Inventor of the Baby Jumper Grew up on White Earth Reservation

A vintage ad for the Jolly Jumper

WHITE EARTH (KDLM) – The original baby jumper, known as the Jolly Jumper was invented by a woman who grew up on the White Earth Reservation.

Susan Olivia Poole, observed how women would strap babies to cradle board and hang them on tree branches using leather straps while working in the fields to sooth their babies with a soft bouncing motion.

Poole used a broom handle and cloth diaper in her first attempts at creating the swing that is now known as the Jolly Jumper. The broom handle was used as a suspension bar and the diaper for a harness. By the early 1950s, her family convinced her to take the swing commercially. She was awarded a patent in 1957, with the help of her son Joseph.

She later established Poole Manufacturing Co., Ltd in Canada which she sold in the 1960s.

The Jolly Jumper is still being made today at a factory located in Mississauga, Ontario.