James Fenimore Cooper on Steamboats colliding with Folklore

This would have made a nice footnote in the book, though of course it is a narrative one and not a historical source in the strict sense of the word.

Hugh C. MacDougall, who edited the Gutenberg copy of The Lake Gun,  the short story where the following paragraph appears in, dates the story to 1850, gives it a decidedly political context, and points to a visit of Cooper in Geneva College (now Hobart College) on Lake Seneca sometime between 1840-1844, when Cooper's son Paul was studying there, as the origin of the "local knowledge" such as it is.

"I haven't seen that ere crittur now"—Peter always spoke of the tree as if it had animal life—"these three years. We think he doesn't like the steamboats. The very last time I seed the old chap he was a-goin' up afore a smart norwester, and we was a-comin' down with the wind in our teeth, when I made out the 'Jew,' about a mile, or, at most, a mile and a half ahead of us, and right in our track. I remember that I said to myself, says I, 'Old fellow, we'll get a sight of your countenance this time.' I suppose you know, sir, that the 'Jew' has a face just like a human?"

"I did not know that; but what became of the tree?"

"Tree," answered Peter, shaking his head, "why, can't we cut a tree down in the woods, saw it and carve it as we will, and make it last a hundred years? What become of the tree, sir;—why, as soon as the 'Jew' saw we was a-comin' so straight upon him, what does the old chap do but shift his helm, and make for the west shore. You never seed a steamer leave sich a wake, or make sich time. If he went half a knot, he went twenty!"

Two ideas that I find curious here are that the novelty of the steamboats, which rubs oddly with this American form of the legend of the "Wandering Jew", is expressed narratively as a form of resistance to be encountered. Nevertheless, when encountered, the supernatural remains superior, going faster than the engine-powered boat.

History of Transportation before 1860

Early Trails

The Appalachian mountains separated the Ohio-Mississippi hinterland from the Atlantic seaboard, and overcoming this separation was the task of early trails (p.3). The efficient sea communication on the Atlantic shore had the curious effect of providing "a stretch of ocean ... over which goods could be transported at less expense than they could be carried overland for distances which to-day seem inconsiderable." (p.3) 

... the colonies throughout the colonial period were commercially closer to Europe than they were to one another. (p.3)

Trade routes into the interior were still necessary, however, as the "seaboard communities could not themselves produce the commodities required by this traffic".

Prior to the Revolution intercontinental commerce was inconsiderable, and intercolonial trade-routes, where they existed, were entirely inadequate. (p.4)

The coastal plain was well opened up by rivers, whose branches led into the valleys and gaps of the mountains.

A study of the spread of settlement up to 1775 shows that the immigrant population ran up the river valleys as far as the fall-line, and there generally stopped. (p.4)

After the Revolution, the twin patterns of the westward migration and the eastward flow of products made the question of how to traverse the Appalachian system "a dominant issue in national politics, involving the economic welfare and growth of every section of the country" (p.4)

The parallel ranges of the Appalachian, a system 300 miles wide and 1300 miles long, reached from the Green Mountains in Vermont, to the pine-hills of Alabama. The rivers could not be navigated up to the mountains, but the headwaters revealed good passes, though in the South these paths ended up being somewhat roundabout.

In  Pennsylvania the chief route to the Ohio followed the West Branch of the Susquehanna. Farther south was another route by the Juniata to a tributary of the Allegheny. (p.4)

Bibliographical Record
Balthasar Henry Meyer, History of Transportation in the United States before 1860, Washington (Carnegie Institute of Washington) 1917.

The naval War of 1812 by Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919

I was pointed to The naval War of 1812 : Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919  as a potential source for my transportation research with the use of Morris, Charles R. (2012-10-23). The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution. PublicAffairs. Kindle Edition.

Morris writes:

Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote a small masterpiece on the naval war, was no fan of [US commanding officer] Chauncey, but he mocked [British commanding officer, RCK] Yeo’s battle report for failing to admit that his fleet “ran away.” (Kindle Locations 459-460)

Business delayed by the early mail

The following is a transcription of a letter sent by Clark Leal, of Fountain Grun, on April 15th, 1844, to General Joseph Smith, Nauvoo, regarding the sale of property. Amusingly, the communication was delayed by a week because the mail had arrived earlier the week before. The latter is available in the Church History Library, MS 9670 folder 5, in Salt Lake City on microfilm.

Transcription

Fountain Grun April 15th 1844

 Dear Sir

I had intended to have written last week but the Mail came 2 hours sooner than usual I was disappointed.

I will sell the NE15 6N8W for five Dollars per acre if paid on or before the first of May or 5.50 censt [sic!] if a bucket [???] bi [sic!] given of 300 Dollars till the first October. I intend going to Carthage to morrow and will make all necessary Enquiries and if the title is not right will let you know immediately.

I will give the necessary Bond when Mr Clayton comes cout [???] as I will {ILLEGIBLE} not probably be well Enough to go as far from home by than that time. 

Yours Respectfully

<sig> Clark Leal 

Letter Lucian Adams to Joseph Smith traveling with steamboat

The following is a transcript of a letter sent by Lucian Adams to [General] Joseph Smith, from Springfield, IL, on June 8th, 1843. The letter is available in the Church History Library, MS 9670 folder 3, in Salt Lake City, on microfilm.

Transcription

General Joseph Smith

I forward by Mr Repsher [Captain of the Steamboat Maid of Iowa, RCK] a mile [???] for the boat. And also enclose three dollars to be handed to Loving Sister Jaime for expenses to this place Mr Repsher will bring her. Please let Lorwen [???] get her to your house.

I am // as ever // Lucian Adams 

 

Letter Joseph Smith to Lucian Adams regarding Maid of Iowa

The following is a transcription of at letter from Joseph Smith Jr (1805-1844) to Lucian Adams, from Nauvoo IL, sent October 20th, 1843, regarding the Steamboat "Maid of Iowa". The letter is available in the Church History Library, MS 16721, in Salt Lake City, on microfilm.

Transcription

Nauvoo City, October 20th, 1843.

Mr Lucian Adams.

I have furnished the steam boat the one hundred dollars you agreed to send on as well as in every thing else and set her a running and she is like to sols [???] where she is now at St Louis. I am owing the bearer of the title [???] seventy five dollars in cash, which I want you to pay him for one and I will  apply it on your share of the boat. 

I am most respectfully your obedient servent [sic!]

<sig> Joseph Smith  

The Steamboat Maid of Iowa

Among the Newel Kimball Whitney papers (VaultMSS 76) mention in the previous post, there is a set of folders (Box 5, folder 10-15) on the steamboat "Maid of Iowa", which is as of August 2014 un-digitized. The contents of these folders is the concern of this post.

The majority of them are bills that have to do with the operations and the upkeep of the "Maid of Iowa". It is noteworthy that when Joseph Smith Jr sends his partners, Dan Jones (some anecdotes about him here) and Levi Moffitt, a financial statement concerning the "Maid" on May 12th of 1843, he styled himself "Esquire", which may refer to the fact that he was becoming knowledgeable and experienced in the law.

The transcripts I have taken so far are here; the BYU article on the steam boat (download here) is somewhat of a help, and mentions some of the ingredients I could not decode, including saleratus.

I am still struggling with decoding some of the units abbreviations, but it looks like the mysterious "uc" could be a "lbs" with a short "L" ....

More geographical river and traveling Information

Here is a bunch of Gazetteers that were developed for the rivers in the US of A. Where not mentioned differently, all scans are on the Internet Archive.

• Samuel Cumings, The Western Navigator, 
• the edition of 1822 (Cincinnati Virtual Library).
• Samuel Cumings, The Western Pilot
  ("containing charts of the Ohio River, and of the Mississippi, from the mouth of the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico ; accompanied with directions for navigating the same, and a gazetteer, or description of the towns on their banks, tributary streams, &c. ; also, a variety of matter interesting to travelers, and all concerned in the navigation of those rivers" as the title of the 1834 edition promises).
• the edition of 1829.
• the edition of 1832.
• the edition of 1834.
• the edition of 1836.
• the edition of 1839.
• the edition of 1840.
• the edition of 1845.
• the edition of 1847.
• George Conclin, Conclin's New River Guide
• the edition of 1849.

Conclin's River Guide has an amusing summary of the state of the City of Nauvoo, with some interesting problems and omissions:

NAUVOO, opposite, in Hancock county, 111., is the site of the celebrated Mormon city, which was laid out about 1840, by Joseph Smith and his followers. It is situated on a handsome plain, on an elevated bank, extending for some distance from the river. The city was laid out on a very extensive plan, and intended to be the great city, to which all should look, as the Jews do toward Jerusalem. A great many houses were erected, some of them on a very magnificent scale, and the city was fast being filled with the adherents of that sect, from all parts of the country. A temple was also in course of erection, which, for vastness of dimensions and splendor of design,was intended to be without a rival in the Union. But, difficulties having arisen among the members of the community, and between them and the citizens of the surrounding country, Joseph Smith, the Lieutenant General of the Nauvoo Legion, and High Priest, and Hiram, his brother, were arrested, and thrown into prison, in Carthage, the county-seat, where they were, on the 27th of June, 1844, murdered, by an armed mob, in disguise, who overpowered the guard, stationed at the jail. New troubles subsequently arising, the Mormons were expelled from the state. Many of them returned to their former homes, in the states, reduced in circumstances, and enfeebled by toil and sickness but a large body banded together, and started toward Oregon [sic!], with the intention of there raising up a city, which should fill the place of that one, which had proved so disastrous to them. Nauvoo has since declined rapidly. A religious denomination were about making a contract for the purchase of the Temple, for a college, but it was destroyed in October, 1848, by an incendiary, who fired it in the cupola, and it is now a heap of ruins. (pp.73-74)

A Lake Erie Canal vignette (Part I)

Just read a nice little anecdote in Archer Butler Hulbert's Historic Highways of America (Vol. 14) The Great American Canals (Volume II, The Erie Canal), pp.44- that ties together some of the ways in which transportation, infrastructure and visionary advancement fit together.

The hero of the anecdote was Gouverneur Morris (Founding Father, representative of the Constitutional Convention for Pennsylvania, Author of the Constitution and signer, etc). He had discussed the idea of mingling the waters of the Great Lakes with the Hudson's in 1777 with then-quartermaster and future Governor of New York Morgan Lewis, as General Schuyler's army was withdrawing from Burgoyne's regiments (pp.43f).

In October of 1795, Gouverneur Morris saw the Caledonia Canal in Scotland and felt inspired, as he recorded in his journal (which Hulbert quotes from Sparky's Life of Gouverneur Morris, p.498f).

... when I see this [i.e. the Caledonia Canal], my mind opens to a view of wealth for the interior of America, which hitherto I had rather conjectured than seen. (p.45)

In the fall of 1803, Gouverneur Morris bumped into General Surveyor Simeon De Witt at in Schenectady, and they ended up spending the evening at the same inn and talking into the night about all sorts of things, including the canal. The event is documented in a letter of De Witt's to William Darby, dated February 25th, 1822 (pp.45f) (which Hulbert quotes from Laws of the State of New York relative to the Canals, Albany (1825), pp.39ff).

I like this scene, the two guys stuck in travel at the same inn, and using the time to exchange ground-breaking ideas with each other about the development of the country, which Morris pursued as improvement with determination

It was from De Witt that James Geddes, who would end up performing the initial survey of the lay of the land for the canal, found out about this meeting in 1804. This event is documented in a letter to William Darby also, dated February 22nd, 1822 (pp.46f), again taken from Laws of the State of New York relative to the Canals, Albany (1825), pp.42ff.

Nothing much happened until December 1806, when President Thomas Jefferson in his state of the Union type address for the Legislative Session of 1807 told Congress to spend any developing surplus on infrastructure improvements and put some canals on the map.

Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance, and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement, as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of Federal powers. By these operations, new channels of communication will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties. (469)

Congress then requested an update on the state of roads and canals from the Secretary of the Treasury in March of 1807, but that report did not reach completion until March 1808.

But the news of the president's speech was enough to get one Jesse Hawley, Esq, a business man, who was then residing in Pennsylvania, to write an essay on an overland connection between Lake Erie and the Hudson under the pseudonym of Hercules (M.Hawley, The Erie Canal, its origin, its success, its necessity, Buffalo Historical Society 1868, p.7; Hulbert, p.47). The first essay appeared in the Commonwealth in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 14th, 1807; the essay was reprinted in the Genesee Messenger, in Canandaigua, starting in October 1807, followed by fourteen more essays.

(to be continued)

Turn Pikes, Toll Roads and Plank Roads

There is a general consensus that road construction was one of the contributing factors to the transportation transformation from the 1815 to 1848 (e.g. Daniel W. Howe, What hath God wrought, Oxford 2007, in: Introduction, loc194).

There is some good research on this:

• A general paper on turn pikes and toll roads for 19th Century America.
• A specific paper on the plank road boom in New Jersey and New York during the last phase of the Antebellum, i.e. 1847 to 1853, with all the usual promises of changing the world around (and an over-expectation about canals to boot).

1837 Travel literature for the Mississippi

In 1837, William Gilmann Lyford wrote a book entitled The western address directory, a travel guide to the main docking places and the merchants residing there, for those perusing the steam boats on the Mississippi river.

Old Histories of Steam Navigation

Up to 1900

• James Burcke (ed), Selected articles from Wilmington, North Carolina newspapers from 1833 through 1843 concerning the building of the Wilmington & Raleigh Rail Road, 1833-1843.
• James Renwick contributed an Essay on the Steam Boats of the United States of America, London, undated (after 1834, before 1863).
• Woodcroft Bennet, A sketch of the origin and progress of steam navigation from authentic documents, London 1848.
• ---, The Ontario and St. Lawrence Steamboat Company's hand-book for travellers to Niagara Falls, Montreal and Quebec, and through Lake Champlain to Saratoga Springs, Buffalo 1858.
• Andrew Murray, Ship Building in Steel and Wood, bundled with Steam Boats, by Robert Murray, both Edinburgh (Black), 1863.
• Edward R. Neill, History of the Minnesota Valley, bundled with History of the Sioux Massacre, by Charles Bryant, Minneapolis 1882.
• James Croil wrote a History of Steam Navigation, published in Montreal in 1898, with an especial focus on the commercial relations of Canada and the United States.

Between 1901 and 1910

• Hiram Martin Chittenden, History of early steamboat navigation on the Missouri River : life and adventures of Joseph La Barge, New York (Francis P Harper), 2 volumes, 1903.
• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Edwin Bell, Early steamboating on the Minnesota and Red rivers, Minneapolis, 1905.
• Thomas Hughes, History of Steamboating on the Missouri River, 1905.
• Edward White Durant, Lumbering and steamboating on the St. Croix River, Minneapolis, 1905.
• R.A. Fletcher contributed Steam-Ships. The Story of their Development to the Present Day, Philadelphia -- London, 1910; the book was intended as a companion to E. Keble Chatterton, Sailing Ships and their Story, of 1909.
• E. Keble Chatterton preferred to write his own book on the steam ship saga, however: Steam Ships and Their Story, London -- New York -- Toronto -- Sidney (Cassell & Company) 1910.

Between 1911 and 1920

• Phil Edward Chappel, A history of the Missouri River : discovery of the river by the Jesuit explorers; Indian tribes along the river; early navigation and craft used; the rise and fall of steamboating, Kansas City?, 1911?.
• George Byron Merrick, William R. Tibbals, Genesis of Steamboating on Western Rivers, in: Proceedings of the Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1911, p.97-151.
• Frederick Talbot, Steamship Conquest of the World, Philadelphia -- London, 1912.
• Francis Bradler, Some Account of Steam Navigation in New England, Salem MA (Essex Institute) 1920.

After 1920

• Preston A Barba, Steam-boating on the Ohio and Mississippi Before the Civil War, in: Indiana Magazine of History, Vol XI, Number 2, July 1915, pp.99-127.
• Walter E. Blair, A raft pilot's log; a history of the great rafting industry on the upper Mississippi, 1840-1915, Cleveland 1930.
• William John Petersen, Steamboating on the upper Mississippi, the water way to Iowa : some river history, Iowa (Iowa State Historical Society), 1937.
• Charles E. Brown, Old Man River; upper Mississippi river steamboating day's stories, tales of the old time steamboats and steamboatmen, Madison WA, 1940.