Loading stores at Nashville, Tennessee, December, 1863. Left to right: Rob Roy, Belle Peoria, Irene, Revelice, Palestine, Lizzie Martin, Mercury. Note: Hard tack in boxes on levee. It is reported that this photograph was taken by a Confederate spy and turned up after the Civil War.
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.
Photograph of the NORTH MISSOURI. "60 Souvenir Postal Cards of St. Charles and Vicinity Transferring Trains at St. Charles, MO., 1869. St. Charles, Mo.," "Transferring trains at St. Charles, Mo., 1869, St. Charles, Mo."
Panoramic photograph of St. Louis, Missouri, 1865. Identifiable steamboats (from left to right) are: EDWARD WALSH, WARSAW, U. S. Mail Line C. E. KILLMAN, SULTANA, and EMPRESS. The Old Courthouse rises above the rest of the skyline.
Bombardment of Island Number Ten by the mortar fleet, March 16, 1862. -- Sketched by Alexander Simplot. -- [ See page 219.] The gun-boat fleet dropping down stream to reconnoitre. Steamers towing mortar-boats into position.
Commissary store boats. Landing cannon. Interior of a sanitary steamer. The general hospital at Hamburg. Moving siege guns to our lines., From Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War.
This map, plotted out by Norbury Wayman, shows the various locations of steamboat lines and related companies on the St. Louis levee, detailing three periods of time; before 1865; 1865 - 1900; and 1900 - 1953. Lines and companies are donated by name, location and years of operation. Nearby streets are mapped as well, for easy frame of reference. Scale in feet: 100 ft. = 1 inch.