This is the third in a series of posts written by John Tholking. In this article, John discusses the Cincinnati our First Families and Settlers and Builders ancestors may have experienced when we were the steamboat capital.
The Ohio River was the great road into the west. The trails of the Indians and buffalo led to
the river as well as the later main roads of the western country. Early explorers traveled by canoe, horseback
or by foot, but most early immigrants floated down the Ohio with their
families, meager possessions and food in canoes, flatboats, barges or
keelboats. In December, 1788, the first
group of settlers in Hamilton County, led by Benjamin Stites, landed at Columbia,
at the confluence of the Ohio and the Little Miami Rivers.
Steam driven boats were first invented in Europe before
1800. In 1807, Robert Fulton's steamboat
Clermont successfully navigated the
Hudson River from New York City to Albany in about thirty hours, becoming the
first American steam vessel to offer regular transportation on an inland river.
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| "Orleans" |
The first steamboat to descend the Ohio was the Orleans in 1811. As early as 1809, Nicholas Roosevelt, an
associate of Fulton, had floated down the Ohio on a flatboat making
measurements of the channels, water levels and noting coal deposits. After eighteen months of construction, at a
cost of $38,000. the Orleans, with
Captain Roosevelt and his family and crew left Pittsburgh on October 20,
1811. The boat first passed Cincinnati
on its four day journey to Louisville.
Because of low water at the falls of Louisville, the Orleans had to wait one month for higher
water. During this time it steamed 141
miles back up the Ohio to Cincinnati.
Two years before, Mr. Roosevelt had
said he would return in a steamboat, but no one had believed him. When the 116 foot long, bright blue steamboat
laid anchor at Cincinnati, it seemed as if all the twenty-six hundred inhabitants
gathered on the riverbank to watch.
No one who lived on the Ohio at that
time will ever forget the amazing year 1811.
On September 17, on a bright and cloudless day, the sun was eclipsed by
the moon. In the fall, The Great Comet
of 1811, with a head larger than the sun, blazed across the night heavens for
months. Millions of squirrels began
migrating south and died in the Ohio River.
In December the strongest earthquake ever recorded in North America caused
changes in the course of the Mississippi and other rivers. Even more amazing, in terms of the settlement
of our ancestors, was the two thousand mile voyage of this first steamboat, the
Orleans, from Pittsburgh, finally
arriving in New Orleans on January 12, 1812.
The second steamboat on the Ohio was
the Comet, built before the summer of
1813, followed by the Vesuvius in
November 1813, both built in Pittsburgh.
In 1814 the Enterprise, the Aetna, the Despatch, the Buffalo,
the James Monroe, the Washington
and others followed.
The first steamboat to complete the
trip from New Orleans back to Pittsburgh was Henry Miller Schreve's powerful Enterprise in 1815. Henry Schreve designed boats and boilers much
more suited to river travel and developed snag boats to remove the many snags
or trees in the channels that sank over half the early steamboats. This made steamboat travel both more safe and
reliable as well as more profitable.
Charles Goss states the first steamboat built in Cincinnati
was the Eagle in 1818 for a Kentucky
firm. The Western Spy reported "The steamboat Cincinnati, launched in February, 1818, was the first steamboat
that has been built from the keel in Cincinnati. She is owned by Mr. J. W. Byrne and Mr. P.
Pennywitt, Jr., merchants of this place."
(Cincinnati Western Spy, March
7, 1818)
Cincinnati soon afterward awoke to the importance of the
shipbuilding industry, and between 1817 and 1819, about one fourth of the
vessels constructed on the western waters were built here. Several shipyards were located in Cincinnati,
North Bend, Fulton (Columbia) and nearby areas.
Most early steamboats were built for freight as well as
passengers. Often the stench of the
animals and livestock was unbearable. As
late as 1843, John James Audubon described his passage on the steamboat Gallant as the " filthiest of all
filthy rat-traps I have ever traveled in.
Our companions on the voyage, about one hundred fifty, were composed of
Buckeyes, Wolverines, Suckers, Hoosiers and gamblers and drunkards of every
denomination, their ladies and babies of the same nature, and specially the
dirtiest of the dirty. We had to dip the
water for washing from the river in tin basins, soap ourselves all from the
same cake, and wipe the one hundred and fifty with the same solitary one towel. Our stateroom was evidently better fitted for
the smoking of hams than the smoking of Christians. When it rained outside, it rained also
within, and on one particular morning, when the snow melted on the upper deck
or roof, it was a lively scene to see each person seeking for a spot free from
the many spouts overhead."
The General Pike,
owned by Cincinnatians John H. Piatt and Philip Grandin, was the first all-passenger luxury packet
travelling a regular route between Maysville, Cincinnati and Louisville. Built in Cincinnati in 1818, it had 14
staterooms and enough berths to carry 86 passengers. "The center of the large hall is
supported by eight marble columns, which together with a handsome carpet
covering the floor, crimson berth curtains, the mirrors decorating the wall,
the neatness and beauty of the painting, and the remaining furniture, give the
whole an air of elegance which borders upon magnificence." (Western
Spy, Cincinnati, March 20, 1819).
The cabin fare in 1819 was $8.00 downstream and $12 up - six years later
the corresponding fares were $4 and $6.
For such sums the passenger was provided not only with transportation
but with bed and meals on a large boat of excellent accommodations.
As late as the 1840's the principal route of migration for
settlers was by wagon through Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh, then by steam-boat
down the Ohio. Flatboats, keelboats, and
barges were still heavily used until the 1820's, after which steamboats became
the primary form of river travel.
Early newspapers such as the Western Spy and the Cincinnati
Gazette often carried lists of passengers as well as cargo for barges,
keelboats and steamboats.
Submitted by: John Tholking
Membership
in First Families is open to descendants of pioneers who were residents of
Hamilton County before December 31, 1820.
Applications or requests for forms may be sent to FFHC, Hamilton County
Chapter OGS, PO Box 15865, Cincinnati, OH 45215-0865.
