Steamboats on the Ohio

While the National Road was being built, those living along the Ohio River were amazed to see a large boat without sails, oars, or any visible means of propelling it, moving down the river.  The "New Orleans" was the first steamboat to be launched in the new western waters.

The steamboat developed quickly.  In 1819 there were already 63 steamboats on the Ohio.  By 1834 the total shipping tonnage on the Ohio and Mississippi was 126,000.  The Northwest region needed ways to move goods quickly and the steamboat was for a time the solution to the problem. 

The boats themselves competed with each other in elegance, with figureheads and all manner of decorations, not to mention luxurious accommodations for passengers.  Engineers and pilots vied for speed records, challenging each other in speed races.  Some of those speed races ended in some of the worst steamboat disasters in history.

Steamboat names reflected the personalities of those that built and piloted them.  The Washington, the Florida, Walk in the Water, the Lady of the Lake...showed a bent to the romance and splendor of the river.  They carried spectators, merchants, dandies, fine ladies and yes, cargo.  They featured piano bars, gambling and card games, champagne bars and all the luxuries dreamed of by those watching from their cabins along the river.

Written anonymously in the Western Monthly Review  in the early days of steamboats:  "A steamboat coming from New Orleans brings to the remotest villages of our shores, a little Paris, a slice of Broadway, or a piece of Philadelphia...fashion and finery where Cincinnati will soon be the celestial empire of the west without encountering the storms, the seasickness and dangers of passage from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic.  When the Eric Canal is completed, the opulent southern planters will be able to take their families, their dogs, their parrots through the world of forests from New Orleans to New York.  Maybe someday their voyage will terminate at Cincinnati." 

Next time...We will be taking a break while I regroup before starting a new topic.  I found a delightful book that chronicles all kinds of pioneers in all kinds of fields.
See you soon!
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On May 30, 1899, amateur bandit, Pearl Hart and her boyfriend hold up an Arizona stagecoach.  Neither of them had any experience in holding up stagecoaches,  but Hart (dressed as a man) and Joe Boot stopped the stagecoach between Globe and Florence and $421 from the three passengers, giving $1 back to each passenger out of pity.  They were arrested four days later after leaving a trail to their whereabouts.  Boot got 30 years, Hart got 5 in the county jail.

Blending Cultures

It took some years to blend the cultures in the Old Northwest and Ohio Valley region.  The Yankee scorned the Southerner and the Southerner scorned the Yankee.  The New Englanders, usually a people of education (their communities appointed a schoolmaster right away),  were pious, law-abiding and industrious.  This didn't blend well with their easy-going neighbors.  New Englanders were, however, shrewd businessmen who could drive a hard bargain with their backwoods neighbors.  "Yankee tricks" was a common term to refer to the business practices between New Englanders and Southerners, with suspicion always on the New Englanders.

In the first days of the westward migration the Cumberland Gap was the gateway to the West.  Situated at the southeastern corner of Kentucky, it was easy for the Virginians and Carolinians to pass to Cincinnati and Louisville.  A group of Virginians, Carolinians, and Kentuckians, known as the "Long Knives", were short on book learning and not known to be gentlemen.  They sought the Ohio Valley as an escape from the society that held their birth and lack of wealth at a disadvantage.  They were not pious, though religious, their houses were poorer, their villages cruder, their dress rougher.  These people, however, were brave, industrious, hospitable and generous to a fault.  They often clashed with the New Englanders.

Before the Erie Canal opened in 1825, there were just three main routes to the new western territory but they all led to the Ohio River. Some went by way of Lake Erie by boat and then land. Some took the Cumberland Gap and Wilderness Road..  And some took long, arduous journeys by land on the National Road.  They went on foot or by canvas-covered wagons (ancestors of the prairie schooners that would go West in the mid-1800s).  Heavy with possessions, these vehicles were drawn over rough, muddy roads by oxen, mules and maybe horses.  Like their later offspring, they found exposure, illness, Indian attacks and acute loneliness. 

As Morris Birkbeck who was passing on the National Road in 1817 wrote, "Old America seems to be breaking up and moving westward on this grand track toward Ohio." 

Next time...Down the Ohio
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Today in Pioneer History: "On April 1, 1700, English pranksters began popularizing the annual tradition of April Fool's Day by playing practical jokes on each other.  Although the day also called All Fool's Day, has been celebrated for centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery.  

Pioneer Pieces: Full Steam Ahead!

By the 1840s steamboats had become part of the American River Folklore. Originally they were used as rescue boats prior to flood control along the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys. Even after the railroads came through, steamboats were still used in floods because between a flood and a railroad, the railroad never wins.

Pioneers who lived along the riverbanks had their own way of surviving a flood - they would load a flatboat raft with all of their possessions and livestock and literally "ride the storm out".

Steamboats became the "Queens of the River", the "Titanic of the River" and afforded the passengers the most modern and luxurious accommendations of all travel, including the popular ship design in Rococo.

Best known steamboat advocate, Mark Twain, penned his best work aboard his beloved riverboats. He claims he got the pen name Mark Twain from a Mississippi steamboat captain name Jonas Sellers.

Next time - Man the Lifeboats!