Posts Tagged ‘missouri river steamboat’

New Bio of Thomas W Poe

Monday, March 3rd, 2014

The Capt Thomas Washington Poe biography was updated yet it still is incomplete.  Information from the Certificates of Enrollment for his later steamboats will not be added until I have made time to review the appropriate volumes at The National Archives. 

 

Copyright © 2014 Francis W Nash
All Rights Reserved

Source Documents

Wednesday, January 8th, 2014

A friend, and Poe relative, introduced me to the personal diary of Isaac T Goodnow.  In her research of Rev Adam Poe who was a cofounder of Ohio Wesleyan University, she crosses into the Poe steamboat land. 

 

Isaac T Goodnow helped establish the community of Manhattan, KN in the 185o’s.  His diaries are an interesting read.  Kansas was the topic of the day.  Slavery was the main issue.  Isaac T Goodnow traveled from Boston to Kansas at least once a year.  Isaac T Goodnow knew Rev Adam Poe who arrived in KN via steamboat to attend a religious conference.

 

In Issac T Goodnow’s travels, he mentioned steamboats often.  However, he rarely named them.  Two daily journal entries are listed below where he named the packets built by Georgetown men:

 

            (1)  str Financier.  At the time of the journal entry, Goodnow would have steamed on str Financier II built for Capt Adam Poe in 1850.   Capt Adam ran the str Financier II for three years and then sold it.  In 1855, he was commanding the str Ella which was also working on the lower Missouri River. 

 

            (2)  str Admiral.    In 1857 Capt Jackman T STockdale was a partner in the ownership of the str Admiral, At that time it is unclear whether he was its captain or pilot. 

 

The Isaac T Goodnow diaries are a fantastic first hand account of the violence in Kansas in the troubled 1850′s.   For me, they also provide source information that confirms my statements that Georgetown steamboats were working at the sharp and dangerous edge of our frontier.

 

 

 

 

Diary of Isaac T. Goodnow

 

Transcribed by staff and volunteers of the Riley County Historical Museum from a typescript of the original diary held in the collection of the Kansas State Historical Society.

 

 

Thursday, 8/16/55         

            Br. Wm. E. left this morning in the steamer Financier for Kansas City.  Hope to see him back soon.  Very rainy.  Drove to Judge W-s 7 miles to dinner.  P.M. rode on to Mr Roberts’ an Illinois man.  Has 120 acres corn.

 

 

Thursday 11/12/57

            Bought 2 land warrants $281.60  Saw my old friend Hugh M. Thompson, formerly of Greenfield.  Did some considerable business, & at 3. P.M. started by Pacific R.R. for Jefferson City, arriving at 9. & taking the steamer Admiral for Leavenworth City.  Lay by till morning on account of the darkness.  Rested tolerably well.  Rainy, P.M. & Evening.

 

 

Copyright © 2014 Francis W Nash
All Rights Reserved

 

Steamboat Idiom

Thursday, November 7th, 2013

Highfalutin,  no apostrophe of course, is clearly the cropped form of highfaluting.  Today it means pompous or pretentious or excessively ornate.  It first appeared in American print in the mid-1800s.  There are several possible origins.  My favorite origin is the steamboat jargon taken from the idea that wealthy people booked passage on the upper decks far away from the animals and cargo in the hold.  The Texas deck was closest to the pineapple topped stacks or flutes as they were sometimes called. 

 

 

Copyright © 2013 Francis W Nash
All Rights Reserved

 

Another Old Book

Sunday, November 3rd, 2013

I found a fascinating historical quarterly on eBay.  The Annals of Iowa (Third Series Vol IV No 5) dated April 1900.  My copy came via a private collector through the New Jersey Historical Society.  The book itself is quite interesting.  The binding is not sewn, yet the book is composed of quarto pages which is unusual.  It has not been read completely because most of the pages had not been cut.  Cutting the pages in order to read the book was a delicate process, and probably value destructive.   

 

The article in the quarterly that caught my eye was the History of Steamboating on the Des Moines River, From 1837 to 1862 by Tacitus Hussey.  It is a collection of arrival and departure logs from two ports and personal diaries.  Combined the logs and diaries confirm that several of my Georgetown guys were working on the Des Moines River as early as 1851. 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2013 Francis W Nash
All Rights Reserved

Steamboat Losses

Sunday, August 25th, 2013

Georgetown steamboat captains and owners littered the inland waterways with their steamboat wrecks.   The boats lost on various inland rivers when owned by a Georgetown captain follow:

 

   Missouri:

      Georgetown (1855 snagged)
      Amelia Poe (1868 snagged)
      Ida Stockdale (1871 crushed by ice)
      Feerless (1882 sunk)

   Mississippi: 

      Glaucus (1852 fire)
      Horizon (1862 CivWar collision)
      Nick Wall (1870 snagged)
      Glencoe (1877 snagged)

 

   Ohio/Monongahela:

      Belmont (1859 fire)
      Mollie Ebert (1875 fire)

 

   Cumberland: 

      Clara Poe (1865 CivWar arson)  

 

   Arkansas:

      John B Gordon (1851 snagged)

 

Other boats once owned and operated by Georgetown men were lost, snagged or burned after they had been sold have not been added to the list.

 

 

Copyright © 2013 Francis W Nash
All Rights Reserved

Thomas Washington Poe

Friday, March 29th, 2013

If there is a “night shade” hovering over any stone in the Georgetown Cemetery, it would be the spirit of Capt Thomas Washington Poe for good reason.   Capt Thomas Poe was arguably the most far-famed and ill-fated steamboat captain from Georgetown, PA.  Thomas Washington Poe was born in 1819 in New Lisbon, Columbiana Co, OH.  He died on 31 Dec 1881 aboard the str Fearless on his way to Pittsburgh.

 

Capt Thomas W Poe with wives, Phebe and Martha Jane (F Nash Collection)

Misfortune paid its respects to Capt Thomas Poe many times and often far from home.  On 11 May 1855  the str Georgetown was fatally snagged at Bellefontaine Bluffs on the Missouri in route to a military post.  The  str Georgetown was owned by Thomas W Poe and other partners from Georgetown, PA.  He was the principal owner of the str Clara Poe which went up in flames during the Civil War - burned by rebel forces on 17 Apr 1865 at Eddyville on the Cumberland River.  He also owned the str Amelia Poe which was a complete loss when snagged on the upper Missouri river on 24 May 1868 and salvaged by 1,500 riotous Indians.  And he was the

Thomas Poe Illustration in Life on the Mississippi

owner of the str  Nick Wall which met a tragic end on the Mississippi River near Napoleon, AK on 18 Dec 1870.  Here a grisly incident occurred that Mark Twain retold in “Life on the Mississippi”.  The boat struck a snag and sunk rapidly.  Though injured himself by the falling roof, Capt Thomas W Poe attempted to save his wife trapped in a stateroom.  He chopped a hole in the roof with an ax striking the unfortunate Martha Jane (Troxell) Poe in the head.  Martha Jane Poe, fatally wounded, was returned to Georgetown for burial.

 

Although Thomas W died on 31 Dec 1881 aboard the str Fearless on his way to Pittsburgh,  his spirit lived on ― in the courts.  The steamer sank eight months later on 26 Aug 1882 on the Missouri.    The legal case regarding the property loss was finally decided by the Supreme Court of Missouri in Oct 1887― not in favor of the Poe heirs.  This verdict feels perfectly consistent with the trend of Thomas Washington Poe’s lfe.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2013 Francis W Nash
All Rights Reserved

Lower Missouri River Commerce

Friday, December 28th, 2012

It is important to acknowledge that the Georgetown steamboat owners and their crews were in the river freight and passenger business at the sharp and dangerous, and always moving, frontier edge of our nation.  Without them and men like them, the development of the interior of our nation would have been delayed many years.

I have added a page to tell their story: Lower Missouri River

 

 

Copyright © 2012 Francis W Nash
All Rights Reserved

History is a Story

Friday, June 8th, 2012

Ms Barbara Macleish has introduced me to the reference “Chronicling America”. 

 

About Chronicling America

 

Chronicling America is a Website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. An NEH award program will fund the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories.

 

So far 737 newspapers from 1836 to 1922 have been digitized.  Unfortunately, western PA is not well represented.  Fortunately OH, MO, and MT along the inland rivers are well represented during the steamboat era.  No doubt I will be spending much time searching these references.

 

A good example of the findings from “Chronicling America” is the little known str Glaucus.  The str Glaucus information provided by the original Certificate of Enrollment appears below followed by Capt Way’s entry in his Packet Directory.  :

 

Str Glaucus

 

Owners and Partners Share Vol: 6633
T Harvey Miller   Enroll No : 89
Thom S Clarke   Cert Date: 6 Jul 1849
Wm Thaw   Cert Type:: Enrollment
Geo Black   Build Locn: W Elizabeth, PA
Robert S Hays   Build Date: 1849
Wm Bingham   Master GW Ebbert
Wilson Miller      
GW Ebbert      

 

 

 

Glaucus.  The sidewheel wooden hull packet named the Glaucus was built in West Elizabeth, PA in 1849 for the St Louis to Keokuk Packet Line.  Its capacity was 154 tons.  George Washington Ebert was partner and its master.  The Glaucus met a fiery end on 30 Mar 1852 in Montrose, IA.  [1]

 

 

In addition to this original source info and Capt Way’s history, Ms Macleish has directed me to newspaper articles found in Chronicling America, as well as other more direct routes.

 

 

Gallipolis Journal 7 Aug 1851

 

By the tremendous hail storm
Saturday night, the steamer Glaucus
had her chimneys blown over, and
cabins badly shattered.

 

 

Hannibal Journal  25 Mar 1852 (Fri)

 

You may have heard of the loss of
the steamer Glaucus – if not, I will
tell you that she was burned at
Montrose on Friday last, while lying
there ice-bound.  She belonged to the
Keokuk Packet Company, and was
insured for $5,000.

  

Democratic Banner (Davenport, Iowa)
1852  March  26
 

BURNING OF THE GLAUCUS.—On Saturday last, the Steamer Glaucus, on her upward trip from Keokuk, while lying ice-bound at Montrose, was entirely destroyed by fire.  The fire originated in the steerage, and spread so rapidly as to prevent the recovery of anything, excepting the books and papers of the boat—even the passengers’ baggage was all destroyed.  The Glaucus, we understand, was not intended to be run as one of the regular mail boats, between this point and Keokuk, but was to have been kept as a reserve, to run in case of need.
 

 

Day in history for March 28, 2002 – Quad-Cities Online

150 years ago: Passengers from the Lamartine, just arrived, informed us that the packet Glaucus burned about 11 a.m. yesterday while it was lying ice- bound at Montrose, Iowa. Not even the baggage of the passengers was saved

 

Notice the differences in the date the str Glaucus burned.  The Hannibal Journal indicated 18 Mar, the Democratic Banner – 20 Mar, the Quad Cities Online – 27 Mar,  and Capt Way – 30 Mar.  Capt Way is my go to guy.  If he writes something, then it is true, even if it was not.

 

This confusion of time, and sometimes identity in other cases, makes an accurate presentation of history difficult.  Early American history is a story.  How much is fact and how much is legend does not really matter, for it did certainly happen. 

 

 

References.

[1]   Frederick Way, Jr.,Way’s Packet Directory, 1848-1994, (Ohio University Press, Athens 1994), p. 188.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2012 Francis W Nash
All Rights Reserved

Str Washington City

Saturday, March 31st, 2012

A biography of the str Washington City has been loaded which underscores the risks taken by these Georgetown steamboat men on the Missouri River in the early 1850′s.

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2012 Francis W Nash
All Rights Reserved

Lives Remembered

Saturday, December 31st, 2011

One-hundred-thirty years ago today, Thomas W Poe died (31 Dec 1881) while on a trip from St Louis to Pittsburgh aboard the str Fearless.  In 1880, Capt Thomas W Poe bought the str Fearless to transport grain between Kansas City and St Louis. 

 

The str Fearless was a large heavy-draft Mississippi River stern-wheel tow boat built in Pittsburg PA in 1865 according to Benjamin M Laughlin.  It was 160 x 30′ rated at 395 tons with two engines (20″x8′) and five boilers (26′ x 40″)- with a working steam pressure of 150lbs.   When it sank on August 26, 1882 in the Missouri River about 40 miles from its mouth near Lower Bonhomme Island, the boat was owned by the Kansas City Barge Line.  The captain of the boat at the time it sank is unknown.

 

Happy New year.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Francis W Nash
All Rights Reserved