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From: "Griesan, Tom" <>
Subject: [L'wrence] Steamboats From Ohio
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 14:09:23 -0600

I posted some inquiries to this list and to one in Franklin, Louisiana. I had some excellent information sent to me. I wanted to post it in hopes that it would help someone else too.
- Jean Griesan

I noticed your questions and I have an answer for you.
How does one get by boat from southern Ohio to Franklin, LA?
The Mississippi River was a much used method of transportation. People from areas around Ohio & Kentucky (and any of the other states along the tributaries of the Mississippi and along the Mississippi would travel down river) to sell their goods, employment or for other reasons.
First People would travel down the Mississippi, sell their goods (including their boat) and those who returned, traveled by land, which was quite dangerous and timely. They had just sold their good and were headed home with their money and they were often waylaid and robbed. With the advent of the steamboat (paddlewheelers, Steamers, etc) which were capable of traveling upriver, people began to travel more. Now they could quickly travel up and down the Mississippi and up and down the various other rivers and bayous. Travel that previously took weeks could now be accomplished in days. Two important thing led to the demise of the steamboat...1) the railroad and 2) the were being overloaded and pushed beyond their capacity and there were several instances where, because of this, several either sank and/or their boilers exploded.
Secondly, was there something going on in Ohio or in Franklin around that time to lure them down there? [One of the Gilletts was a steamboat pilot].
Yes, there was money to be made in Louisiana, especially for a steamboat pilot. Louisiana, especially southern Louisiana, has many bayou's which were navigable and were important trade, transportation, and mail routes in those days. Cotton was king and cotten needed to be moved from the various plantations to the ports at New Orleans for shipment to either the Industrial states up north or to Europe.
Some steamboat pilots went up and down the big rivers and were got home when they could, others navigated the smaller rivers..and were home more often.

When was steamboating fairly common?
The Mississippi's currents floated settlers and traders south from other rivers - the Illinois, the Ohio and the Allegheny - that reach deep into what was then America's frontier. With their families or goods they came during high water on wide, long flatboats, barges and rafts that relied on the river's power to carry them south. At the end of those one-way trips the boats were sold for lumber or firewood.
Some traders used keelboats, longer and narrower than the flatboats and with larger crews, to float cargo south. These boats were poled, rowed and pulled by a system of ropes back north against the current in a trip that could last 3 to 4 months.
By 1832, 4,000 boats floated down the Mississippi and past Baton Rouge. The town may have served as a way station, but the destination was almost always downstream.
However, 20 years before, a glimpse of a future that would bring growth to the city appeared when the steamboat New Orleans paused here on its long, cautious trip from Pittsburgh to the Crescent City.
Steamboats proved dangerous - fires, sinkings and boiler explosions limited lives of the early boats to an average of five years - but efficient. They had the power to fight the river. By the middle 1820s, 200 steamboats plied the Mississippi and its tributaries, a number that jumped to almost 1,000 in 1860.
Steamers offered merchants, planters and passengers much greater freedom of movement. Cargo and people flowed both ways on the river. Along the Mississippi and its tributaries, towns like Baton Rouge grew into cities, new settlements sprang up and plantations flourished. The town grew from fewer than 1,500 in 1830 to 3,900 in 1850 and 5,400 in 1860. The steamboat era created a bustling agricultural port and state capital from what had been a little town dozing on the river bluffs.
Pictures from the late 1800s show steamboats all but hidden by bales of cotton stacked 30-40 feet high on their decks. Steamboats also brought the river's most romantic images: luxurious sternwheelers, roguish card players, Southern belles, the stories of river pilot Mark Twain.

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• [L'wrence] Steamboats From Ohio by "Griesan, Tom" <>