P-029: John Hartford Collection Photographs

Herein are located the photographs collected by folk musician and river enthusiast John Hartford.
Herman T. Pott National Inland Waterways Library

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Weighing In
Photograph of African American cotton pickers circa 1940.
Wenonah
Steamer Wenonah at levee.
Wenonah
The Wenonah was built originally as the Little Clyde at Rumsey, Kentucky in 1907. She was a wooden hull towboat, dimensions:- 98 x 20 x 4.5 feet. Her engines are 11 inches in diameter with a 5-foot stroke; 36 horse power. She has two return flue boilers. While navigating the Mississippi River on November 1, 1901, and just after leaving Pontoosac, Illinois, she was found to be leaking badly. She was immediately beached but sank in five feet of water. The supposition was that she had struck a rock upon landing at Dallas, Illinois, about 4 miles above Pontoosac. The damage was not reported but she was raised and repaired. Later she was used for towing the showboat Golden Rod and when the latter was moored at the St. Louis levee the Wenonah was used as a power plant. At this time, April 1947, she is still at the St. Louios levee but in a somewhat dilapidated condition. She has lost her sheer, and has the appearance of being on the verge of foundering - most of the bucket planks have fallen off her wheel arms.
Wild Wagoner
The Wild Wagoner, a handsome sidewheeler, of the Civil War period was built in 1864 at the Knox boat yard of West Marietta, Ohio for the Cincinnati and Wheeling trade. She cost $155,000, a lot of money in those days and had a capacity of 700 tons. She was owned by Captain H. H. Drown of Marietta, Ohio and her dimensions were: 180 x 39 x 5.5 feet. She had three boilers and her engines were 25.5 inches in diameter with an 8-foot stroke. She had an illuminated high top, fancy pilot house. The Wagoner ran in the Cincinnati-Louisville trade in opposition to the U. S. Mail Line Company in 1866 with the St. Charles for a partner boat under management of Captain Jesse K. Bell. In the fall of 1866 she was bought by Captain Charlie Muhleman and ran Wheeling-Cincinnati. He soon sold her to the Memphis-New Orleans trade, and later she ran New Orleans-Natchez. Among her elegant furnishings was a painting of the original \"Wild Wagoner,\" her namesake and the hero of Thomas Buchanan Reed's poem bearing the same title. Reed, a resident of Cincinnati, was teh author of \"Sheridan's Ride\" which had been read and recited in school houses all over the country during that period. A large picture of the Wild Wagoner, built and commanded by Captain H. H. Drown, is one of the relics at the River Museum at Marietta, Ohio. She was later dismantled and tradition has it that her engines, originally on a gunboat, went to the Pittsburgh towboat Joe Nixon, later the Valiant and then the Transporter. The late Captain Charles W. Knox, who for several years commanded the Pittsburg and Cincinnati packet Keystone State, was a clerk on the Wild Wagoner. The late G. C. Best, father of Mrs. Lillian Ede and Mrs. C. F. Speary, was also clerk on this boat.
Winnebago
The Winnebago is a passenger steamboat of the typical packet boat style which now plies the Upper Mississippi River system. She was built by the Dubuque Boat and Boiler Works at Dubuque, Iowa, and assembled at the Dells, Wisconsin, after shipment by train. She has a horizontal, oil burning boiler forward and abaft of the bow underneath a gang way leading to the second or boiler deck. The sternwheel is of the bucket type, wooden construction. Every evening during July and August the Winnebago carries up to 400 passengers through the Dells , Wisconsin to the Indian Ceremonial at Stand Rock on the Wisconisn River... During the season of 1941 some 156,000 persons were carried through the Dells landing in the various canyons for short hikes that are cool and picturesque. In the city of Wisconsin Dells, where all boats start, accomodations are available for tourists. Exclusive elevator service to and from the boats is available as the city is 70 feet above the rock cliff to eliminate climbing. The boats have sound systems for the guides to call the rock formations and conduct the tours. After 8:00 A.M. a boat can be boarded every 30 minutes for these trips. Thirty five 60 passenger motor boats and the Winnebago make these trips. The boat capacity is 200,000 passengers per year on a three hour trip. The boats are very modern having bus seating capacity with the engines in a compartment separate from the passenger's compartment. In the evening the American Legion puts on an Indian ceremonial at the Ampitheatre along the south bank whic seats 2,000 persons and there are 100 Indians in the play. Some of the leading characters are Chief Silvertongue, famous Indian tenor; Evergreen Tree, impersonator, and many others famous throughout Florida and Wisconsin resorts.
Wm R. King
U. S. Towboat "Wm R. King" and tender with dredge, quarterboat, barges, machine shop and pontoons in tow.
Wreck of the Chalmette
The Chalmette was built in 1881 at Jeffersonville, Indiana as the City of Vicksburg for the Anchor Line Packet Company of St. Louis, Missouri. She was wrecked by the cyclone in St. Louis on May 27, 1896 along with four other Anchor Line steamers. In the process of rebuilding by Captain W. H. Thorwegan as an excursion boat she was purchased by the Illinois Central Railroad interests and renamed the Chalmette, after a New Orleans suburb. She continued to operate as a packet boat on the lower Mississippi but sunk [sic] in 1904 at the head of Deadman's Bend, about 60 miles below Natchez., Betsy Ann in the background.
Yocona
The Yocona is a sternwheel, steel hull towboat built by the Dubuque Boat and Boiler Works in 1919 at Dubuque, Iowa. Her hull measures 153.5 by 34 by 5.8 feet. She has 3 boilers which burn oil. The engines are 15's - 30's with 7-foot stroke; 450 horse power. The Yocona was oariginally built for the U.S. Coast Guard. However, she was converted into a towboat by her present owners, the Patton - Tully Transportation Company of Memphis, Tennessee.

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