A folk painting on display in the History Center’s Pittsburgh: A Tradition of Innovation exhibit captures one of Pittsburgh’s most important early innovations.
One can find little but a brief mention in Portsmouth, Ohio history of a monumental event in 1811: "the first steamboat New Orleans travels past town.”
(Paul T. Hellmann. Historical Gazetteer of the United States. 2004.)
Henry Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio in Two Volumes. Vol. II. (1902) tells us that Alexander Parker surveyed the town of Alexandria in1799. The land that he surveyed originally belonged to his brother, Thomas Parker. Alexander Parker named the community after himself.
Alexandria served as the original county seat of Scioto County, but it held this distinction for only a few years until Henry Massie established Portsmouth, Ohio in 1803. Massie laid out Portsmouth on the east bank of the Scioto River. The land here was significantly higher than Alexandria and was not prone to flooding.
Due to the threat of flooding, by 1803, many Alexandria residents had already relocated to the east bank of the Scioto River, where they had established the small community of Boneyfiddle. Portsmouth very quickly surrounded Boneyfiddle and incorporated the older community. With Portsmouth's founding, residents of Alexandria abandoned this community, and Alexandria ceased to exist.
To those who witnessed the vessel pass, the first steamboat on the Ohio must have seemed more like a dream than a reality. I could find no record of a local stop. I can only imagine New Orleans heading toward the Mississippi on a very different looking river of 1811. The lasting impact of the event cannot be overstated. No wonder the brief description of the event is included in Portsmouth history.
At that time, navigating the river was a dangerous business undertaken by rugged and profane men who faced Indian attacks, pirates, navigational hazards, and unrelenting daily toil. But, the commercial ventures of keelboats were often quite profitable. A keelboat owner reported in 1817 that the cost of operating a 36-ton boat from New Orleans to Louisville was $1,750 and provided a profit of $1,490 for each trip on a total capital investment of less than $2,000. Consider the dawn of steamboats and their profitable economic trade.
(Leland R. Johnson. Falls City Engineers:A History of the Louisville District. Corps of Engineers. United States Army. Louisville, Corps of Engineers. 1975.)
THE NEW ORLEANS
Steaming Upstream by Moonlight, 1811
New Orleans
The steamboat New Orleans' 1811-1812 trip down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from Pittsburgh to New Orleans marked a turning point in the transportation revolution. After the New Orleans showed that it could be done, steamboats proliferated on the Ohio and the Mississippi and their tributaries.
The vessel was the first steamboat on the western rivers. Thus, she represented the introduction of steam technology to the western frontier. After Lewis and Clark returned to St. Louis in 1806, the launching of the New Orleans could be said to have been the next major historic event in the development of the West. Within a decade, steamboats would link the nation’s interior like nothing had before.
And, it was steamboat traffic that helped create a national economy, opening markets for farm goods and drawing people and commerce to cities along the rivers.
J.H.B. Latrobe's “The First Steamboat Voyage On the Western Waters” (1871) puts the event in proper historical perspective …
“Prior to the introduction of steamboats on the Western waters, the means of transportation thereon consisted of keel boats, barges and flat boats. Keel boats and barges ascended, as well as descended, the stream. The flat boat was an unwieldly box, and was broken up, for the lumber it contained, on its arrival at the place of destination.
“The keel boat was long and slender, sharp fore and aft, with a narrow gangway just within the gunwale, for the boatmen as they poled or warped up the stream, when not aided by the eddies that made their oars available. When the keel boat was covered with a low house, lengthwise, between the gangways, it was dignified with the name of 'barge.'
“The only claim of the flatboat, or 'broad horn,' to rank as a vessel was due to the fact that it floated upon water and was used as a vehicle for transportation. Keel boats, barges, and flat boats had prodigious steering oars, and oars of the same dimensions were hung on fixed pivots on the sides of the last named, by which the shapeless and cumbrous contrivance was, in some sort, managed. Ignorant of anything better, the people of the West were satisfied with these appliances of trade in 1810.”
(J.H.B. Latrobe. “The First Steamboat Voyage On the Western Waters.” Fund Publication, No. 6. Maryland Historical Society. October 1871.)
With recent steamboat success between New York and Albany, the dream of building a boat to ply the currents and falls of the Ohio, then down the Mississippi was ready to be realized. Nicholas Roosevelt (1767-1854) entered into an agreement with Robert Fulton, Robert Livingston, and John Stevens to build a steamboat of Fulton’s basic design but using Roosevelt’s and Morey’s side paddle wheels.
These men were powerful and influential people of the time. Their ambition, money, influence and inventive genius all came together – Livingston was a highly connected lawyer and inventor; Roosevelt was an inventor and a major investor in Upstate New York land; and Stevens was a lawyer, engineer, and inventor who constructed the first U.S. steam locomotive, first steam-powered ferry, and first U.S. commercial ferry service from his estate in Hoboken.
Historical Note:
Nicholas Roosevelt was to have a couple of distant relatives who, in another century, became presidents of the U.S. Nicholas was a distant cousin of both Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Roosevelt family proudly maintained that Nicholas was the true inventor of the steamboat. In actuality, there were many inventors working simultaneously to develop steamboat designs and methods of operation, many of them moderately successful. Fulton, however, became the first to experience complete success and claimed the subsequent patent for its design in 1809.
Bright, artistic, assertive, and fearless, Nicholas' wife, Lydia Latrobe, first met Nicholas who was her father’s business associate and friend, when she was nine years old and he was 34. When she was 13 years old, she and Nicholas became engaged, over her father’s objections. Lydia married Nicholas Roosevelt in 1809, when she was 17 and he was 42.
Of course, river scholars had warned Nicholas Roosevelt that steam-power would never work on the Ohio and Mississippi river runs. However with financing from Robert Livingston and design from Robert Fulton, the New Orleans was competed in Pittsburgh in September of 1811 for a cost of $38,000. Nicholas Roosevelt was in charge of the vessel.
The boat was a side-wheeler 120 feet in length, 20 foot beam and 400 tons load burden. It had twelve feet depth of hull but drew only four feet of water. Built more like a sea-going boat than what later evolved into the ‘western style, the New Orleans had masts, provisions for sails, a bowsprit and figurehead. It had a copper low-pressure boiler that primarily burned wood. The engine had a 34" diameter piston. There was a cabin up front for the crew and men-folk and one aft for the maids and the Roosevelts.
Historical Note:
It is not to be supposed that this was Roosevelt’s first trip down river. Indeed, between June and December,1809 he made the same journey in a flatboat with his then new wife, Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt. This was not a leisurely drift down stream, but saw Roosevelt rowing off in a skiff from his flatboat to visit more remote parts of the river to determine if the depth, currents and other features of the river might be suitable to the passage and provisioning and commercial use of a steamer.
Indeed, he even found deposits of coal on the banks in Illinois which were secured to his use so that he might avail himself of them to fuel the steamer that he intended to build. This was, of course, a supplement to the usual fuel, wood. Wood was available in seemingly limitless supply ashore, but at no little delay and expense of labor to render it suitable for boiler fuel. Indeed, in later years as steamers proliferated on the river, cutting and providing wood to the steamers became a major industry.
(Thomas D. Schiffer. “First Steamboat to Descend the Ohio River in 1811.” Originally prepared for the Boone County Public Library. Boone County Kentucky. Reprinted with permission from Bridget Striker. www.CincinnatiTripleSteam.org. January, 2012.)
The Maiden Voyage
After a successful trial trip around Pittsburgh on October 15, 1811, New Orleans finally steamed for New Orleans on October 20. Nicholas Roosevelt took aboard his new steamer his eight-months pregnant wife Lydia; two maids; Andrew Jack, pilot; Nicholas Baker, engineer; six Kentuckian deckhands; a cook; and a Newfoundland dog “of some size” but no passengers per se.
(Charles W. Dahlinger. "A Critical Account of the Beginning of Steamboat Navigation on the Western Rivers of the United States. Pittsburg Legal Journal 59: October 21, 1911.)
Historical Note:
As the New Orleans approached completion, and when it came to be known that Mrs. Roosevelt intended to accompany her husband on the voyage, the numerous friends she had made in Pittsburg united in endeavoring to dissuade her from what they regarded as utter folly, if not absolute madness.
Her husband was appealed to. The criticisms that had been freely applied to the boat by the crowds of visitors to the shipyard, were now transferred to the conduct of the builder. He was told that he had no right to peril his wife’s life, however reckless be might be of his own. Mrs. Roosevelt, too, expected before long to become a mother; and “this was held to enhance the offense which the good people of Pittsburg fancied he was committing.” But the wife believed in her husband; and the New Orleans, after a short experimental trip up the Monongahela, commenced her voyage.
(J.H.B. Latrobe. “The First Steamboat Voyage On the Western Waters.” Fund Publication, No. 6. Maryland Historical Society. October 1871.)
Lydia not only decided to go with Nicholas on his trip, she designed and furnished the barge that they would use to make the trip.
Lydia’s father,
Benjamin Latrobe, wasn’t exactly conventional. He was well known
for his work on the United States Capitol building and his designs
for the porticos on the White House. His influence on Washington D.C.
also includes working as the chief surveyor for the Washington Canal.
He designed the main gate to the Washington Navy yard and consulted
on the building of the Washington Bridge across the Potomac River.
Drawing on array of skills that she had learned from her
father, Lydia included a bedroom on the barge as well as a dining
room, pantry, a room for the crew in front, and a fireplace for
cooking. She also provided a flat area for sporting seats and an
awning for sultry days on the Mississippi River.
(Kathy Warnes. “Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt and the First Mississippi River Steamboat.” historybecauseitshere.weebly.com.)
This was a voyage to display the advantages of the new concept of steam and to deliver the boat to its chosen venue of operation; New Orleans to Natchez. The journey was to be an epic adventure of 2000 miles.
(Thomas D. Schiffer. “First Steamboat to Descend the Ohio River in 1811.” Originally prepared for the Boone County Public Library. Boone County Kentucky. Reprinted with permission from Bridget Striker. www.CincinnatiTripleSteam.org. January, 2012.)
During its first stop, at Wheeling, then on Virginia's northwestern point, Roosevelt welcomed crowds aboard the ship, charging them a twenty-five-cent fee for the opportunity and tour.
On October 27, when the boat passed Cincinnati, Ohio, the city's residents were disappointed it did not stop and thought they'd never see New Orleans again. The Western Spy reported: “From the rapidity with which she passed this place it is supposed she went at the rate of 12 or 14 miles an hour.”
Liberty Hall reported: “Arrived at this place (Louisville) on the 28th. Mr. Roosevelt’s steam-boat New Orleans – we are informed she is intended as a packet boat between Natchez and New Orleans; her burthen is 405 tons, and can accommodate from 60 to 80 cabin and steerage passengers, in a style not inferior to any packet in the Union. She arrived at this place in 64 hours sailing from Pittsburg. Frequent experiments of her performance have been made against the current since her arrival; in the presence of a number of respectable gentlemen, who have ascertained with certainty she runs thirteen miles in two hours and a half..”
Historical Note:
Louisville presented the New Orleans with its first challenge. There, they found the water level too low for the vessel to navigate through the notorious Falls of the Ohio. This series of ridges, caused by the Ohio River dropping 26 feet over a rise in the limestone bedrock, was the most serious obstacle in the first stage of the trip. There was nothing to do but wait. The New Orleans stayed put through November. This proved just a well, since Lydia gave birth to the couple’s second child, Henry, while they were waiting in Louisville. As they say, timing is everything.
Great Comet
At Louisville, New Orleans arrived in the middle of the night; and, as she let off her steam pressure, the sound awakens the sleeping residents of the small frontier town. For the past few evenings, the residents had observed a comet in the sky. Before the sleeping town could find their way out of their homes many thought for sure the comet had fallen from the sky and landed in the river.
All along the boat’s trip, eyewitness accounts recorded that some people reacted to it with fear. Native American tribes – already provoked by U.S. expansion into Indian Territory and the Battle of Tippecanoe in November – were sometimes openly hostile.
The boat’s journey coincided with the appearance of the Great Comet of 1811 over North America, for some, one more sign that the whole endeavor foreshadowed disaster.
(Leslie Przybylek.”The Incredible Journey of the Steamboat New Orleans.” Heinz Historical Center. October 18, 2017.)
The Great Comet of 1811 was the brightest comet with the longest duration of brightness on record (260 days) until Comet Hale-Bopp shattered that record in 1997.
It is referred to as “Napoleon’s Comet” because of the Napoleonic Wars and the impending War of 1812, in which the United States was allied with France, Germany and Austria against Britain, Spain, Portugal, and Russia. The wars are the backdrop for the novel War and Peace by Tolstoy.
Comets have often been looked upon as harbingers of disaster. This one was stunningly beautiful and bright. Observers spoke of the “twilight” it shed over the forests. The shocks also “contributed greatly to increase the interest on the subject of religion” was how the evangelist James Finley modestly put it. Kentucky had been the scene of astonishing outbursts of religious enthusiasm for ten years, but on the whole the Devil had held up his end. “For the great day of His wrath is come,” Finley declared, “and who shall be able to stand?”
(James Penick Jr. “… I Will Stamp On The Ground With My Foot And Shake Down Every House …” American Heritage. Volume 27. December 1975.)
The Shawnee leader Tecumseh, who was born in the year of the Comet of 1769 and was named accordingly, invoked the Comet of 1811 as he built a confederacy of tribes which allied with the British in the War of 1812. Tecumseh claimed the appearance of the comet as a favorable omen during his mostly unsuccessful efforts that year to bring southern tribes into his pan-Native American alliance.
James Mooney, in his book The Ghost-Dance Religion, recounts the story of Tecumseh’s prediction, made in a speech to the Creeks at the town of Tukabachi, on the Tallapoosa River, near the present site of Montgomery, Alabama:
“Your blood is white. You have taken my talk, and the sticks, and the wampum, and the hatchet, but you do not mean to light. I know the reason. You do not believe the Great Spirit has sent me. You shall know. I leave Tuckhabatchee directly, and shall go straight to Detroit. When I arrive there, I will stamp on the ground with my foot and shake down every house in Tuckhabatchee.”
(James Mooney. The Ghost-Dance Religion. 2011.)
Falls at Louisville
Since the Falls of the Ohio were too shallow to allow passage at the moment, the travelers filled the waiting time by returning to Cincinnati and back … demonstrating conclusively that they could stem the river’s current over some distance … in this case about 130 miles.
Some weeks later after rain swelled the river they were able to pass over the falls (there was a drop of 23 feet in six miles at the falls; the falls were more a series of rapids than anything like Niagra).
Earthquakes
Then, as the New Orleans made its way down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, she found herself in the middle of one of the greatest earthquakes in American history, the New Madrid earthquake of 1811-12 (between Dec. 16, 1811 and Feb. 7, 1812, a series of earthquakes struck along the New Madrid fault line near the Mississippi River in Missouri and Arkansas). The Native Americans felt that the earthquake was caused by the appearance of the comet and this loud hissing steamboat, they called the "fire canoe.”
The first shock that was observed was felt on board the New Orleans while she lay at anchor after passing the Falls [Louisville, Ky.]. The effect was described “as though the vessel had been in motion and had suddenly grounded.” The cable shook and trembled, and many on board experienced for the moment a nausea resembling sea sickness. The shocks succeeded each other during the night.
The Roosevelts stopped at Henderson, Kentucky, where they visited friends, John (the painter) and Lucy Audubon. The farther they went down river the worse the earthquake conditions got; banks caving in, earth splitting open and spewing mud, sulfurous vapor and sand, islands disappearing and being formed.
So great was the confusion due to the caving of banks and destruction of landmarks that Captain Jack declared that he was lost in the middle of the river! He found roots and stumps where deep water had been. The river had broken through areas where forests once stood.
(Thomas D. Schiffer. “First Steamboat to Descend the Ohio River in 1811.” Originally prepared for the Boone County Public Library. Boone County Kentucky. Reprinted with permission from Bridget Striker. www.CincinnatiTripleSteam.org. January, 2012.)
With magnitudes ranging from 7.5 to 8.0, these quakes remain the strongest earthquakes ever to hit the eastern U.S. The impact was felt as far away as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
The Mississippi temporarily ran backwards. Two waterfalls briefly emerged as the river’s bed shifted to accommodate the tremors. Whole islands disappeared while new ones were created. Channels were blocked by debris. Existing navigational charts became meaningless. Boats traversing the area braved miles of utterly uncharted waters.
Miraculously, the New Orleans made it through the earthquake zone. Avoiding the banks, where trees continued to fall into the river, the boat somehow navigated through the disappearing islands, roiling waters, and unstable riverbed to reach its destination during the worst period of seismic activity the region has ever experienced.
(Leslie Przybylek.”The Incredible Journey of the Steamboat New Orleans.” Heinz Historical Center. October 18, 2017.)
James Penick Jr. of American Heritage reported …
“Eventually the steamboat appeared off New Madrid, where “terror stricken people … begged to be taken on board, while others dreading the steamboat, even more than the earthquake, hid themselves as she approached. To receive the former was impossible. The would be refugees had no homes to go to; and ample as was the supply of provisions … it would have been altogether insufficient for any large increase of passengers. … Painful as it was, there was no choice but to turn a deaf ear to the cries of the terrified inhabitants of the doomed town.”
(James Penick Jr. “… I Will Stamp On The Ground With My Foot And Shake Down Every House …” American Heritage. Volume 27. December 1975.)
Historical Note:
The following is from a letter found in a book called Lorenzo Dow's Journal," published by Joshua Martin, printed by John B. Wolff, 1849, on pages 344 - 346. This was written by Eliza Bryan, a resident of New Madrid, MO.
“On the 16th of December, 1811, about two o'clock, A.M., we were visited by a violent shock of an earthquake, accompanied by a very awful noise resembling loud but distant thunder, but more hoarse and vibrating, which was followed in a few minutes by the complete saturation of the atmosphere, with sulphurious vapor, causing total darkness. The screams of the affrighted inhabitants running to and fro, not knowing where to go, or what to do - the cries of the fowls and beasts of every species - the cracking of trees falling, and the roaring of the Mississippi – the current of which was retrograde for a few minutes, owing as is supposed, to an irruption in its bed – formed a scene truly horrible.
“From that time until about sunrise, a number of lighter shocks occurred; at which time one still more violent than the first took place, with the same accompaniments as the first, and the terror which had been excited in everyone, and indeed in all animal nature, was now, if possible doubled. The inhabitants fled in every direction to the country, supposing (if it can be admitted that their minds can be exercised at all) that there was less danger at a distance from, than near to the river. In one person, a female, the alarm was so great that she fainted, and could not be recovered …
“At first the Mississippi seemed to recede from its banks, and its waters gathering up like a mountain, leaving for the moment many boats, which were here on their way to New Orleans, on bare sand, in which time the poor sailors made their escape from them. It then rising fifteen to twenty feet perpendicularly, and expanding, as it were, at the same moment, the banks were overflowed with the retrogade current, rapid as a torrent - the boats which before had been left on the sand were now torn from their moorings, and suddenly driven up a little creek, at the mouth of which they laid, to the distance in some instances, of nearly a quarter of a mile.
“The river falling immediately, as rapid as it had risen, receded in its banks again with such violence, that it took with it whole groves of young cotton-wood trees, which ledged its borders. They were broken off which such regularity, in some instances, that persons who had not witnessed the fact, would be difficultly persuaded, that is has not been the work of art. A great many fish were left on the banks, being unable to keep pace with the water. The river was literally covered with the wrecks of boats, and 'tis said that one was wrecked in which there was a lady and six children, all of whom were lost.”
With the comet still visible when the earthquakes began, the doomsayers had considerable clout. “Earthquake Christians,” as they came to be called, suddenly sought to get right with God, and membership in the local Methodist and Baptist churches soared. According to historian David W. Fletcher, “Preachers attested significant numbers of baptisms and conversions, since sinners wanted to avoid further outpourings of God’s wrath.” As one minister recalled, “It was a time of great terror for sinners.”
(Ron Soodalter. “The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812.” Missouri History. April 20, 2020.)
Ever-present Snags
The earthquakes also intensified a danger always present on the river: snags – sunken trees whose twisted roots and branches could impale a boat and easily take it to a watery grave. The activity from the New Madrid fault caused the situation to be far worse.
One writer sent a letter (published in the Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette on Feb. 18, 1812) to Zadok Cramer and the men who published the Navigator river guide. He described the situation: “the river burst and shook up hundreds of trees from the bottom . . . all turned roots upward and standing up stream in the best channel and swiftest water, and nothing but the greatest exertions of the boatmen can save them from destruction in passing those places.”
(Leslie Przybylek.”The Incredible Journey of the Steamboat New Orleans.” Heinz Historical Center. October 18, 2017.)
Drums Of War
We have received, in a letter from Fort Wayne, dated September 6, the following important intelligence. The National Intelligencer says – In the year 1810, a Miami chief having received at Fort Malden his annual donation of goods, was thus addressed by Ellicott, the British Agent.
My son, keep your eyes fixed on me - - my tomahawk is up: be you ready - - but do not strike until I give you the “signal.”
So some of these Indians appear to have gone to Malden to receive the British signal, and appear anxious to "strike."
As if comets and earthquakes weren't enough for Nicholas Roosevelt to contend with, there had been an alarming increase in Indian hostilities. A report read …
“In consequence of supposed hostilities being offered to the United States by the celebrated Shawanoe [Shawnee] chief, Tecumseh, and that the Miami tribe of Indians were adherents of the prophet [Tenskwatawa]: his excellency William H. Harrison dispatched a messenger, about the 21st of August, with a speech to be delivered to the Miami tribe of Indians at this place.
“On the 3d of September, nearly the whole of the Miami tribe of Indians amounting in number to 350, assembled at Fort Wayne, for the purpose of answering to certain interrogatories made by Governor Harrison to the Shawanoe Prophet.”
(“Miami Speeches At Ft. Wayne. September 03, 1811.” history.hanover.edu.)
The Indians met at the Public Store, accompanied by the public officers and citizens of the place, where a very lengthy and friendly speech from Gov. Harrison was read to them by John Shaw, Assistant Indian Agent, and delivered in their own language by capt. William Wells.
Although Tecumseh continually proposed peace and refrained from attacking white settlements, Harrison’s spies reported that Tecumseh’s followers were preparing for war.
In November 1811, Harrison’s army marched to Prophetstown, the headquarters of the Confederacy. Although native warriors launched a surprise attack as Harrison’s troops approached, the soldiers fought back successfully, and then burned the town.
When Tecumseh returned, he concluded that any chance for peace with the white settlers had vanished. With his remaining followers, he set out for Upper Canada. He planned to meet the British officers and negotiate an alliance against the Americans. By continuing to expand onto their lands, repeatedly revising treaty boundaries, and finally by attacking them outright, white Americans had driven the native confederacy to ally with the British.
1811 New Orleans Replica Steamboat at Wheeling in 1911
Following the trip, Roosevelt and his family returned to New York, where he took up other entrepreneurial ventures and discontinued his partnership with Fulton and Livingston. Soon, New Orleans was making regular runs between New Orleans and Natchez.
However …
If you think that all was roses as the Roosevelts and New Orleans got to that city, you are wrong. The boat did successfully enter the trade between New Orleans and Natchez as was their original plan. However, other would-be steamboat men soon built steamers near Pittsburgh and attempted to enter the trade.
But,through the good offices of Robert Livingston and his brother Edward in New Orleans, an exclusive monopoly was granted to the owners of New Orleans. Issuing a monopoly was an early way of giving the developers of new inventions a reward for their enterprise. With a monopoly in effect, there would be no competition at all. This might be in addition to, or instead of, a patent which is the method used today.
The monopoly stirred up a good deal of resentment among the shippers who did not like domination of western trade by eastern interests...which the vessel's owners represented.
Henry Shreve, inventor and steamboat captain, did not like the format of the New Orleans and designed his own boat, Washington, built some six years after the New Orleans with his own modifications. His modifications were said to set the basic design criterion for western river boats thereafter.
Shreve's boat was built in
Brownsville on the banks of the Monongahela River. His design placed
the engines on to the main deck and lowered the draft of the hull
by
making the hull wide, with flat bottom designed to navigate the
shallow western rivers. He also mounted the engines horizontally with
a separate engine and boiler for each wheel. This set the tone for
new steamboat design.
Shreve was appointed Superintendent of Western River Improvements in 1826 and was instrumental in breaking the Fulton-Livingston monopoly on steamboat traffic on the lower Mississippi.
(Thomas D. Schiffer. “First Steamboat to Descend the Ohio
River in 1811.” Originally prepared for the Boone County Public
Library. Boone County Kentucky. Reprinted with permission from
Bridget Striker. www.CincinnatiTripleSteam.org.
January, 2012.)
And, it was the river that claimed the New Orleans. She hit a snag, which punctured the hull, and she sank near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 14, 1814, two years after that first historic trip, setting the pattern for the average lifespan of a steamboat of about three years.
Fulton's steamboat company moved the engine and machinery to a new hull, which they also named New Orleans, and it continued on the Natchez steamboat trade.
Roosevelt retired to Skaneateles, New York, and died 39 years later in 1854, at the age of 87.
“The comet appeared in early September in the New Madrid area, and became more brilliant with each passing day. By December, the comet was as big as the moon, and the tail covered half the sky. And to add to the creep-factor, the comet’s tail was two-pronged – strangely reminiscent of the devil.”
(Lee Sandlin. Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild. 2011.)
"LOU HOBBS"LIVING ON THE NEW MADRID FAULT LINE
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