Inspiration for Creative Works
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Paintings and Drawings
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Artwork visually chronicled the first decades of the steamboat era. Ranging from works in oil and watercolor to pencil sketches and prints, boats were popular subjects for artists such as Harlan Hubbard and Glen Tracy.
The advent of photography enabled contemporaries to document more readily and accurately the many boats on the river. The Filson has a large collection of steamboat photographs dating from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century. The Judge Arthur Hopkins Collection contains over one thousand photographs and includes glass plate negatives and lantern slides.
The Filson even holds snippets of a home movie of the Louisville wharf and steamboats on the Ohio, circa 1930. Images of such renowned boats as the City of Louisville, City of Cincinnati, J. M. White, Fleetwood (in two of its numerous incarnations), General Pike, Robert E. Lee, and many others are preserved in the general collection.
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Music
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Music also became a popular medium to memorialize the steamboat era. Two of the most famous composers of their day, Stephen Foster and Will S. Hays, as well as many others, wrote songs about steamboats and river travel. In addition to the songs themselves, the covers of the sheet music serve as interesting and revealing illustrations for researchers.
Roustabout Songs: A Collection of Ohio River Valley Songs documents the significance and musical influence of African American communities on the river during the steamboat era.
