Archive for November, 2009

A Letter from a Brother

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Like the colorful character, Auberon, in “The Great Steamboat Race” by John Brunner, William Albert Calhoon was suffering from “the consumption” in the last days of his life.   In a letter written from a hospital bed in Cairo, IL, William Albert Calhoon described his condition to his sister Parthenia Parr Calhoon.  The letter was dated 5 Jul 1889.    William Albert had been treated in St Louis for five weeks without relief.  On his way home to Georgetown, PA, he was forced to stop in Cairo, IL where again he was hospitalized.  His description of the hospital and his fellow patients reveals much more about him than the hospital.  William Albert Calhoon did return to Georgetown, PA where he died less than four months later on 25 Oct 1889.  He was 37 years of age. 

Ltr Cherokee Packet Co Envelop 7 Jul 1889 (Anna L and John F Nash Collection)

Ltr Cherokee Packet Co Envelop 7 Jul 1889 (Anna L and John F Nash Collection)

Ltr on Cherokee Packet Co dated 5 Jul 1889 (Anna L and John F Nash Collection)

Ltr on Cherokee Packet Co dated 5 Jul 1889 (Anna L and John F Nash Collection)Cherokee Packet Co Letterhead by William A Calhoon Jul1889 (Anna L and John F Nash Collection)

Cherokee Packet Co Letterhead by William A Calhoon Jul1889 (Anna L and John F Nash Collection)

Cherokee Packet Co Letterhead by William A Calhoon Jul1889 (Anna L and John F Nash Collection)

 

Deathe Notofication for William Albert Calhoon 25 Oct 1889 (Anna L and John F Nash Collection)

Deathe Notofication for William Albert Calhoon 25 Oct 1889 (Anna L and John F Nash Collection)

Georgetown Cemetery List

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

A page entitled Georgetown Cemetery File, listing the names of the people buried in Georgetown Cemetery, has been loaded as an Excel 2003 spreadsheet.  This file can be downloaded for local artful analysis. 

 

Georgetown Cemetery File 22 Nov 2009

Georgetown Cemetery File 22 Nov 2009

The total number of names is 883 with 46 veterans identified with flags or GAR markers.  The Strain mausoleum was locked according to a note in the document so its contents are not included. The date of the last burial listed was 1973, the earliest was 1795.  I know neither when the document was compiled nor who compiled it.  As I learn more about the mausoleum and the cemetery activeness, I will post updates.

 

The Excel format supports search and sort operations which provide insight into the data.  The columns with a blue font I added; the source data is in black.

Indian Rock RPPCs

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

I published a page named Indian Rocks.  It contains all my photographs of the Indian petroglyphs at Smith’s Ferry, PA.  The images are real photo postcards (RPPCs) dated 1908.  Each image on the page has a hyperlink to the image so that you can zoom in or out on the image. 

To photograph the petroglyphs, white chalk was placed into the carved depressions and the photos were often taken from ladders.

I have also been adding hyperlinks to images on all the published pages, but have not yet completed the steamer biographies.

Georgetown Cemetery

Monday, November 9th, 2009

I found a document listing the names of the people buried in the Georgetown Cemetery.   Names and dates will be entered into an MS Office Excel 2003 spreadsheet so that the data can be searched and sorted.  The earliest burial date listed was 1795.  On 24 Apr 1968 the Georgetown Cemetery Maintenance Association was chartered according to the document.  The document is 30 pages.  It is unsigned.

Oddly the first reported burial in the Georgetown Cemetery was James Clark.  He was reported to have been the last white man killed by Indians in Beaver County. In 1792 he was shot in what would later become Smith’s Ferry.  That burial predates the establishment of the cemetery according to the found document.

For thoses of you who dig graveyards (sorry about that) Georgetown Cemetery is the place to go to research the names of Georgetown people since the late 1790′s.

A Civil War Letter

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

This letter, published in the S&D Reflector in Dec 1969, was written by the mayor of Pittsburgh to recognize six steamboat captains and their vessels for their service to the country. 

 

                                 Pittsburgh, PA,
                                 Feb 19th, 1862

I desire that the captains of the following
steamers be placed on record for the patriotic
and liberal (volunteering) of their services
and boats, without renumeration, to proceed
immediately to the Cumberland River to relieve
the sick and wounded soldiers:  Rocket, Capt
Wolf;
Clara Poe, Capt Poe, Horizon, Capt
Stockdale;
Emma, Capt Maratta; Westmorland,
Capt Evans; Sir William Wallace, Capt Hugh
Campbell.

                                B. C. Sawyer, Jr., Mayor.

 

 

My search for the original letter has failed to date.  To whom the letter was addressed is unknown.  What words were replaced?  The subject of the paragraph in the S&D Reflector was salaries of the captains of the steamers during the war.  Apparently, boats and crews who worked for no salary were not uncommon especially when pressed to service.

 

The letter was also interesting from the steamer point of view.  Three of the applauded boats were destroyed during the war.  While running at night without lights, the Horizon collided with the Moderator near Vicksburg on 1 May 1863.  In Jan 1865, the Emma collided with the Louisville ferry.  Both vessels were disabled and both floated helplessly over the falls.  A dramatic ending for the Emma.   The Clara Poe, bound for Nashville with supplies, was burned by rebels on 17 Apr 1865 along the Cumberland River.  That date was curious.  Hostilities in the west continued for about thirty days after Appomattox.   

All six boats were built and manned from the Pittsburgh region.  The Clara Poe and the Horizon were owned and operated by my guys from Georgetown, PA

 

Another description of the impact of the Civil War on river commerce is found in a brief editorial on the The Golden Age of Steamboating.