Naloxone -- The Debate Over Moral Hazard

“There are certain people who might overdose more frequently than others, so maybe on an individual level, we’ll see a little bit of that. But I think if we’re talking about the population as a whole, I would not really be willing to say that the use of naloxone is making things worse. We’re just trying to save a life.”

– Jody B. Glance, MD, medical director of addiction medicine services at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, every day, more than 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids. The misuse of and addiction to opioids – including prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl – is a serious national crisis that affects public health as well as social and economic welfare.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates for each fatal overdose, there are approximately 30 nonfatal overdoses – many of the cases appearing in emergency rooms across the country.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the total "economic burden" of prescription opioid misuse alone in the United States is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment, and criminal justice involvement.

A “Miracle Treatment”

Naloxone (also known as Narcan) is a medication that can reverse an overdose caused by an opioid drug (heroin or prescription pain medications). When administered during an overdose, naloxone blocks the effects of opioids on the brain and quickly restores breathing.

Naloxone has been used safely by emergency medical professionals for more than 40 years and has only this one critical function: to reverse the effects of opioids in order to prevent overdose death. Naloxone has no potential for abuse.

In 2014, only 12 states allowed basic EMS staff to administer naloxone for overdose. Today, laws in every state allow the drug to be administered by anyone, from a physician to a family member.

One survey of a small number of community organizations in Delaware Country Pennsylvania, that used the 4-mg nasal spray found that first responders were successful at reviving about 98% of cases who went on to survive. In addition, a review of emergency medical services data from Massachusetts found that when given naloxone, 93.5% of people survived their overdose. The research looked at more than 12,000 dosages administered between July 1, 2013 and December 31, 2015. A year after their overdose, 84.3% of those who had been given the reversal drug were still alive.

The Debate

There is no doubt that naloxone saves lives. However, the increased availability of naloxone has engendered an ethical debate. Does the prospect of not dying from opioids make people more likely to use opioids? And, what about those who are revived multiple times? How many “second chances” for life should be given and at what cost? Some have even suggested there should be limits on how many times naloxone should be administered to the same person.

Critics of the life-saving medication say that it gives drug users a safety net and allows them to take repeated risks as they continue to get high. Opponents also argue that naloxone prevents users from feeling the consequences of their actions and this attitude is evidenced by the fact so many addicts fail to turn their lives around after the drug has been administered. They say using the treatment merely feeds the cycle of addiction.

Indeed, many users overdose more than once – some O.D. multiple times before learning their lesson. Each time, naloxone brings them back from the brink of death. Unfortunately, some never do shake addiction and lose their lives to repeated overdosing.

Researchers like Jennifer Doleac of the University of Wisconsin looked at the time period before and after different naloxone-access laws were put into place, such as providing legal immunity to people who prescribed or administered the drug and allowing anyone to buy naloxone in a pharmacy without a prescription.

Doleac found arrests related to the possession and sale of opioids went up, as did opioid-related ER visits. Meanwhile – and most worryingly – Doleach found there was no overall impact on the death rate. In fact, in the Midwest, the implementation of naloxone laws led to a 14 percent increase in opioid-related mortality, she found.

To Doleac, the administration of naloxone presents a moral hazard. In other words, “anytime you make something less dangerous, people are going to do more of it,” she said.

Note – Here is an example of an economic moral hazard. If you rent a car and opt for the maximum insurance coverage possible, damaging the vehicle does not have significant negative consequences. The insurance company will pay for repairs—or a replacement car—if something happens. In exchange for that coverage, you pay a price that seems fair, and everybody is satisfied.

Doleac's views have been criticized. She is an economist, and economists are known often to make “causal inferences”: They study natural experiments like law changes, use statistical tools to rule out other explanations and draw conclusions about cause and effect. (Doleac, in turn, criticized the methods used in the studies that came to different conclusions than her own.)

The Cost

According to www.statnews.com, a decade ago, a lifesaving dose of naloxone cost $1. Today, that same dose costs $150 for the nasal spray, a 150-fold increase. A naloxone auto-injector, approved in 2016, costs $4,500. Pharmaceutical innovation hasn’t driven up these prices. Opportunity has.

Bjanttac National Training and Technical Assistance Center Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, says naloxone, depending on the specific form of naloxone used by the department, runs from a single naloxone rescue kit approximately $22-$60 for intranasal kits.

As a general rule, law enforcement training for overdose reversal programs is provided at no cost by a sister or a community agency. In some instances, costs for transportation and related training expenses may be covered by state grants.

As far as personnel costs, the time required for personnel to undergo training as part of law enforcement overdose reversal and prevention varies on case-by-case basis. Labor unions may consider opioid overdose reversal training as a change in work conditions.

The Surgeon General’s advisory explicitly addresses the importance of low out-of-pocket costs for naloxone. The reduction or elimination of consumer cost sharing to optimize naloxone distribution will require participation from health sciences companies, pharmaceutical benefit managers, and health plans.

Whose Morality?

To others like Lisa Campo-Engelstein, PhD, associate professor in the Alden March Bioethics Institute in department of obstetrics & gynecology at Albany Medical College, the moral hazard associated with naloxone is acceptable.

Campo-Engelstein concludes ... 

“The moral component here is that a lot of people think drug use is ‘bad’ and that people who use drugs are moral failures. Obviously, we want people to take responsibility for their actions, but we don’t deny people health care because they make ‘bad decisions.’”

Campo-Engelstein continued … ““We see this type of argument for a lot of public health problems. We see it with health education, with the HPV vaccine, and for any health issues that have a moral component.”

Lawrence H. Greenblatt, MD, Professor of Medicine and Community and Family Medicine at Duke Health, refutes those who believe naloxone presents a moral hazard. He says …

“They (the opposition) literally make the argument that by saving the lives of people who use injectable illicit drugs, you’re increasing the problem because there are more users. That’s a pretty unethical argument. It’s suggesting that if these drug users just got out of the way by dying of an overdose, we’d have less of a problem. It’s really ugly. It’s certainly hard to get behind that.”

Greenblatt adds that some of the data does not seem to be particularly strong or even applicable to the questions critics seek to answer. He says ...

“For example, they report a 1.4% drop in Google searches for the term ‘drug rehab’ after naloxone became available in a community. First of all, that’s a tiny reduction. Second of all, is tracking Google searches even a legitimate means of assessing peoples’ attitudes toward coming off opioids?”

Greenblatt also took issue with the fact that some studies have compared places where naloxone is widely available to places where it is not yet widely available. Naloxone’s effects likely depend on the availability of local drug treatment: when treatment is available to people who need help overcoming their addiction, broad naloxone access results in more beneficial effects.

Some clinicians maintain that rather than perpetuate risky behavior, naloxone can be used as an opportunity to disrupt this vicious cycle. When accompanied by resources and advice on rehabilitation, naloxone can be a valuable intervention point.

David A. Thomas, PhD, of the National Institute of Drug Abuse told Healio Family Medicine, concludes …

“When a patient goes to the ED, treatment should not just end with recovery from the overdose – there should be what we call a ‘warm handoff’ into the health care system, where they can get into treatment,” There are treatments out there that work. After a near-death experience, a patient might be particularly open to a teaching moment that could potentially change that behavior.”

Naloxone Understandings

Naloxone does not treat addiction, per se. However, naloxone is the only reversal agent for opioid overdose death in the community and in other situations where ventilatory support is not available. The alternative to the unresponsive, apneic opioid overdose patient is death.

One cannot assume drug users respond to incentives in any rational way. Addiction surely clouds judgment and makes policy in this area difficult. “Addiction is compulsive use despite the risk of harm,” says David A. Thomas, PhD, of the National Institute of Drug Abuse told Healio Family Medicine. Thomas continues …

“People who have opioid use disorder, or have a problem with any drugs of abuse, tend not to have enough executive function to have self-control and make good decisions about drugs. It’s really not a highly logical process - risk is just part of taking drugs.”

Jody B. Glance, MD, medical director of addiction medicine services at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, agrees with Thomas. She says, “When people are addicted, they’re going to use regardless of whether or not there is an antidote or a reversal agent, because their brains have really been hijacked and the addiction has taken over.”

Glance says ultimately naloxone’s ability to save lives is more important than any secondary moral concerns. She states ...

“Nobody wants to be an addict. Naloxone is going to save a life in the here-and-now and give that person another chance to enter a life of recovery, a life that they want to be living.”

Another rumor should be addressed – that of the drug being used as a “fix.” Naloxone is not sought out by patients for a "higher high." Naloxone availability laws haven't led to increase distribution or utilization. Stigmatizing addiction in this manner merely exacerbates the epidemic.

Critics of naloxone must understand that different policies concerning its use range in possible impact from trivial to significant. They also must not presume that a naloxone law’s passage has immediate effects. In practice, there is generally a significant lag between when laws are enacted and when they have their most powerful on-the-ground effects.

Any study of the use of naloxone must examine other key policies such as Medicaid expansion, targeted federal grants for the purchase of naloxone, and the implementation of parity regulations that require equal insurance coverage of services used to treat mental illnesses and substance use disorders. Richard G. Frank explains …

“Medicaid spending on outpatient naloxone prescriptions reached just under $20 million in 2016. Federal grants for naloxone purchases exceeded $20 million in 2015. In that same year, $100 million in federal grants were directed at high need community health centers.”

Remember the key phrase by Jody B. Glance: “We're just trying to save a life.” Harm reduction is based on the idea that the best way to help people suffering from drug addiction is to keep them as healthy as possible. One life saved is one more person who might just eventually find help and a way out. Others have. And many of them are now leading productive lives, yet were once thought to be hopeless and too addicted to recover.

We are presently taking baby steps to exit a major opioid health crisis. These advances are too recent to determine their long-term impact. I am in favor of giving every addict a chance (chances) at life until we do. Substance users deserve to live. We have at our disposal an overdose reversal medication that enables survival. It is immoral not to provide and use it. Any argument about a moral hazard fails when the victim of an opioid overdose is a loved one. 

References:

Jennifer Byrne “Increased Narcan availability evokes ethical debate.” Healio. April 2, 2018.

Tessie Castillo. “Should We Limit How Many Times Someone Is Saved with Naloxone?” The Fix. November 15, 2016.

Richard G. Frank, Keith Humphreys and Harold A. Pollack. “Does Naloxone Availability Increase Opioid Abuse? The Case For Skepticism.” Health Affairs. March 19, 2018.

Michael Hufford and Donald S. Burke. “The costs of heroin and naloxone: a tragic snapshot of the opioid crisis.” www.statnews.com. November 8, 2018.

Olga Khazan. “Why a Study on Opioids Ignited a Twitter Firestorm.” The Atlantic. March 14, 2018.

 Nadia Kounang. “Naloxone reverses 93% of overdoses, but many recipients don't survive a year.” CNN. October 30, 2017.

Ryan Marino, Brian Fullgraf and Jeremiah Escajeda. “Research Analysis: Conclusions about 'moral hazard' of naloxone not supported by methodology. Www.ems1.com. March 21, 2018.

National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Naloxone for Opioid Overdose: Life-Saving Science.” https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/naloxone-opioid-overdose-life-saving-science/naloxone-opioid-overdose-life-saving-science.

Social Sciences Research Network “The Moral Hazard of Lifesaving Innovations: Naloxone Access, Opioid Abuse, and Crime.” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3135264.

“What are the typical costs of a law enforcement overdose response program?” Bjanttac.

Things You Learn From the Paper: Portsmouth Times in the 1930s

Yes, 85 years is quite a span of time. One expects major changes over that period of time, and an exploration into the local paper reveals monumental differences between the 1930s and today.

In 1930, Portsmouth, Ohio had a population of 42,560 (+2.57% growth rate) and perhaps surprisingly Scioto County numbered 81,221 people (+29.23% growth rate).

In 2019, Portsmouth has a population of 20,443 (+0.48% growth rate) And recent census data shows 75,929 people in the county (-0.41 % growth rate)

Does it surprise you to know that while Portsmouth was a much larger industrial city in the 1930s, Scioto County was growing at a phenomenal rate? However, 85 years later Scioto County has 5,000 fewer inhabitants than it did in 1930, and Portsmouth's population has decreased by more than 50%.

People? What about the folks who lived in the area in the 30s? We know the years of the Great Depression of the 1930s were difficult for everyone. Even more disastrous was the flood of 1937. But, the 30s were grand times in other respects. It was the day of the greatest peak population and steady manufacturing growth.

In fact, Portsmouth was once known as the “Shoe Capital of the World.” Portsmouth’s shoe manufacturing history began long before in 1850, when Robert Bell came to Portsmouth and formed the Portsmouth Shoe Manufacturing Co. Portsmouth had many, many shoe factories in its history.

In January of 1877, the Irving Drew & Company was formed. It was reorganized in 1879 as Drew, Selby and Company. In 1927, Selby had become the eighth largest maker of shoes in the world. In the 1930s, over 2,000 workers were employed at Selby’s alone.

The population was of the 30s was very active and full of progressive hope. For example, during this time the Norfolk and Western Corporation that came into existence in 1982 built a grand, art deco passenger station on 16th and Findley streets in Portsmouth that provided a substantial entry to the city. Passengers used the station for access to both interstate and intrastate train lines, which provided basic transportation for many. Many of us have fond memories of the station and its storied service.

Also worth noting is that during this time period, the N&W’s Portsmouth Yards was the largest railroad yard in the world owned by a single railroad, and employed literally thousands of Scioto County residents.

A Long-Time Forgotten

A stroll through the Portsmouth Times of May 4, 1934; June 3, 1934; October 8, 1936,; and December 6, 1936, shows just how engaging folks were here in the 1930s. Their pastimes and forms of entertainment reveal interests that surprise present-day inhabitants.

Contract Bridge

How very popular a card game can be. In simpler times, a simple form of entertainment was all the rage. 

Contract bridge, one of the world's most popular partnership card games, may be dated from the early 16th-century invention of trick-taking games such as whist. Bridge evolved through the late 19th and early 20th centuries to form the present game. It was very popular. In 1925, Harold S. Vanderbilt, American multi-millionaire and three-time America's Cup winner, changed the course of bridge while on a cruise. He suggested that only tricks bid and made count toward game, with extra tricks counted as bonuses. These revised rules turned auction bridge into contract bridge.

In1931, the Culbertson Summary and Culbertson's Blue Book about bridge topped all book sales for the year, outselling such popular titles as Believe It or Not and Crossword Puzzles. That same year "The Battle of the Century" was held in New York City. The team captained by Ely Culbertson won by 8980 points.

Bridge was an ideal populist pastime for the Depression and the war years. It was sociable and challenging, yet the only cost was the price of a deck of cards. Couples took it up by the millions, and in the nineteen-forties, according to the Association of American Playing Card Manufacturers, the game was played in forty-four per cent of American homes.

During this period, Charles H. Goren, a Philadelphia lawyer who had applied himself to bridge in college after a young woman laughed at his poor play, displaced Culbertson as the nation’s preëminent authority.

Then came the decline in popularity. The drop can be attributed to other, more popular forms of recreational media such as television, video games, etc. And, bridge suffered from an image problem. While card games like poker conjure up images of hard-bitten men, scantily clad women, and long nights in Las Vegas, bridge evokes cucumber sandwiches and genteel parlor gatherings.

Serenading

A record serenade in Piketon. Nope, not just a pleasing tune beneath a lady's window. 

“Noising” or harassment of brides and grooms is an old custom in the United States. But the serenade, per se, was comprised of a crowd of friends who would awaken the bridal couple with “rough music and shouting, subjecting them to various indignities, and pestering them until the husband set up a treat.

Because noise was the key to gathering a large crowd, serenading parties worked to improve their racket-making capabilities. They often used noisemakers of various kinds to aid their merriment.

Upon gathering a crowd, the typical serenade party made its way to the home of the married couple. The group would stand out in front of the house making a racket until the married couple made an appearance.

“You wanted to have plenty of cigars and candy handy if you were hosting such a party,” said Robert Ripley. The bride and groom were expected to pass out these favors. Sometimes, if they could get into the house, the serenaders would “remake” or “short-sheet” the wedding bed. The emphasis was on creating as many vexations for the married couple as possible.

The serenades were of particular importance to the community because they brought together a significant number of local people who otherwise might have been busy attending to their local tasks. Although the married couple was the “target” of the senenade, the custom itself was communal in nature.

Serenading, according to Ripley, “gave out after the automobiles came in.” In Yankee Moderns: Folk Regional Identity in the Sawmill Valley of Western … (2000), Michael Hoberman says it is no coincidence that the practice of serenading faded at exactly the same time as other forms of regionally oriented folklife.

Dog and Pony Show

We all know that typically now, the term is used in a pejorative sense to connote disdain or distrust of the message being presented or the efforts undertaken to present it. But, the origins of the phrase are very real.

The term was originally used in the United States in the late-19th and early-20th centuries to refer to small traveling circuses that toured through small towns and rural areas. The name derives from the common use of performing dogs and ponies as the main attractions of the events.

This Portsmouth show was a performance by the famed Gentry Brothers. “Prof. Gentry's Famous Dog & Pony Show” was the most notorious act of its kind in history. It began when teenager Henry Gentry and his brothers started touring in 1886 with their act, originally entitled “Gentry’s Equine and Canine Paradox.” It started small, but evolved into a full circus show. The show operated so successfully that by 1897, it was traveling on 14 cars.

Some of the best known circus owners and managers of later years were graduates of the dog and pony shows, and some of the latter exhibitions were converted into full-fledged circuses as they flourished and expanded.

Henry B. Gentry quit school in 1886 at the age of 17 to join Professor Morris, self-styled “world’s greatest trained animal showman,” and from him, Gentry learned the art of domestic animal training. After a few years, he picked up a troupe of dogs from the streets of his home town, Bloomington, Indiana, and upon training them, made his debut in the Bloomington opera house.

The Gentry shows followed much the same pattern. There were military ponies, the Schneider dog family, the monkey fire department, a dog that walked a high wire, a high diving simian, the monkey horse doctor, and trained pigs and goats. As the shows grew, trained elephants were added.

Gentry advertised his show as “the only moral exhibition in the world under canvas. An educational festival patronized and endorsed by the elite of the land.”

In 1916, Gentry retired from business. But retirement was short, for H. B. Gentry accepted the management of the Sells-Floto circus and was owner of Sparks circus for a brief period, before he revived his original dog and pony show in 1931, traveling on 14 trucks.

Associated with him were his son, Robert, and his remaining brother, Frank, and he gathered together a staff that included several executives who worked for him back in the heyday of the Gentry regime. But the resurrection was ill-timed, coming as it did as the country was sinking deep into the throes of the depression and in 1934, the show disbanded.

Satires of 1934

What can you say about this risque show at the Westland Theatre? The “Satires of 1934” featured music, music, music … and a “bevy of beautiful girls” not to mention torch-singing Helene Brown and fan-dancing Francis Rudy. This extravagant Viola Holden production was booked for three days, which certainly attests to its popularity. I could find no additional information about the show or the performers, but doesn't this make you question any preconceived notions of the widespread Puritanical beliefs of the time?

The morality police, the arbiters of public taste, received a blow in March of 1930. A hung jury caused the judge to dismiss obscenity charges against Mae West's Pleasure Man. This is the same judge who broke a gavel, pounding to keep order and erase from the record a question by Miss West about how a police officer could tell if he were addressing a young lady or a man in drag.

When the show was raided, police arrested 52 members of the cast, several of whom were men in drag. This resulted in an amendment to the "Wales Padlock Law" in New York. In the future, only the writers and producers - and not the cast or crew of a show - would be held responsible for material deemed obscene or immoral.

During the Great Depression, shows distracted audiences with escapism, while also offering political commentary and social engagement. But, vaudeville took a significant stick in the eye. In 1925, there were approximately 1500 theaters in the vaudeville circuits; by 1930, only 300 were left.

Gridiron Warrior Impersonator

Speaking of liberal times, I was surprised to see this entry on the sports page of the Times. I guess we never really known history until we research and find new understandings of the past.

Clifford Glenn, a junior at Glenwood New Boston High School in 1936, had a rather unusual talent. As well as being a great football tackle, he was also a exceptional dancer and ... a female impersonator.

By the way, the New Boston Tigers regained the championship of the Big Six Conference that year. I'd say Clifford was no sissy on the gridiron.

Ali Baba's Spiritualistic Seance and Ghost Show

When viewing this ad, I was thinking about how such a show would be a Halloween hit today. After all, haunted houses and fields attracting huge holiday crowds are very popular now. Why not a séance? I smell a sellout.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the American public had a desperate, insatiable fascination with spiritualism and the promise of communication with dead family members. In 1929, a stage magician named Elwin-Charles Peck (who performed as El-Wyn) came up with an act that was at once very new and very old, and he presented it in a way no one had before. After all the other acts at whatever theater he was playing at the time went home for the night, he put on another show.

The El-Wyn's Midnite Spook Party opened with El-Wyn explaining to the audience that he was in contact with the spirit world, warning them they should be prepared to see some strange, even terrifying things over the course of the next hour. He then did a few of his standard tricks, slowly working in some of the same tricks used by the spiritualist charlatans Houdini had unmasked over the previous 30 years.

Objects moved mysteriously, eerie sounds came out of nowhere, and at the close of the show the theater went completely dark as the spirits of the dead appeared and vanished onstage and flew over the heads of the audience. What he was offering, at heart, was a seance.

The traveling show was such a huge success (playing mostly to lively audiences in their late teens and early 20s) that it quickly spawned dozens of imitators. It was the birth of a new entertainment form. Given these other shows also tended to start at midnight, they came to be known generally as Midnight Spook Shows, Midnight Ghost Shows, or, later, Midnight Monster Shows.

Author Jim Knipfel in the article “Midnight Spook Shows: A Brief History” explains ...

“Considering the level of often raucous audience participation, the Midnight Spook Shows can in many ways be considered the direct predecessors to the Midnight Movie phenomenon which began in the early ‘70s (just as the final spook shows were fading away) with films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

“Cheap as the tricks were, the shows worked thanks to the power of suggestion, imagination, and anticipation. Tell people beforehand that spiders will drop on them or monsters will grab them in the darkness and, well, they will. The real innovation the Bakers brought to the form was clever, gimmicky promotions. Mini graveyards popped up in public places in the small towns where the show was about to open, newspaper and radio ads promised everything from “King Kong live onstage!” to contests where someone in the audience could win “a real dead body!” (it turned out to be a frozen chicken). Spooky trailers plugging the show ran in the theaters for weeks beforehand, and fake protest groups showed up outside the show to denounce the depravity of it all.”

The Sultana Explodes on the Mississippi -- Worst Maritime Disaster in U.S. History

The Burning of the Sultana

By Wm. H. Norton, Company C, 115th Ohio, 1892

Midnight’s dreary hour has past,
The mists of night are falling Fast,
Sultana sounds her farewell blast,
And braves the might stream;
The swollen river’s banks overflow,
The deaden clouds are hanging low
And veil the stars bright silver glow,
And darkness reigns supreme.

Her engine fires now brighter burn,
Her mammoth wheels now faster turn,
Her dipping paddles lightly spurn
The river’s foaming crest:
And drowsy Memphis, lost to sight,
Now fainter shows her beacon light,
As Sultana steams in the dead of night,
And the Union soldiers rest.

The sleeping soldiers dream of home,
To them the long-sought day had come,
No more in prison pens to moan,
Or guarded by the gray;
At last the changing fates of war
Had swing their prison “gates ajar,”
And “laurel wreaths” from the North afar
Await their crowning day.

For Peace has raised her magic hand,
The Stars and Stripes wave o’er the land,
The conquered foemen now disband,
“As melts the mowing dew;”
And mothers wear their wonted smile,
And aged sires the hours beguile,
And plighted love awaits the while
The coming of the blue.

On sails the steamer through the gloom,
On sleep the soldiers to their doom,
And death’s dark angel oh! so soon-
Calls loud the muster roll.
A-burst-a-crash-and-timbers fly,

And-flame-and-steam-leap to the sky,
And-men awakened-but-to die-
Commend to God their souls.

Out from the flame’s encircling fold,
Like a mighty rush of warriors, bold,
They leap to the river dark and cold,
And search for the hidden shore.
In the cabins, -and-pinioned-there,
A mid-the-smoke-and-fire-and-glare,
The-awful-wail-of-death’s-despair
Is heard above the roar.

Out on, the river’s rolling tide,
Out from the steamer’s burning side,
Out where the circle is growing wide,
They battle with the waves.
And drowning men each other clasp,
And writhing in death’s closing grasp
They struggle bravely, but at last
Sink to watery graves.

Oh! for the star’s bright silver light
Oh! for a moon to dispel the night!
Oh! for the hand that should guide aright
The way to the distant land!
Clinging to driftwood and floating down,
Caught in the eddies and whirling around,
Washed to the flooded banks are found
The survivors of that band.

On April 27, 1865, the steamboat “Sultana” exploded and sank while traveling up the Mississippi River, killing an estimated 1,800 people. The event remains the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history (the sinking of the Titanic killed 1,512 people). Yet few know the story of this tragedy.

“In the long list embracing every engagement of the Rebellion, the Union killed on the field have exceeded the loss of lives by this explosion in only four great battles: the Wilderness, Gettysburg, Spottsylvania and Antietam. There have been more lives lost by this explosion than were killed from the Union ranks in the combined battles of Fredericksburg, Franklin, and Five Forks; more than were killed from the Union ranks on the fields of battle at Pea Ridge, Perryville, and Pleasant Hill combined; more than the Union loss in killed at Chancellorsville, or Chickamauga, or Shiloh. Only the fact that it occurred just at the close of the great war, just when the country was bowed in grief at the murder of its beloved first citizen, gave it relatively a minor place in the history of that time.”

– Jesse Hawes, author Cahaba: A Story of Captive Boys in Blue

The Sultana was on its way from Vicksburg, Mississippi, to St. Louis when the explosion occurred, says Jerry Potter, a Memphis lawyer and author of The Sultana Tragedy. The vessel was packed with Union soldiers who'd been released from Confederate prison camps.

By the spring of 1865 the war was close to its end, and the opposing armies agreed that it was time to release their prisoners and send them home. After the prisoners were released they had a hard time making their way west across the South to Vicksburg, where, they had been told, steamboats would carry them to their homes in the north.

Traveling north from Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, boats could reach the Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee rivers and, from there, the towns of the American Midwest from which the soldiers had come. But to get to the Mississippi River at Vicksburg the soldiers had to travel by boat, by train, and on foot. Because they were so weak from their war and prison experiences some of them died along the way. Making matters worse, some of the trains derailed due to the damaged railroad tracks — many of the railroad tracks had been destroyed by the war. In 1865 there were no highways and not even many good roads.

The owners of the steamboats had been competing to see who could arrange for the most freed prisoners on their boats. The steamboat companies were paid $5 for each enlisted man and $10 per officer by the government to transport the soldiers and freed prisoners – a lot of money in 1865. And, some of the company employees bribed army officials in Vicksburg to make sure they got as many passengers as possible.

Desperate to get home, the POWs persuaded army officers to let them all on the steamship. When the Sultana pulled out of Vicksburg for her journey north, she was carrying approximately 2,100 more passengers than her capacity of 376. The weight on the top deck was so heavy that prior to launch stanchions were installed underneath to strengthen the support, but, despite the alterations, the deck was still sagging. The Sultana was loaded to more than six times its capacity.

Add to this overload the flood stage of the Mississippi River then. That day, the water was moving very quickly and contained a lot of trees and other debris. And it was very cold and very, very dark.

In Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Surivors (1892), Rev. Chester D. Berry wrote …

“But there was one thing that was unfavorable, and that was the pitchy darkness of the night. It was raining a little, or had been, and but occasional glimpses of timber were all that could be seen, even when the flames were the brightest, consequently the men did not know what direction to take, and one man, especially, swam up stream.

“Another thing that added greatly to the loss of life is the fact that the river at this place is three miles wide, and at the time of the accident it was very high and had overflown its banks, and many, doubtless, perished after they reached the timber while trying to get through the woods back to the bluffs, the flats being deeply under water.

“Others died from exposure in the icy-cold water after they had reached the timber, but were unable to climb a tree or crawl upon a log and thus get out of the water.”

It was close to midnight when the packet let go her mooring lines and crossed the river to take on coal. After this was loaded the Sultana went on up the river, bound for Cairo. Most of the servicemen aboard were to disembark there.

One assumes the passengers were dozing. Two or three more days and they would be home again. Then they could sleep and eat and rest, and the terrible prison camp experiences could begin to fade in their memories. The war was over; just a few more hours on this crowded steamboat, and they would be home.

The Sultana made it only a few miles north of Memphis. Near 2:00 A.M. on April 27, 1865, when the Sultana was just seven miles north of Memphis, her boilers suddenly exploded, and the entire center of the boat erupted like a volcano. It was as if a tremendous bomb had gone off. The shrapnel, the steam and the boiling water killed hundreds.

Fire, drowning, and exposure would kill many hundreds more. Most of the men preferred drowning to being burned alive, and leaped into the water. But the story of the Sultana is about more than lost lives. It is also about a rescue effort that brought together people who had been at war just weeks earlier. Many Sultana survivors ended up on the Arkansas side of the river, which was under Confederate control during the war. And many of them were saved by local residents.

It should also be remembered that among the passengers were twelve ladies, most of them belonging to the Christian commission, an association akin to that of the sanitary commission of the Army of the Potomac.

According to Berry ...

“One of these ladies, with more than ordinary courage, when the flames at last drove all the men from the boat, seeing them fighting like demons in the water in the mad endeavor to save their lives, actually destroying each other and themselves by their wild actions, talked to them, urging them to be men, and finally succeeded in getting them quieted down, clinging to the ropes and chains that hung over the bow of the boat.

“The flames now began to lap around her with their fiery tongues. The men pleaded and urged her to jump into the water and thus save herself, but she refused, saying: 'I might lose my presence of mind and be the means of the death of some of you.'

“And so, rather than run the risk of becoming the cause of the death of a single person, she folded her arms quietly over her bosom and burned, a voluntary martyr to the men she had so lately quieted.”

Tragically, the disaster was overshadowed by other events. On April 9, General Robert E. Lee surrendered, ending the Civil War; and five days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, who himself was killed on the 26th, the day before the Sultana had exploded on the Mississippi.

Sultana Disaster, April 1865. From List of Federal prisoners who survived 

A Local Connection

And now for the local historical connection. Valley graduate Olivia Smalley is related to John J. Kurtz, who was a soldier in the 7th Ohio Calvary, Company F. According to family accounts, he survived a Confederate POW camp known as “Libby Prison,” and then John went on to survive the Sultana disaster. He incurred a broken back in the process of saving himself from the latter.

John J. Kurtz was born in Pennsylvania in October of 1837, and he died in Otway, Ohio, on April 7, 1921 at age 83. He was known as “Jack.” Kurtz lived in Brown County (Waggoner's Ripple, Ohio) for some time before moving to the Otway community. He is buried in Otway Cemetery.

These two members of Company F (Kurtz's company) died in the Sultana explosion: J. H. Starrett, corporal company F, 7th Ohio Cavalry; and J. J. Curley, private company F, 7th Ohio Cavalry

 Portsmouth Daily Times, 07 Dec 1921, Wed, Page 6

Chronicles of the Disaster

The following accounts were taken from survivors of the Sultana disaster. They provide a stirring personal view of the tragedy.

N. Wintringer, Chief Engineer stated ...

“As I was chief engineer of that ill-fated steamer at the time of her explosion I thought that my recollections of that terrible calamity would be of some interest. I believe that George Oayton, one of the pilots and myself were the only officers of the boat that escaped with our lives …

“The 'Sultana' left Cairo on that fatal trip the 15th of April, 1865, the day after the death of President Lincoln, and as all wire communications with the south were cut off at that time, the "Sultana" carried the news of his assassination and death to all points and military posts on the Mississippi river as far as New Orleans.

“I do not remember the exact date of our leaving New Orleans on our return trip. But on our arrival at Vicksburg, we were ordered to report to carry a load of paroled soldiers, who, I believe, were from Andersonville and Libby prisons.

“While at Vicksburg we repaired a boiler. Now it was claimed by some at the time that this boiler was not properly repaired, and that was the cause of the explosion. In a short time those boilers

were recovered and the one that had been repaired at Vicksburg was found in good condition, whole and intact, and that it was one of the other three that caused the explosion.

Now what did cause this explosion ? The explosion of the 'Walker R. Carter' and 'Missouri,' in rapid succession, I think fully answers that question. It was the manner of the construction of those boilers.

“After these three fatal explosions they were taken out of all steamers using them and replaced with the old style of boiler. They were an experiment on the lower Mississippi. They had been used with some success on the upper Mississippi, where the water at all times is clear and not liable to make much sediment or scale.

“... those boilers … had not long been in use there, and it was the opinion of experts that it would have been only a question of time for all steamers using those boilers to have gone the way that the 'Carter,' ''Missouri,' and 'Sultana' went, had they not have been taken out and replaced by others.

“I have one word to say for the engineer who was on duty at the time and who lost his life. It was talked around that he was under the influence of liquor. I can say for him, and all who were personally acquainted with him can say the same, that he was a total abstainer from anything of the kind.” (This was written April 14, 1886, and he died October 11, 1886.)

P. S. Atchley, 3rd Regiment of Tennessee Volunteers said ...

“I was thrown into the surging waves of that mighty river, into the jaws of death, and life depended on one grand effort, expert swimming, which I did successfully, and after swimming six or seven miles,according to statements given by citizens living on the banks of the river, landed on the Arkansas shore without any assistance whatever.

“There I found a confederate soldier who came to my relief, and took me to a house near by, and gave me something to eat, and I felt something like myself again, thanks to the Great Ruler of the Universe. The said confederate soldier worked hard to save the lives of the drowning men, and brought to shore in his little dugout about fifteen of them.

“A number of comrades got out at the point where I did. Among them were some Ohio men for whom I have great respect (but have lost their names), especially one of the 24th Ohio Regiment, that got out of the water at the same time I did. I gave him my blouse and slips as he was naked ; if he is yet living I would like to hear from him. I will close by wishing God to bless every survivor.”

J. Walter Elliot, 10^th Regiment Indiana Volunteer Infantry, remembered ...

“Women and little children in their night clothes, brave men who have stood undaunted on many a battle field, all contribute to the confusion and horror of the scene as they suddenly see the impending death by fire, and wringing their hands, tossing their arms wildly in the air, with cries most heart-rending, they rush pell-mell over the guard into the dark, cold waters of the river; while the ''old soldier" is hastily providing for himself anything that will float — tables, doors, cots, partition planks — anything, everything.

"What a worse than Babel of confusion of sights and sounds as each seeks his own safety, regardless of others. Where is the cot of my selection a few hours previous, and where its occupant? Ask of that holocaust below. 'There is a divinity that shapes our ends.'”

“There seemed to be acres of struggling humanity on the waters, some on debris of the wreck, some on the dead carcasses of horses, some holding to swimming live horses, some on boxes, bales of hay,

drift logs, etc. Soon we parted company with the wreck and the crowd and drifted out into the darkness almost alone.”

William Fies, 64th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, said ...

“After being in the water for quite a long time, which seemed to me an age, part of the time in company with others going down the river, some swimming, others floating on driftwood and all conceivable kinds of rafts, everything that would float being utilized; some were shouting for help, others praying, singing, laughing, or swearing.”

Isaac Van Nuys, 57^th Indiana Veteran Volunteer Infantry stated ...

“No adequate cause for the explosion has ever been ascertained. The steamer was running at her proper speed (nine or ten miles an hour). No peril seemed imminent and the event remains yet a mystery. The scene that followed the explosion was simply horrible beyond words to depict, but it was of short duration as the glare of the burning steamer that illuminated the sky and made visible the awful despair of the hour soon died away, while darkness, all the more intense, settled down on the floating hulk and the 2,300 victims of the explosion, who, maimed or scalded, in addition to battle wounds, were borne down by the unpitying flood whose rapid current was strewn with the bodies of the dead and the dying and but few, in fact, but what were injured.”

L. A. Deerman, 3rd Regiment of Tennesee Cavalry, related …

“I went on and on swimming for my life on my short board. It seemed to me that I was in the water about an hour and a half. While I was in the water I struck an old log; one end of it was hanging to something and the other end was floating about in the water. I caught hold of the end of it and pulled myself upon the log and here remained until eight o'clock in the morning. I could hear the boys, all up and down the river banks on logs, bushes and drift, smacking and rubbing themselves to keep warm, and crowing like chickens while many a poor boy was sinking or floating in the deep waters of the Mississippi.

“Oh! this was so unexpected to that crew that night.”

Sources:

Rev. Chester D. Berry. Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1892, by REV. CHESTER D. BERRY, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

Jon Hamilton. “The Shipwreck That Led Confederate Veterans To Risk All For Union Lives. NPR.

April 27, 2015.

Alan Huffman. “Surviving the Worst: The Wreck of the Sultana at the End of the American Civil War.” History Now http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/319/surviving-the-worst-the-wreck-of-the-sultana Mississippi Historical Society. 2000–2017.

Cedric A. Larson. “Death on the Dark River.” American Heritage. Volume 6, Issue 6. October 1955.

Robert R. Smith. Indiana and the Sultana Disaster. 2015.

“The Tragedy of the SS Sultana.” https://www.ancestry.com/contextux/historicalinsights/sultana-disaster-1865/

Sultana Museum, Arkansas

Ohio -- Unparalleled Union Service in the Civil War

Color guard of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry with the national colors 

of their regiment, ca. 1863-1865.

"Three out of every five Ohio men between the ages of 18 and 45 served at various times in the Union Army and Navy 

during the Civil War. "

– Ohio Historical Society

I wonder if locals really understand the unequaled impact of Ohio and its population on the outcome of the American Civil War. Some actually claim, “Ohio won the Civil War.” While one must understand the tremendous contributions of all the Union States in the conflict, it is difficult to dispute this claim when considering the troops, the leadership, the supplies, and the total commitment provided by Ohio.

Due to its central location in the Northern United States and burgeoning population, Ohio was both politically and logistically important to the war effort. Ohio was a major Union "breadbasket," supplying large amounts of corn and grains. It also had the most horses of any northern state, and the most sheep (providing wool for uniforms).

Nearly 320,000 Ohioans served the Union Army in the Civil War, the third largest number of soldiers of any Union state. As the third most populous state in the Union at the time, Ohio was behind only New York and Pennsylvania in total manpower that contributed to the military effort. Ohio had the highest per capita service of any Union state – 3 of 5 eligible men in the state served.

Ohio men fought in every major battle of the war. 35,475 Ohioans died during the Civil War in battle, from wounds or from disease. Eighty-four of every one thousand Ohio men who served died in the war. Another forty-four for every one thousand deserted. This was one of the lowest desertion rates in the Union states.

When President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 recruits in April 1861, Ohio's quota was 13,000. Within forty-eight hours of President Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers in April 1861, two Ohio infantry regiments already had departed for Washington, DC. Sixteen days after Lincoln’s call for troops, enough Ohioans had volunteered to meet the full national requirement. More than 100,200 men enlisted that year.

The federal government required each state to supply a set number of soldiers determined by the state's population. Ohio exceeded the government's call for men by 4,332 soldiers. This number does not reflect the 6,479 men who paid a monetary fine to the government to escape military duty. It also does not include the 5,092 African-American soldiers who served in the United States Colored Troops or in units from other states, including the famous Fifty-Fourth and Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts Infantry Regiments. In all, Ohio exceeded the federal government's requirements by more than fifteen thousand men.

During the American Civil War, the State of Ohio provided the United States government with three types of military units: artillery units, cavalry units, and infantry units. Ohio supplied the federal government with more than 260 regiments of men; not counting several companies that formed the basis of regiments in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Massachusetts.

An Ohio brigade protected the Union army's retreat at the Battle of First Bull Run in 1861. Ohio regiments also helped secure Kentucky and West Virginia for the North. They participated in the Battles of Fort Donelson, Fort Henry, Gettysburg, Antietam, Fort Wagner, Shiloh, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and many others.

Historical Note – NARA records show that four men from Scioto County won the Medal of Honor for their actions during the Civil War: William Reddick, George Wilhelm, James M. Cumpston, and Martin J. Hawkins.

Among those who served from Ohio, more than 200 reached the rank of general, including several Confederate generals. Prominent generals included Irvin McDowell, Don Carlos Buell, Philip Sheridan, George McClellan, William T. Sherman, and Ulysses S. Grant.

Five veterans of the war with links to Ohio became president. The state lays partial claim to Ulysses Grant, who was elected from Illinois, and Benjamin Harrison, who was elected from Indiana. They were both born in Ohio. Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield and William McKinley all served with Ohio units and were elected president as Ohioans.

Historical Note – In March, 1940, George Farley passed away. He was the last Scioto County Civil War veteran. Farley was born in Portsmouth, and he enlisted at the age of 15. After serving exactly one year to the day, he wIn March, 1940, George Farley passed away. He was the last Scioto County Civil War veteran. Farley was born in Portsmouth, and he enlisted at the age of 15. After serving exactly one year to the day, he was promoted to 1st Sergeant of Co. H, 44th Regiment U.S. Colored Troops.

Ohio women were also among the leaders who emerged during the war. They raised money, served as nurses at military hospitals, ran their family farms and sometimes fought in battle … not to mention providing great moral support for the troops.

Soldiers aid societies were groups of women who raised money for supplies and soldiers' medical care, There were strong societies all over Ohio. The women organized events to raise thousands of dollars for the war effort. The U.S. Sanitary Commission provided the medical care for soldiers, but the groups didn't like how it handled that effort and chose to send their supplies and money directly to the hospitals and those caring for soldiers.

"They were using the argument that these men don't have time for your bureaucracy," said Christie Weininger, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center executive director.

Another woman who didn't like legal red tape, Mary Ann Bickerdyke of Mount Vernon, also led efforts to get supplies to the front and tended to hurt soldiers. She once approached a Union general and told him what she needed to properly care for the solders.

When he asked her on whose authority she was doing this, she responded, "God Almighty. Do you have a higher authority?"

The general let her take what she needed.

After the war, women wanted to continue having an influence in those areas, which led to the women's movement. "They realized what they could do," Weininger said.

Historial Note – When the first unit from Portsmouth left in 1861, several women formed the Ladies Aid Society in Portsmouth. The first soldiers from Portsmouth were killed at the Battle of Vienna in 1861. The following year, the Ladies Aid Society marked May 30th as the day to place flowers on the soldiers’ graves and hold memorial services Headed by Amanda Pursell, these ladies raised funds for the soldiers and their families. Amanda Pursell, a widow, was the only woman known to have hired a man to serve in the war in place of her husband. She insisted that she not know who he was or what happened to him.

The monument in Tracy Park represents John R.T. Barnes, the first soldier from Scioto County to die in the war, and is a memorial to all those who gave their life. It took 12 years to raise the $7,500 needed for the monument and it was dedicated on May 30, 1879.

"The Civil War was the single most important event in American history," said Eric Wittenberg, a Columbus historian/author who served on Ohio's Civil War Sesquicentennial Advisory Committee. "It took a collection of states and turned them into the United States of America, it freed the slaves and it established the predominance of the federal government."

The Ohioans who helped win the Civil War have faded from memory … all traces gone but a few lines on monuments and markers. Today, there are more than 200 Civil War monuments and memorials in 85 of Ohio's 88 counties … and countless Union soldiers whose names remain in etchings on grave stones.

James Bissland of Bowling Green, author of Blood, Tears and Glory: How Ohioans Won the Civil War, believes Ohio shouldn't remember these bygone combatants for their losses, but for their hope.

"From 1861 to 1865, hundreds of thousands of Ohioans from all walks of life put their lives on the line and the creature comforts on hold to save the nation, confident they could achieve it," he said.

"Ohioans were tremendously important and confident years ago; we need our ancestors to inspire us to believe what we can do instead of dwelling on what we don't have."

Civil War Vets, Scioto -- 1915

The Flying Streetcar of Portsmouth -- Ghostly Tale From 1893

Construction of streetcar line began in 1877.

“Ill winds mark it's fearsome flight,
And autumn branches creak with fright.
The landscape turns to ashen crumbs,
When something wicked this way comes...”

– Ray Bradbury

“Mystery.” The Portsmouth Times – December 30, 1893

Were supernatural powers at work? Did witchcraft cause an inexplicable phenomena? Or, was there some logical explanation for what happened one cold December night in Portsmouth, Ohio, in 1893?

The article appeared right there in the local paper for everyone to read.The street car Kanawha had taken flight forty feet in the air and flown clear over Harper Trestle to light again "fair and square" on the track at the other side of the trestle. Strange and mysterious times, indeed. This must have been the talk of the town as speculation of what had occurred swept the area. 

The events certainly surprised Will Harper, who had filed an injunction to prevent the electric railway company from running its cars in front of his premises. The case was tied up in the courts, and in the meantime Harper had the cars stop at the trestle although the track and the trolley had been completed to New Boston. 

Yet, there it was for all to see -- the car was discovered on the far side of Lawson's Run beyond the trestle despite the Harper injunction. The conductors and the motormen say the car “got away” from the crew and couldn't be stopped until it reached the other side.

How could this happen? Some residents had further details. Ed Kirby said the car left the track just above Clay Street, rose up in the air, and did not light until it reached the other side. Wash Hoskins believed the wind “blew the car over” the trestle while motorman Cronch blamed “lunar attraction” during that night's full moon for the seemingly impossible feat. 

Whatever the case, the car was there and doing good business, as passengers were given transfer tickets at the trestle and walked around or over it to the car on the other side. So, it seems, the spooky occurrence, however it happened, worked out for street car company and its passengers.

What do you think happened? Here is the original article preserved in the best state  I can render. Read it and decide for yourself. I think you will agree that the Portsmouth Times was, at one time, a delightful newspaper with a quaint and playful voice. 

  

  

Elizabeth Byers and Jack Sumner -- Tracing Lucasville to Colorado

Robert Lucas

“The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail.”

– John Wesley Powell

Lucasville connections are endless. Ties to the past as simple as a few words or a faded image pull us into a pool of knowledge where we can lose ourselves, wander without restraint, and somehow, by chance, discover story after story that strengthens our human connections to history. These encounters, no matter how trivial or how vast, enrich us with a touch of simple association. Then, we find we really do “know.”

In a prior post, I shared the John Wesley Powell story. I will relate part of this connection again. However, in this entry I will share two stories related to other Lucasville figures. The two subjects of this entry are Elizabeth Minerva Sumner Byers and John Colton Sumner. To understand the lives of these two people – a brother and a sister – we must explore the West of the 1800s. Yes, Mr. Horace Greeley ... "Colorado, here we come!"

Two Subjects – Elizabeth Byers and Jack Sumner

Elizabeth -- Over the course of six decades, Elizabeth Minerva Sumner Byers (1834-1920) saw the evolution of Denver, Colorado, from a dirty little supply settlement at the foot of the Rockies into a thriving capital city. Dedicating her life to making the quality of life better for those who came to the area, she was a tremendous catalyst for change. Although never properly recognized in her lifetime, she remains a venerated figure for forming groups and institutions that helped the children, the poor, and the elderly. The Grand Army of the Republic dedicated a black granite memorial fountain to her in 1923. It was Denver's first monument honoring a woman.

Jack -- Elizabeth's younger brother, John “Jack” Colton Sumner (1840–1907) was the guide and lead boatmen for Major John Wesley Powell when Powell made his first trip down the Colorado River in 1869. Powell became the leader of the first scientific exploration of the last unknown area in the continental United States: In 1869, Powell and his team became the first people of European descent to travel the length of the Grand Canyon – a journey of three months and more than 900 miles.

Connections

Please bear with me. This explanation is rather convoluted; however its complexity is due to multiple local ties. First let me present the two subjects of this inquiry. Then, I will explain their genealogical connections to the area.

1. Elizabeth Minerva Sumner Byers was the daughter of Horation Nelson Sumner and Minerva Lucas Sumner. She was born August 31, 1834 in Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio. She died on January 6, 1920 in San Diego, San Diego County, Californa. Elizabeth is buried in Fairmount Cemetery in Denver, Colorado.

2. John “Jack” Colton Sumner was the son of Horatio Nelson Sumner and Minerva Lucas Sumner. He was born May 16, 1840, in Newtown, Fountain County, Indiana. He died on July 5, 1907 in Fort Duchesne, Uintah County, Utah. He is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Denver, Colorado.

Horatio Nelson Sumner and Minerva Lucas Sumner

Mother and Father, Horatio Nelson Sumner (1808-1875) – presumably named after the British Admiral Horatio Nelson – and Minerva Lucas Sumner (1811-1886) were the parents of Elizabeth and Jack. Minerva was born in Portsmouth, Ohio in 1811. She married Horatio and had 9 children. Horatio died on February 4, 1875. Minerva passed away on April 29, 1886, in Denver, Colorado.

Edward Sumner's Stone

Edward Culver Sumner (1764–1821) and Abigail Clark Sumner (unknown-October 19, 1821) were Elizabeth's (Sumner Byers) and Jack's (Sumner) grandparents. Edward was born October 14, 1764, in Connecticut. He died September 20, 1821. He is buried in Old Wheelersburg Cemetery in Wheelersburg, Ohio. Abigail Clark Sumner is also buried in Old Wheelersburg Cemetery.

Minerva Lucas's parents were and Robert Lucas (1781-1853) and Elizabeth (“Eliza or Betsey”) Brown Lucas (1786-1812). So, Robert Lucas and Elizabeth Lucas were Elizabeth's (Sumner Byers) and Jack's (Sumner) grandparents, too. Elizabeth is buried the the Lucasville Cemetery in Lucasville, Ohio. Robert is buried in in Oakland Cemetery in Iowa City, Iowa.

Are you confused yet?

To make clearer the Lucasville, Ohio connection – Both Elizabeth Byers' and John (Jack) Sumner's grandfather was Robert Lucas and their grandmother was Elizabeth Brown Lucas. 

As we well know, Robert was the brother of John Lucas, the founder of Lucasville.

Historical Note – Elizabeth Brown Lucas died very young (age 26). Robert Lucas then married Friendly Ashley Sumner Lucas (1796-1873). So, Friendly also has ties to the subjects of interest, Elizabeth Byers and Jack Sumner.

Elizabeth "Libby" Byers

Elizabeth Minerva Sumner Byers

A scion of colonial patriots and a heartland native from Chillicothe, Ohio, Elizabeth was born to Minerva Lucas Sumner and Horatio Nelson Sumner on August 31, 1834. She married a politician, William Newton Byers, in November 1854 at Muscatine, Iowa.

In 1859 (two years before Colorado became a U.S. territory), Elizabeth Minerva Sumner Byers traveled west with her husband, William Newton Byers, and their two young children. Mary Newton-Robinson, their daughter, recalled her mother saying …

“I was the eighth white woman in Denver, and when I climbed out of the little buckboard with my two babies I felt that I was the advance guard of civilization at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.”

William Byers was known as a founding figure of Omaha, Nebraska, serving as the first deputy surveyor of the Nebraska Territory, on the first Omaha City Council, and as a member of the first Nebraska Territorial Legislature.

The Byers moved to Denver to take advantage of recent gold strikes in the area. They traveled by oxcart, and in the back of their buckboard, they carried a printing press, the beginnings of the Rocky Mountain News – Colorado's first newspaper and a major civilizing agent for the West. (It continued publication until 2009.) William founded and edited the paper while Elizabeth worked as co-publisher and journalist.

In time, William would be called “the greatest Denver promoter of all.” The newspaper attracted newcomers and money to upstart towns such as Denver. Byers became the spokesman for Denver and helped to organize a Chamber of Commerce. He tirelessly promoted Denver as the “Queen City of the Rockies.”

Historical Note – William's father, Moses Watson Dyers, was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and at the age of four years, in 1808, accompanied his parents to Ohio. They settled at Circleville, Pickaway County, but later he and a brother removed to Darby Plains, in Madison County, where he improved a place of nearly three hundred acres. In 1860 he sold his property there and settled near Muscatine, Iowa, where he improved a large tract of land. 

Elizabeth is often remembered for her charitable work and wonderful civic contributions to Territorial Colorado.

It was a time of great hardship, as settlers tried to build a new civilization for themselves in an unfamiliar land, amid often-stormy relations with native populations and in a harsh climate. The experience of Elizabeth “Libby” Byers, surrounded by the realities of life in the territory, gave rise to the first charitable association in Denver – inspiring a future of benevolence in a rough new town.

The immediate area offered little comfort to its first inhabitants: no gold, no mines, no jobs, no farms, little lodging, and little support. The earliest citizens struggled to organize and settle, as desperation and incidents of “shiftiness” led to even greater hardship. The undeveloped gold industry demanded much from the influx of traveling miners, or “Pikes Peakers.”

Civil involvement began in earnest in January 1860, when a meeting was held at the home of William and Elizabeth Byers. As a result, the Ladies Union Aid Society (LUAS) took shape. Its purpose was to aid and comfort those in need. The LUAS was the first of many charitable organizations to come. In the years that followed, Denver saw a significant rise in such institutions.

Libby Byers was well known and well liked for her caring and ambition in alleviating the suffering of others. Elizabeth formed the Pioneer Ladies Aid Society shortly after in auxiliary to her husband’s charitable aims. The society’s sole purpose was to provide care to “indigent pioneers and those depending on them.” In addition to being a charter member of the Ladies Union Aid Society and the Pioneer Ladies Aid Society, she chartered the Ladies Relief Society and helped open a home for aging women.

The Ladies Relief Society founded a day nursery, kindergarten, and free medical dispensary as well as a free clothing and supply distribution center by the end of the 1880s. By 1889, the society supported 2,600 individuals. Byers also ran a working home and orphanage for boys. But despite her involvement in the growth of a benevolent civilization, Libby Byers never aspired to be a symbol of civic development.

Overshadowed by the business enterprises and successes of her husband, Libby Byers was a pioneer in her own right. Her contributions to the development of charitable organizations in the ravages of early Denver are arguably as significant as the political and professional accomplishments of her husband.

During the construction of the State Capitol dome in 1899, a committee took charge of identifying individuals significant enough to the history of Denver to honor with murals. William Byers was identified as the father of journalism in the city, for his establishment of the Rocky Mountain News.

The Ladies Relief Society nominated Mrs. Elizabeth Byers as the “wife of the editor of the first newspaper in Denver”; she declined the nomination saying her family was already represented there by her husband and that other women were equally deserving. Yet, she added …

“While I gladly accord my husband every honor he is entitled to, and rejoice that he is so honored and appreciated by his fellow-citizens, I remember that he and I stood shoulder to shoulder through all the trials and hardships of pioneer life, and I feel that I ought not stand wholly in the light of reflected glory.”

Elizabeth “Libby” Minerva Sumner Byers died at age 85 in San Diego, California, on January 6, 1920.

John "Jack" Sumner

John Colton Sumner

John “Jack” (“Captain Jack”) Colton Sumner was born May 16, 1840, in Newtown, Fountain County, Indiana. In this entry I will refer to him as "Jack" because from my investigation, most used that moniker for John during his lifetime. 

By the time Jack was five, his family had settled in Iowa – then the new American frontier. He was one of eight siblings who grew up on a farm in Muscatine County, Iowa, along the Cedar and Mississippi rivers. John Colton. John became an enthusiastic reader but was not interested in farming.

As it turned out, Jack Sumner was born under a “wandering star.” Award-winning author, Don Lago says the Sumner family story is “a quintessential story of the American frontier, a story of moving on in search of adventure and opportunity (both good and bad), a story of family bonds that repeatedly stretched to keep up with the American Dream.”

Lago relates the early westward movement of the Sumners to Iowa ...

“It (the move) was probably to follow Lucas (Robert Lucas, the grandfather of Jack Sumner) that the Sumner family moved to Iowa a few years after him. With his first wife, Lucas had one daughter, Minerva. After his wife’s death, Lucas married a woman named Friendly Sumner. Friendly had a youngest brother named Horatio Nelson Sumner, and Minerva married him. Thus Horatio Sumner was both the brother-inlaw and the son-in-law of Governor Lucas. When Horatio and Minerva moved to Iowa, Horatio was following his sister and Minerva was following her father ...

“They settled in the town of West Liberty, which was only 15 miles from the state Capital of Iowa City, where the Lucas family home, Plum Grove, is preserved today as an Iowa State Historic Site ...

“There was probably another reason why Horatio and Minerva Sumner moved to Iowa. Horatio had gotten into deep financial and legal trouble back in Indiana. The Sumners had left Ohio for Indiana around 1835, and this too may have been encouraged by some financial misdeeds. Financial misdeeds became a continuing theme of Sumner family history; decades later, Jack (John Colton) Sumner would commit the same misdeed as his father, and thus precipitate a family crisis.”

It became an annual event for the Tippecanoe County court to issue a summons for Horatio Sumner to appear, but he was long gone, and only in 1847 did the court declare Sumner’s land forfeit. Into this turmoil Jack Sumner was born.

One Sumner family source says that the Sumner family didn’t meet the Byers family until they were in Iowa. Chauncey Thomas, who would marry Jack Sumner’s youngest sister Flora and whose father worked with William Byers at his Denver newspaper, said that shortly after Horatio Sumner settled in West Liberty in 1841, “a covered wagon pulled up at his gate. The occupant asked about the roads ahead and about land to settle, and Horatio told him there were no good roads ahead and no bridges and he might as well settle on the good land right next door to Horatio.” And he did.

Mr. Byers, had a ten year old son named William, and Horatio had a seven year old daughter named Elizabeth, and thirteen years later they got married. Thus, Jack Sumner grew up next door to William Byers, and it was Byers who would now pull the Sumner family further west. Byers became a surveyor and worked his way to Oregon and California. As we know, after his marriage Byers settled in Omaha, serving in the first Nebraska state legislature. When Byers heard the call of Colorado, he bought some wagons and horses, one of which was named “Jack” in honor of Jack Sumner. Jack Sumner’s brothers Ed and Robert would drive the teams to Colorado.

Robert expressed doubt that Byers could succeed with the paper. Lago reports Robert's doubts …

“He (Byers) will wish he had of had nothing to do with it. My opinion is it will not pay, it will be a fizzle because half of the best papers in the states have failed with four times as many subscribers as he will be able to raise in the mining region.”

Jack Sumner was feeling left out of a great adventure; even his younger brother Charlie had gone with Ed and Robert to Omaha, although Charlie would stay there for school. Two weeks earlier, Charlie had written home about their arrival in Omaha, how the view from the Missouri River bluff was “the finest view that we ever saw before in our lives.”

Charlie went to work for Byers, riding newspapers to the mountain towns for $30 a week. This must have finally proven too much for Jack Sumner, for now he too headed west. He arranged to meet up with his brother Ed, who was working as a clerk for Byers, for a trapping expedition.

However, it is not exactly known where Jack was on his first western adventure. Yet back in 1861, at the age of 21, Jack Sumner was already living a mountain man’s life, dealing with trapping and Indians. We can guess that Jack Sumner soon found his way to Denver in the wake of a family tragedy. After only a month of hauling newspapers into the mountains, Charlie was stricken with Mountain Fever. A doctor gave him a prescription for quinine, but by mistake he got a bottle of morphine, and Charlie, with his great affection towards Jack, became violently sick and died

Then, at the age of 22, Jack answered the call of duty from his country and enlisted in E Company, 32^nd Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment serving with the unit until the war’s end in 1865. During the Civil War, Jack became a corporal and sharpshooter in the 32nd Iowa Volunteer Infantry, fighting for the Union at Vicksburg and Nashville.

When fighting in the Battle of Pleasant Hill in 1864, both of Sumner's legs were broken and both of his hips were dislocated by an exploding shell, and a shell fragment hit his head. Although he recovered, he was left with recurrent headaches.

Lago relates how Elizabeth Byers managed to get Jack to Colorado …

“William and Elizabeth Byers went back to Iowa at the end of 1865, and Elizabeth and her children stayed until spring. It was then that she took charge of getting Jack out to Colorado. It is a likely sign of Jack’s continuing precarious health that Elizabeth purchased an ambulance and team of horses to carry him across Iowa to Omaha. Elizabeth drew upon Byers’ old connections with the Union Pacific Railroad, which was based in Omaha, and arranged for a special train to carry just their family out to Fort Kearney, the end of the line at that moment.

“At Fort Kearney, they joined a wagon train heavy with supplies bound for Montana, and after a hundred miles they broke off and headed for Denver on their own. There were plenty of Indian troubles on the plains that spring, so Elizabeth was quite aware of the risk they were taking, but this was her seventh trek across the plains, so she also had the confidence of a tough pioneer woman.”

John Wesley Powell met Jack Sumner a year later. At that time, Powell was meeting a man who embodied the toughness and experience of an entire family of important Colorado pioneers.

Yet, unfortunately, shortly before 1880, Jack Sumner signed a note worth a considerable amount of money to a man named “Martin.” Later, Jack would claim that his old trapper friend had forged his name to this note, but the court issued its judgment against Sumner. To make the proverbial long story short, the whole ordeal that followed was a mess in which Minerva Sumner died, and her husband became executor of the estate, and Byers needed Jack's signature to sell their lots, and Jack wondered if Martin could lay claim to the estate, on and on. Finally Byers threatened to sue Jack Sumner to force the court to annul the Catch-22 “on grounds of error or misinterest.”

The whole ordeal must have left bad feelings, for Jack Sumner would not return to Denver and visit his siblings for fifteen years.

"Men On Boats" -- play about the exploration

Jack, The Celebrated Guide

When he was 26, Jack established a trading post consisting of a two-room log cabin overlooking what was then called the “Grand River” and is now the Colorado River. There, he catered to trappers and Ute people.

Jack had served as a guide for Bayard Taylor’s adventure through Colorado that became Taylor's 1867 book, Colorado: A Summer Trip. When Bayard Taylor toured Colorado, he was a veteran travel writer; in the previous twenty years he had visited western Europe, central Africa, California, Egypt, Asia Minor, China, Japan, and Russia. Taylor considered himself a poet and translator.

The next year, Jack would meet then little-known Illinois Professor John Wesley Powell while traveling down the Colorado. Powell enlisted him to participate in the exploration of the Grand Canyon. And Jack served as guide on the expedition.

Powell purchased four modified, round-bottomed Whitehall rowboats for the expedition. The three "freight boats" – the “Maid of the Cañon,” the “Kitty Clyde's Sister,” and the “No Name” – were identical in design: twenty-one feet long and four feet wide, built of sturdy but heavy oak, with a decked-over bulkhead at each end for storage space. The fourth boat, the “Emma Dean,” was smaller and lighter, only sixteen feet long and built of pine. This was Powell's personal boat, and was rigged with a strap that Powell could clutch with his left hand to keep his balance while standing on deck. Each boat would be rowed by two oarsmen, with only Powell and Oramel Howland, the expedition's official mapmaker, excused from rowing duties.

All of the expedition members had considerable wilderness knowledge, and seven were veterans of the Civil War, all of whom had fought for the Union. None of them, however, had any significant whitewater experience on the rivers of the West. Only four of the men were paid for their participation; three at a wage of $25 per man per month for making maps and using scientific instruments, and Billy Hawkins at $1.50 per day for his services as camp cook.

So, in 1869, In 1869, when Sumner was 29 years old, the expedition to the Grand Canyon took place. Getting underway at 1 p.m. on May 24. The expedition party consisted of a total of ten men, traveling along the river in four wooden boats. Sumner kept a daily journal of the historic trip.

On June 8, as the expedition was paddling along the Green River in the Lodore Canyon, an accident occurred. The “No Name” hit a series of rocks in a rapid and was destroyed, losing food supplies and scientific instruments. No one was injured; however. in July, a Nebraska newspaper printed an erroneous story that the entire expedition had been drowned, with Sumner the sole survivor.

From the wreck, only two barometers and a keg of whiskey were recovered. With good reason the men later named this place "Disaster Falls."

Jack Sumner wrote this dramatic account of the near disaster in his journal …

“June 8th. – We had proceeded about half a mile when the scouting boat came to a place where we could see nothing but spray and foam. She was pulled ashore on the east side and the freight boats instantly signaled to land with us. The Maid and Kitty's Sister did so but the No Name being too far out in the current and having shipped a quantity of water in the rapid above, could not be landed, though her crew did their best in trying to pull ashore at the head of the rapid, she struck a rock and swung into the waves sideways and instantly swamped.

“Her crew held to her while she drifted down with the speed of the wind; went perhaps 200 yards, when she struck another rock that stove her bow in; swung around again and drifted toward a small island in the middle of the river; here was a chance for her crew, though a very slim one.

“Goodman made a spring and disappeared ; Howland followed next, and made the best leap I ever saw made by a two-legged animal, and landed in water where he could touch the rocks on the bottom; a few vigorous strokes carried him safe to the island. Seneca was the last rat to leave the sinking ship, and made the leap for life barely in time; had he stayed aboard another second we would have lost as good and true a man as can be found in any place.

“Our attention was now turned to Goodman, whose head we could see bobbing up and down in a way that might have provoked a hearty laugh had he been in a safe place. Howland got a pole that happened to be handy, reached one end to him and hauled him on the isle. Had they drifted thirty feet further down nothing could have saved them, as the river was turned into a perfect hell of waters that nothing could enter and live. The boat drifted into it and was instantly smashed to pieces.

“In half a second there was nothing but a dense foam, with a cloud of spray above it, to mark the spot. The small boat was then unloaded and let down with ropes opposite the wrecked men on the island. The trapper crossed over and brought them safely to shore to the east side. She was then let down about a half a mile further, where we could see part of the stern cuddy of the wrecked boat on a rocky shoal in the middle of the river. Two of the boys proposed to take the small boat over and see how much of the lost notes could be recovered. The Professor looked ruefully across the foaming river, but forbade the attempt. All hands returned to the head of the rapids, feeling glad enough that there were no lives lost, a little sore at the loss of the boat and cargo of 2,000 pounds of provisions and ammunition, all the personal outfit of the crew, three rifles, one revolver, all the maps and most of the notes and many of the instruments.”

Of the recovered whiskey, Powell later wrote …

"… they had taken it on board unknown to me, and I am glad they did, for they think it does them good – as they are drenched every day by the melted snow that runs down this river from the summit of the Rocky Mountains – and that is a positive good itself."

Here are a few memorable entries from Jack Sumner's journal …

“June 5th. — This morning we were all awakened by the wild birds singing in the old tree above our heads. The sweet songs of birds, the fragrant odor of wild roses, the camp was in Little Hole which is cut by Little Davenport Creek … Low, sweet rippling of the ever murmuring river at sunrise in the wilderness, made everything as lovely as a poet's dream. I was just wandering into paradise; could see the dim shadow of the dark-eyed houris, when I was startled by the cry, 'Roll out; bulls in the corral; chain up the gaps' – our usual call to breakfast. The hour is vanished, and I rolled out to fried fish and hot coffee. The Professor and Dunn climbed the hill south of camp, two miles from the river – height, 2200 feet; Howland spent the day dressing up his maps; Bradley, Seneca and Hall crossed to eastside and measured off a geological section. The remainder of the party spent the day as best suited them. Measured the old tree; circumference, 5 feet from the ground, 23/ 2 feet.”

“June 27th. — Off again at seven, down a river that cannot be surpassed for wild beauty of scenery, sweeping in great curves through magnificent groves of cottonwood. It has an average width of two hundred yards and depth enough to float a New Orleans packet. Our easy stroke of eight miles an hour conveys us just fast enough to enjoy the scenery, as the view changes with kaleidoscopic rapidity. Made sixty three miles today, and camped on the west side, at the mouth of a small, dirty creek. Killed eight wild geese on the way ...

"'Ashley, 1825' – mark scratched evidently by some trapper's knife; all aboard, and off we go down the river; beautiful river, that increases its speed as we leave the fall, till it gets a perfect rapid all the way, but clear of sunken rocks; so we run through the waves at express speed; made seventeen miles through Red Stone canyon in less than an hour running time, the boats bounding through the waves like a school of porpoise. The Emma being very light is tossed about in a way that threatens to shake her to pieces, and is nearly as hard to ride as a Mexican pony. We plunge along singing, yelling, like drunken sailors, all feeling that such rides do not come every day. It was like sparking a black-eyed girl — just dangerous enough to be exciting.”

Frank Goodman left the expedition on July 6 during the resupply at the Uinta River Indian Agency, claiming he’d had more than enough adventure. He walked away and lived for some years with the Paiutes of eastern Utah.

On August 28, another mishap occurred, that would haunt Sumner for the rest of his life. As the rapids were becoming increasingly difficult to navigate and food rations were running out, Dunn and the brothers, Oramel and Seneca Howland, decided to leave the expedition, climb the canyon, and walk to a Mormon settlement.

Powell writes of the decision in his journal …

“August 28 – At last daylight comes, we have breakfast, without a word being said about the future. The meal is as solemn as a funeral. After breakfast I ask the three men if they still think it best to leave us. The elder Howland thinks it is, and Dunn agrees with him. The younger Howland tries to persuade them to go with the party, failing in which, he decides to go on with his brother.”

They hiked out of the canyon and historians still dispute their fate. Some claim they were never seen again. It is often proposed that they were killed by local Shivwits Indians in a case of mistaken identity. Another story suggests that they were executed by Mormons who mistook them for "spies" and hostile Federal agents. Jack Sumner was deeply upset that he had not dissuaded them from leaving the expedition and striking out on their own.

Of the ten men that started out from Green River Station, six completed the entire journey. On August 30, Powell and the five others reached safety at the Mormon settlement of St. Thomas near the mouth of the Virgin River.

After the Expedition

Jack Sumner had trouble getting enough money to travel home to settle in Grand Junction, Colorado. After arriving, he supported himself as a trapper and prospector, but accumulated debts that eventually made it difficult for him and his siblings to inherit the family farm.

Jack would return to Iowa in 1870 and in 1873 me married Alcinda Jane Norris. They would return to the Colorado frontier and remain on the frontier until the American frontier no longer excited. His wife divorced him in 1884 because of his heavy drinking, only to remarry him eighteen months later.

Most of Jack’s life after the running the Canyon was spent on the rivers and in the hills looking for gold and other minerals. In 1890, Jack and his partner found gold in Utah’s Henry Mountains.

Jack Sumner became a lost man in the modern world of technological and legal complexities. Sumner was forgotten, while John Wesley Powell, who became a Washington bureaucrat, remained a hero of the frontier myth. Sumner felt that a promise to him had been broken, and he attached that sense of betrayal wholly upon Powell.

Sumner and Powell became estranged. Powell rapidly became famous and celebrated, while Sumner found himself with little money or recognition. Sumner resented what he saw as insufficient compensation and credit for the success of the trip, and he believed that Powell exaggerated his own contributions to the expedition while failing to publicly acknowledge Sumner and other members of the crew. Sumner continued to agonize over the killing of the three men from the expedition.

When Powell died in 1902, Sumner sent a letter to The Denver Post, criticizing what he felt were mistakes made by Powell during the trip and Powell's dishonesty in subsequent accounts of what happened. Wallace Stegner has written that many of the accusations in the letter were inaccurate.

In May 1902, Sumner traveled back to the Grand Canyon, along the Green River. He was in a terrible state of despondency. American historian and author, John Ross, attributes Sumner's state to his guilt over the deaths of the three men, while Don Lago attributes it primarily to his unhappiness about his overshadowing by Powell. Hanson later wrote Sumner was experiencing “a time of supposed temporay insanity.”

Sumner survived his depression, but died broke and alone five years later. John “Jack” Colton Sumner died on July 5, 1907, in Vernal, Uintah County, Utah. He is buried next to his mother, father, younger brother, and his youngest sister in the Sumner family plot at Riverside Cemetery in Denver, Colorado.

Sources

AJames M. Alton. (1994). John Wesley Powell. Boise State University.

Jacklyn Backhaus. “Men on Boats.” Play.

“The Captain Jack Project.” The Robert Lucas Foundation. Established Iowa City, Iowa. 2014.

Edward Dolnick. (2002).Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon. United States of America: Harper Perennial.

Willam Culp Darrah; Chamberlin, Ralph V.; Kelly, Charles (2009).The Exploration of the Colorado River in 1869 and 1871–1872 (Summary). University of Utah Press.

Verne Huser, ed. (2005). "The Lost Journal of John Colton Sumner". River Reflections: A Collection of River Writings. University of New Mexico Press.

Don Lago. (2004). "The Westering Star of Jack Sumner" (PDF). The Ol' Pioneer: The Quarterly Magazine of the Grand Canyon Historical Society. 15 (2).

Don Lago. (2017). The Madness of Jack Sumner. The Powell Expedition: New Discoveries About John Wesley Powell's 1869 River Journey. University of Nevada Press. pp. 190–95.

Tom Noel. “Throughout Colorado’s history, women have had starring roles.” Special to the Denver Post. April 19, 2012.

Mary C. Rabbitt. (1978). “John Wesley Powell's Exploration of the Colorado River". United States Geological Survey.

John F. Ross. (2018). The Promise of the Grand Canyon: John Wesley Powell's Perilous Journey and his Vision for the American West. Penguin-Viking.

Bob Silbernagel. (2018). "John Wesley Powell Ally Jack Sumner Became a Bitter Critic (1869–1905)". Historic Adventures on the Colorado Plateau. The History Press.

Mary Ellen Snodgrass. Frontier Women and Their Art: A Chronological Encyclopedia. 2018.

McKenna C. Solomon. “Advance Guard of Civilization” Colorado Heritage: The Magazine of History of Colorado. November / December 2015.

Wallace Stegner. (2004). "Jack Sumner and John Wesley Powell". In Grinstead, Steve; Fogelberg, Ben. Western Voices: 125 Years of Colorado Writing. Colorado Historical Society, Fulcrum Publishing. 

Gary James Sumner. From Fear to Freedom. 2014.