Letter from Samuel Sevey, Jr. to E. Smith, 2 February 1819

Letters serve as an excellent source of information about the experience of steamboat travel. Jonathan Clark may fail to enlighten readers of his diary about his 1811 ride on the New Orleans, but others traveling on boats often did.

In a February 1819 letter to his uncle, written while traveling through the western country, Samuel Sevey Jr. of Maine reported from Louisville that the “trade of this town is supposed to be greater than that of any other in this Country as it is a port of entry and discharge for all the Steam Boats, many of which are owned here[.] [T]hese boats are increasing rapidly[;] no less than 10 have been on the stocks at one time in the vicinity of this place[,] some of 400 and some of 700 tons.”

Sevey also detailed the disasters and tragedy associated with early steamboats, noting that “Old Captain Clough formerly our Towns man died on board the S. B. Buffaloe, which he commanded on his passage up the River.” Sevey wrote that Clough’s “usual bad fortune attended him through the voyage[;] the engineers child by accident fell overboard[,] the father followed but was not able to save it[.] [T]he mother soon died of grief and the father followed her.” 

Letter from W. N. Carroll to Jane Carroll, 9 December 1838

Many disasters marked the steamboat era, and letters in the Filson's collection describe a variety of them from the perspective of survivor and observer. Those whiling away the hours—and sometimes days—when boats ran aground also composed letters. In December 1838, W. N. Carroll wrote to his mother from the steamboat Campte, which was "hard and fast aground" at Flint Island, located on the Ohio River in far western Meade County, approximately 45 miles southwest of Louisville. He reports that he has been there for one week and that there are "6 or 8" other boats in the same situation.

He writes that there "no chance to get off until the river raises and lets me off. I have now been here one week and I cant say how much longer I will be compelled to stay. . . I console my[self ] by looking all around me and Seeing plenty of Boats in the Same fix as there is Some 6 or 8 of us here all together . . . all fast and hard aground.” Carroll might have been the captain or mate of the boat. 

Letter from Samuel Wigglesworth to Thomas Wigglesworth, 17 July 1839

Another “aground” letter was written by physician Samuel Wigglesworth while stranded on the Elk in July 1839. Making a western tour from his home in Boston, Wigglesworth departed Louisville on July 15 and quickly encountered delays due to the low water level on the river. Two days later, the Elk was “fast stuck in the mud about a hundred miles below Louisville, and here we have been for the last five hours steaming and lighting all in vain.”

The day, reported Wigglesworth, was hot enough to “roast a salamander” and being “near no town or settlement, there is no attraction on shore and nothing to do on board, so in pure despair I sit down to write, though certainly the noise and bustle and the jarring of the boat in her efforts to get off are no great auxiliaries to my task—not to mention the three or four passengers who instigated by a laudable spirit of inquiry, are looking over my shoulder to see what in the world I can be writing.”

Despite the onlookers, Wigglesworth provided an account of the delays, the crew’s efforts to get unstuck, and some of his fellow passengers, including the sights of a “very respectable looking old lady, with cap and spectacles on reading a newspaper and smoking a cigar!” and a “nicely dressed little boy about six years old [who] came out of the Ladies cabin to the ‘bar’ and requested the barkeeper to make a ‘julip for mother.’” He concluded that westerners’ “manners differ a little from those of our country.”