The Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company was the second company to conduct steamboat commerce on the rivers west of the Allegheny Mountains. The company was founded in 1813 under the leadership of Elisha Hunt and based in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Daniel French designed and built the engines and power trains for both the Despatch, or Dispatch, and the Enterprise. During the Battle of New Orleans the shareholders of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company sent the Enterprise to aid the American cause. In 1815, the Enterprise demonstrated for the first time by her epic 2,200-mile voyage from New Orleans to Brownsville that steamboat commerce was practical on America's western rivers.
Video Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company
Background
In 1811, Robert Fulton and Robert R. Livingston were the first to enter the potentially lucrative field of steamboat commerce west of the Allegheny Mountains. They established an operation in Pittsburgh, where their steamboats were also built, and another in New Orleans, the busiest port in the West. During this age, a steamboat builder could receive a federal patent that provided both protection from being copied and the freedom to navigate any of the country's waterways. Fulton had been granted a federal patent but so had several others, including Daniel French. Fulton and Livingston decided to take additional measures to prevent another steamboat company from beginning operations on the western rivers. To this end they petitioned the states bordering the western rivers for a grant of an exclusive privilege to ply their waters by steamboat. Their requests were turned down by every state except Louisiana which granted them an exclusive privilege in 1814. In states where they did not have an exclusive privilege, Livingston and Fulton resorted to litigation under their federal patent to prevent competition.
Maps Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company
Elisha Hunt
Elisha Hunt was a resident of Brownsville where he was a prominent businessman, land owner, and a director of the Monongahela Bank of Brownsville. He owned and operated a general store which was located in the "Neck", as the commercial center of Brownsville was called. He sold a wide variety of goods, ranging from cotton and woolen goods to nails and gunpowder, to local customers. Elisha Hunt was ambitious and he wanted to expand his mercantile business. To accomplish this he planned to augment the store's local business with interstate commerce via the western rivers.
Philadelphia meeting
During the autumn of 1812, Elisha Hunt made the 290-mile trip to Philadelphia. Here he met with Joseph White, a former business associate and a Friend, who introduced him to Daniel French. Daniel French was an experienced mechanic who would design and construct steam engines to power a variety of equipment which he would also design and build. This equipment just happened to include a steamboat, named the Rebecca, which was currently operating as a ferry between Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey. Furthermore, French held a federal patent for his particular steamboat design which was propelled by one of his engines driving a stern paddlewheel.
While he was there, arrangements were made and a stock company was formed to construct steamboats and carry passengers and freight by steamboats between Pittsburgh and New Orleans. The stock of this company was divided into six shares, of which Joseph White owned two or one-third of the whole amount stock. Daniel French, a Connecticut man, owned a patent for steamboats, and had built a little stern wheel steamboat on his plan, which was then running as a ferry boat between Cooper's Point, Camden, New Jersey, and Philadelphia.
French said he could construct steamboats that would run five miles an hour, against the current of the Mississippi river, and an arrangement was made with him by which he sold to the company the right to use his patent west of the Allegheny mountains.The draft business agreement between Hunt and Daniel French reads, "Daniel French gives Hunt one-fourth of all advantages and profits during the patent arising from French's one-half of the whole property in his new invented steam improvements. Hunt gives French five hundred dollars in advance. Said Hunt is to go from places to places to look out places for establishing French's machinery in its various applications in mills, boats and other machinery, as also to sell, let, lease and assist in setting up works for the benefit of the said French at Hunt expense, and those services shall continue during the patent term as the best interest of the company mutually considered may direct, the said Hunt shall not hold back any reasonable services requested by the said French on forfeiture of said one-fourth as granted by said French to said Hunt, as those services are the principle consideration to said French for Hunt's one-fourth of said profits." The services of French were engaged, shops were erected at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, tools for working in iron were made, logs were cut into plank with whip saws, and with the ferry boat above mentioned as their model, they constructed the steamboat Enterprise, costing about fifteen thousand dollars, and in the latter part of the summer of 1813 she left Pittsburgh for New Orleans, under the command of Captain Henry Shreve, who was the son of Israel Shreve, of Burlington county, New Jersey, a Colonel in the Revolutionary army.
In December 1812, Elisha and Caleb Hunt transported Daniel French, his three sons and a steam engine from Philadelphia to the valley of the Monongahela River in western Pennsylvania. The trip was documented by Caleb Hunt's grandson, James Walker Roberts, on a tag which was attached to his grandfather's "steamboat watch":
Early in the nineteenth century Uncle Elisha Hunt, Caleb Hunt, and four others had hauled across the Allegheny Mountains to Brownsville, Pa., a steam engine and machinery...
The Philadelphia meeting between Elisha Hunt, Joseph White and Daniel French was a success. Joseph White, the third shareholder in the fledgling steamboat company, would remain in Philadelphia where his hardware business was located. The basic business plan was this: Elisha Hunt would promote the use of Daniel French's steam engines and then French would build them. The nucleus of a steamboat company had been formed. But before a steamboat could be built the company needed a large increase in capital.
1813
Late in 1813, the keel of the Enterprise was laid.
Hunt's store was a meeting place where potential investors were presented with an opportunity to invest in the fledgling steamboat company. Elisha Hunt wrote, "The little office connected with our Brownsville store was the rendezvous of many intelligent and enterprising young men, and there all the recent inventions for improving travel, etc., were argued and discussed."
Daniel French built the steam engine at Brownsville which was installed in the Comet at Pittsburgh in 1813.
1814
Caleb Hunt went to Louisiana for the purpose of expanding the company's steamboat line to a third boat which would operate between Louisville and New Orleans. Furthermore, this trip was a fulfillment of the business agreement between Elisha Hunt and Daniel French.
On March 1, 1814 Benjamin Henry Latrobe, serving as an agent for Fulton and Livingston, wrote from Pittsburgh to Robert Fulton, "There is a company chiefly of Quakers who are building a Steam boat on French's plan at the eastern shore 30 miles above this place."
Sometime in May 1814, the Enterprise was launched at Bridgeport.
Latrobe responded to the arrival of the Enterprise at Pittsburgh by publishing a public notice threatening the shareholders of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company with litigation.
In August 1815, the manager of the cotton factory, named the "Bridgeport Manufacturing Company", announced that it was ready to begin operations. Using Daniel French's steam engines the company would process raw cotton and wool into yarn.
Elisha Hunt was one of the principals behind the Bridgeport Manufacturing Company. He planned to process raw cotton and wool into finished goods in Bridgeport and then ship them to southern ports aboard the company's steamboats. Then the steamboats would transport raw cotton to Bridgeport to be processed into finished goods. This synergistic relationship between the manufacturing company and the steamboat company would increase the chances that both of them would be successful.
1815
By summer of 1815, the company appeared to be firmly established.
1816
The Enterprise met her demise sometime during summer 1816. When at Shippingport, Kentucky, below the falls of the Ohio River, the Enterprise was anchored by its captain in deep water because the water above the falls was low. The captain went by land to Pittsburgh and hired two men to tend the ship. However, one of the men went ashore and the other got drunk and neglected the pumps, and the seams of the boat opened in hot weather. The Enterprise filled and sank to the bottom of the river, where she remained.
Aftermath
During the waning days of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company, Caleb Hunt exchanged his share of stock for a fine English watch. This watch, with its original recorded history, has been passed down through several generations of Caleb Hunt's descendants.
Gallery
See also
- The Navigator (1801 guide book)
- Steamboats of the Mississippi
Notes
References
- Congressional Edition, Volume 2552 (1889). The executive documents of the House of Representatives for the first session of the Fiftieth Congress, 1887-'88. Washington: Government Printing Office
- Ellis, Franklin (1882). History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania: with biographical sketches of its pioneers and prominent men. Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co.
- French, Daniel (c. 1812). "Draft of a business agreement between Daniel French and Elisha Hunt". Indiana Historical Society: digital file 6091
- Hunter, Louis C. (1993). Steamboats on the western rivers, an economic and technological history. New York: Dover Publications.
- Latrobe, Benjamin Henry. The papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Maryland Historical Society, microfiche #115/B8
- Maass, Alfred R. (1994). "Brownsville's steamboat Enterprize and Pittsburgh's supply of general Jackson's army". Pittsburgh History 77: 22-29. ISSN: 1069-4706
- Maass, Alfred R. (1996). "Daniel French and the western steamboat engine". The American Neptune 56: 29-44.
- Maass, Alfred R. (1999). "The right of unrestricted navigation on the Mississippi, 1812-1818". The American Neptune 60: 49-59.
- Shourds, Thomas (1876). History and genealogy of Fenwick's Colony, New Jersey. New Jersey: Bridgeton pp. 314-320 Shourds wrote: "The following interesting narrative of Joseph White, written by his youngest son Barclay, and forwarded to me a few months ago,..." "It was my [Barclay White's] privilege and pleasure on several occasions during those years to converse with him [Elisha Hunt] upon his social and business connections with my father [Joseph White], and the incidents above narrated have been chiefly derived from such conversations."
- New Orleans Public Library, 219 Loyola Avenue, New Orleans, LA New Orleans Wharf Register
- Stecker, H. Dora (1913). "Constructing a navigation system in the west". Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, 22: 16-27
- Woodward, E. M. (1883). History of Burlington county, New Jersey, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men. Philadelphia: Everts & Peck (Elisha Hunt, pp. 270-271; Joseph White, pp. 220-221)
- Wright, D. T. (1955). The waterways journal. Volume 69, Issues 1-26. Includes information regarding Caleb Hunt's steamboat watch.
External links
- Daniel French Papers Courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society
- History of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company Based on information provided by Barclay White and recorded by Thomas Shourds.
- History of the Bridgeport Manufacturing Company
- The Enterprise trial at New Orleans Petition, which discloses the names of the shareholders of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company, that was composed by defense attorney Abner L. Duncan and filed 14 February 1816.
- Complaint against Henry M. Shreve, filed 21 June 1816
- The navigator, containing directions for navigating the Monongahela, Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers;... by Zadok Cramer, Spear and Eichbaum; ninth edition, 1817; provided by The University of Missouri Digital Library.
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