A yearly cash income of $1,230.79 would make many a farmer of our day contented.
The proprietor of the flat-boat left on his three thousand mile trip taking only a couple of farm hands with him as crew. They lived in the stern of the boat under the same roof that sheltered the cargo, but separated by a partition. It was all clear sailing, night and day. Almost the only work was to keep the craft in the current. Several miles above the “falls” at Louisville, pilots would be found in skiffs ready to climb aboard and steer the “flat” down the rapids for ten dollars or less. If the cargo was intended for the coasting trade, business began at the first large plantations. This was in the day of overseers who liberally patronized these “coasters,” giving in payment drafts on New Orleans. The darkies were, in some cases, allowed to make their own purchases; they did not neglect the liquor, often exchanging molasses for brandy even, gallon for gallon.
Upon arriving at his destination, the proprietor sold his remaining stock and boat, invested his money in sugar and molasses, and embarked with his freight on a packet for home. Thus two profits were cleared.
The advent of the Civil War was evident to these latter day boatmen; watches were always kept on the outlook lest the “lines” be cut. At the opening of the war flat-boats were frequently fired upon. When the business was again revived in 1866 it was a new, sad South the flat-boat men found. The negroes were “free,” the overseers gone, the coasting trade ruined; through freights were found to be the only ones that paid after 1865.
Collins asserts that Captain Jacob Yoder took the first flat-boat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans in 1782; “the late Capt. Jos. Pierce of Cincinnati, Ohio, had erected over the remains of his old friend Capt. Jacob Yoder, an iron tablet (the first cast west of the Alleghanies) thus inscribed:
‘JACOB YODER
Was born at Reading, Pennsylvania, August 11, 1758; and was | a soldier of the Revolutionary army in 1777 and 1778. | He emigrated to the West in 1780; and in May, 1782, from Fort Redstone, | on the Monongahela river, in the | First Flat Boat. | That ever descended the Mississippi river, he landed in | New Orleans, with a cargoe of produce. | He died April 7, 1832, at his farm in Spencer County, Kentucky, and lies | here interred beneath this tablet.’”
Flat-boats were, both in early and modern times, always used or sold at their destination for lumber. Thus the early bargemen and flat-boat men who made down river trips returned largely on foot, until the era of steamboats. The long journey across country from New Orleans through the low fever-infested country and into Kentucky was a dangerous and arduous experience.[56] “A large number of these boatmen were brought together at New Orleans. Their journey home could not be made in small parties, as they carried large quantities of specie, and the road was infested by robbers. The outlaws and fugitives from justice from the states resorted to this road. Some precautionary arrangements were necessary. The boatmen who preferred returning through the wilderness organized and selected their officers. These companies sometimes numbered several hundred, and a greater proportion of them were armed. They were provided with mules to carry the specie and provisions, and some spare ones for the sick. Those who were able purchased mules, or Indian ponies, for their use, but few could afford to ride. As the journey was usually performed after the sickly season commenced, and the first six or seven hundred miles was through a flat, unhealthy country, with bad water, the spare mules were early loaded with the sick. There was a general anxiety to hasten through this region of malaria. Officers would give up their horses to the sick, companions would carry them forward as long as their strength enabled; but although everything was done for their relief which could be done without retarding the progress of their journey, many died on the way or were left to the care of the Indian or hunter who settled on the road. Many who survived an attack of fever, and reached the healthy country of Tennessee, were long recovering sufficient strength to resume their journey home. One would suppose that men would have been reluctant to engage in a service which exposed them to such great suffering and mortality without extraordinary compensation; but such was the love of adventure and recklessness of danger which characterized the young men of the West, that there was no lack of hands to man the boats, although their number increased from twenty-five to fifty per cent yearly. The fact that some of these boatmen would return with fifty Spanish dollars, which was a large sum at that day, was no small incentive to others, who perhaps never had a dollar of their own.”[57]
The “ark” of pioneer days was, as the name implies, the earliest type of houseboat. “These boats,” Mr. Harris records, “are generally called ‘Arks;’ and are said to have been invented by Mr. Krudger, on the Juniata, about ten years ago [1795]. They are square, and flat-bottomed; about forty feet by fifteen, with sides six feet deep; covered with a roof of thin boards; and accommodated with a fire-place. They require but four hands to navigate them, carry no sail, and are wafted down by the current.”[58]
Rafting logs down the Ohio was one of the great employments of the men of three-quarters of a century ago. “Our raft,” testified an old voyageur who went down the Allegheny and Ohio from Olean, New York in 1821, “was one hundred and twenty feet long and sixty wide and about two feet deep. It had eight oars. In the center was our cabin, which was twenty by sixteen, and contained, of course, our provisions and valuables, ... and our stove. This was a patent range peculiar to those days and quite wonderful in its way. It was made of a wooden box lined with clay. It had a hole in the top for a kettle, and another through which the smoke passed to an aperture in the roof of our cabin, left for that purpose.... Our crew consisted of ten persons, including a man and his wife and one child, who were going to migrate.... There are many eddies along the river and at them we tried to tie up at night in order to be out of the current.... From Pittsburg to Cincinnati, five hundred miles, the river being broad and deep and free from snags, we could travel night and day.... At one point in our trip we saw a raft stranded on an island; but the Captain did not seem to take the matter very seriously to heart, and answered our salutations by singing and dancing and lustily waving his hat as we passed by.... At Limestone, [Maysville] Ky., seventy miles east of Cincinnati, I stopped and sold some shingles, the raft and the rest of the crew going on. After I had transacted my business, I took passage on another going to C. [Cincinnati]. At L. [Limestone] I remember seeing a bell on a tavern for the first time. This raft had the misfortune to run into a flatboat loaded with coal, and also the audacity to sneak off before the damage was discovered to avoid both delay and expense.... Once there [at Cincinnati] we hired a gang of men to wash the lumber, which was covered with dirt and weeds; they then drew it to the lumber yard, where we sold it.... I was not sorry when I reached my home ... on the evening of the 10th of June. I had been away since the middle of February.”[59]