Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company explained

Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company
Type:Privately held company
Founder:Elisha Hunt
Defunct:1817
Location City:Brownsville, Pennsylvania
Location Country:US
Area Served:Port cities located on the Monongahela, Ohio and Mississippi rivers
Key People:Daniel French
Caleb Hunt
Industry:Steamboat construction
Steamboat commerce
Owner:23 shareholders

The Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company (or MOSBC) was the second company to engage in steamboat commerce on the rivers west of the Allegheny Mountains.[1] The company was founded in 1813 under the leadership of Elisha Hunt and headquartered in his store which was located close to the boat landing in Brownsville, Pennsylvania.[2] Daniel French designed and built the engines and power trains for both the Despatch, or Dispatch, and the Enterprise.[3] During the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, the shareholders of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company sent the Enterprise to aid the American cause.[4] [5] [6] 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.[7] [8] [9]

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.[10] [11] They established an operation in Pittsburgh, where their steamboats were also built, and another in New Orleans, the busiest port in the West.[10] [11] 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.[10] [11] Fulton had been granted a federal patent but so had several others, including Daniel French.[10] [11] Fulton and Livingston decided to take additional measures to prevent another steamboat company from beginning operations on the western rivers.[10] [11] To this end they petitioned the states bordering the western rivers for a grant of an exclusive privilege to ply their waters by steamboat.[10] [11] Their requests were turned down by every state except Louisiana which granted them an exclusive privilege in 1814.[10] [11] In states where they did not have an exclusive privilege, Livingston and Fulton resorted to litigation under their federal patent to prevent competition.[12]

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.[13] He owned and operated with Caleb, his younger brother, a general store which was located in the "Neck", as the commercial center of Brownsville was called.[14] The Hunt brothers sold a wide variety of items, ranging from cotton and woolen goods to nails and gunpowder, to local customers. They were ambitious and wanted to expand their mercantile business. To accomplish this Elisha and Caleb Hunt 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.[15] Here he met with Joseph White, the younger brother of Josiah White. White, a former business associate and a Quaker, introduced him to Daniel French.[15] 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.[15] [16] [17] Furthermore, French held a federal patent for his particular steamboat design which was propelled by one of his engines driving a stern paddlewheel.[15]

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 Elisha Hunt and Daniel French reads:

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.

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 family and hardware business were 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

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 began to construct the steamboat Enterprise. 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."[18]

Daniel French built the steam engine at Brownsville which was installed in the Comet at Pittsburgh in 1813.[19] [20]

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.[21]

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.[22] [23]

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.[24]

1815

In August of 1815, the manager of the cotton factory, named the Bridgeport Manufacturing Company, announced that it was ready to begin operations.[25] 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.

By August, the shareholders of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Co. had decided to expand their business by adding another larger steamboat to make round-trip voyages between New Orleans and Louisville. To this end they planned to raise capital by selling additional shares at $500 each.[26]

1816

February

The Dispatch at New Orleans

The Dispatch, owned as well as the Enterprise by the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company, steamed from Brownsville to the port of New Orleans by February 13, 1816 with important documents aboard for attorney Abner L. Duncan to use during the impending Enterprise trial.[27] [28] While docked at the levee, an incident occurred aboard the Dispatch that Robert Rogers, the first engineer, would record:

Accounts of this incident were published in newspapers throughout the West.[29]

May

The Enterprise trial at New Orleans

See also: Gibbons v. Ogden.

During May 1816, the Enterprise trial, judge Dominic A. Hall presiding, was held in the old Spanish courthouse, 919 Royal Street. The plaintiffs were represented by John R. Grymes, the defendants by Abner L. Duncan. Duncan began by presenting Daniel French's 1809 federal patent for his improved steamboat engine, which powered the Enterprise.[30] Duncan argued that this federal patent protected all of the defendants – French, Shreve and the shareholders of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Co.  - from the charges by the monopolists.[31] On May 20, Judge Hall, stating that the Territorial Legislature had exceeded its authority in granting the steamboat monopoly, dismissed the petition of the plaintiffs. A letter announcing the news of Judge Hall's decision and proclaiming its significance to the growth of steamboat commerce and the economy of the West was published in a Louisville newspaper.[32]

During January of 1817, the Kentucky legislature responded to the seizures of the Enterprise and the Dispatch by passing a resolution.[33]

From the arrest and seizure of May 1, 1815, throughout the preliminary legal procedures, to the last testimony before Judge Hall during the Enterprise trial, Grymes and Duncan represented opposing positions. Out of court, however, they worked together as aides-de-camp for General Andrew Jackson during the recent siege of New Orleans and as conspirators engaged in profiteering from illegally seized Spanish property. Their accomplices included attorney Edward Livingston, Commodore Daniel Patterson, the smuggler Pierre Laffite, and the pirate Jean Laffite.[34] [35]

August

Final voyage of the Enterprise

Steaming from New Orleans under the command of Daniel Wehrley the Enterprise reached Shippingport by August 5, 1816.[36] The Ohio River above the Falls was too shallow for the voyage to continue, so the Enterprise was anchored in Rock Harbor.[37] [38]

Historian Thomas Shourds used firsthand information provided by Elisha Hunt, the principal founder and shareholder of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company, to chronicle the final days of the Enterprise:

According to Elisha Hunt, while safely anchored in Rock Harbor during August or early autumn of 1816, the unattended Enterprise was allowed to sink.

Sale of Company assets

During August of 1816, an announcement that assets of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company would be sold was published in Brownsville's newspaper, the American Telegraph.[39]

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.[40] This watch, with its original recorded history, has been passed down through several generations of Caleb Hunt's descendants.

See also

References

External links

Notes and References

  1. Hunter, p. 13:
    "In the meantime a group of men at Brownsville, some fifty miles above Pittsburgh on the Monongahela River, entered the new field, building and putting into operation several steamboats."
  2. Shourds, p. 315:
    "This new acquaintance proved to be Elisha Hunt, who, with his brother Caleb, were conducting a mercantile business there."
    Shourds, p. 317:
    "During the autumn of 1812 Elisha Hunt visited Philadelphia, and while there arrangements were made and a stock company formed to construct steamboats and carry passengers and freight by steamboats between Pittsburg and New Orleans."
    Shourds, p. 319:
    "One of Elisha Hunt's letters says: 'The amount of dividend paid to the stockholders out of the profits of the boats I am not able to give, for no book account was ever kept by the Captain. On his return to Brownsville he brought his funds in several shot bags of Spanish dollars, which were poured out on the counter of E. & C. Hunt's store, and laid off into six piles to the shareholders, with which they were satisfied at the time.' "
  3. American Telegraph (Brownsville, Pa.), 5 July 1815:
    "Last Saturday evening the Steam was first tried on the Despatch, another steam boat, lately built in Bridgeport, and owned as well as the Enterprize, by the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company. We are happy to learn that she is likely to answer the most sanguine expectations of the ingenious Mr. French, the engineer, on whose plan she is constructed."
  4. American Telegraph [Brownsville, Pennsylvania], Wednesday, 14 December 1814:
    "The Steam Boat Enterprise of this place, which has been trading since last June in the Ohio, arrived here last Sunday afternoon. We understand that she performed the voyage from Steubenville to Pittsburgh, with a full cargo, in about three days; she made the passage from Pittsburgh to Brownsville, a distance of 65 miles, in about 17 hours. When the strength of the current is taken into consideration, it will be seen that she is equal to any boat in use. She will return to Pittsburgh in a few days, whence she will take freight and passengers, for New Orleans."
  5. Major Abraham Edwards to James Monroe, Secretary of War, 11 February 1815:
    "Report of the departure of boats, loaded with munitions of war, from this place [Pittsburgh] to Baton-Rouge and New Orleans and the names of persons in charge of the stores."
    National Archives DNA-RG 107, E-1815, microfilm 222, reel 15
  6. Western Courier [Louisville, Ky.], 4 January 1815:
    "Passed the Falls [Falls of the Ohio at Louisville, Ky.] on the 28th ult. the Steam Boat Enterprise, loaded with public property, consisting of 24 pounders, carriages, shells, small arms &c. for Gen. Jackson's army."
  7. Western Courier, 1 June 1815:
    "Arrived in this port, in 25 days from New-Orleans, the Steam-Boat Enterprize, capt. SHRIEVE. The celerity and safety with which this boat descends and ascends the currents of these mighty waters, the improvement of the navigation of which is so advantageous to the western world, must be equally interesting to the farmer and the merchant. The facility and convenience of the passage, in ascending the rivers, are such as to give a decided preference to this mode of navigation, while the size and construction of the boat entitles it to all the advantages which the Ætna and Vesuvius have in vain attempted to monopolize over the free waters of our common country."
  8. American Telegraph, 5 July 1815:
    "Arrived at this port on Monday last, the Steam Boat Enterprize, Shreve, of Bridgeport, from New Orleans, in ballast, having discharged her cargo at Pittsburgh. She is the first steam boat that ever made the voyage to the Mouth of the Mississippi and back. She made the voyage from New Orleans to this port, in fifty four days, twenty days on which were employed in loading and unloading freight at different towns on the Mississippi and Ohio, so that she was only thirty four days in active service, in making her voyage, which our readers will remember must be performed against powerful currents, and is upwards of two thousand two hundred miles in length."
  9. Hunter, p. 18:
    "The members of a committee of Congress reporting early in 1816 must have had the achievements of the Enterprise particularly in mind when they declared that the success of steamboat navigation on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers was no longer in doubt."
  10. Hunter, pp. 7-12
  11. Stecker
  12. Pittsburgh Gazette, 29 October 1813: "Fulton and Livingston have ordered a suit to be brought against Daniel French and the owners of the "Comet" for a violation of the essential part of their patent."
  13. Ellis, pp. 450-451; Bank directors are listed.
  14. Ellis, p. 432:
    "Elisha Hunt and Caleb Hunt kept a store in the Neck, where now is Keiser's jewelry-store. The Hunts were members of the Society of Friends."
  15. Shourds
  16. Daniel French Papers
  17. Maass (1996)
  18. Shourds, p. 319:
    "One of Elisha Hunt's letters states: '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.' "
  19. Congressional Edition, Volume 2552 (1889), pp. 188-9:
    "In the mean while, however, several other steam-boats had been built. The Comet was constructed at Pittsburgh in 1813, 52 feet long and 8 feet beam, with 50 to 60 pounds of steam per inch, and 20 to 30 strokes a minute."
    "At the end of 1813, there were according to Kramer's Almanac, eleven steam-boats in the whole country, three building about Pittsburgh to complete the line between that town and New Orleans, and one small boat to carry wheat and corn on the Monongahela."
  20. Congressional Edition, Volume 2552 (1889), p. 193:
    "The first high-pressure engine was built in 1813, by French, at Brownsville, Pa., and was placed on the Comet. It was an oscillating engine, but not working well, was taken out and placed in saw-mill at Natchez in 1814."
  21. "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." French, Daniel: Draft of a business agreement between Daniel French and Elisha Hunt.
  22. Lloyd, James T. (1856), Lloyd's steamboat directory, and disasters on the western waters..., Philadelphia: Jasper Harding, p. 43: "The Enterprise was No. 4 of the Western steamboat series."
  23. "The Elegant Steam Boat, Enterprize, Captain Israel GREGG, arrived here on Wednesday last, from Bridgeport, on the Monongahela,... She is handsomely fitted up for passengers for Louisville, Falls of Ohio, for which place she will sail on Saturday or Sunday morning next." Pittsburgh Gazette, 10 June 1814.
  24. Pittsburgh Gazette, 15 July 1814: "Steam Boat Navigation. Robert Fulton and the heirs of Robert R. Livingston, proprietors, of a Patent for navigating by Steam, do hereby give notice, that they will use every legal means to prevent the violation of their patent rights on the waters of the Ohio, to the injury of themselves or their assigns.

    It is not the wish of the patentees, nor is it the intention of their agent to interrupt the amusement of any person who, in making experiments on this mode of navigation, may encroach on their patented invention. The advantageous terms on which they have assigned their agents to compare it, willing and able to carry them into effect on a useful scale, are proof of their liberality. But they cannot in justice to themselves or their assigns, and certainly will not permit injurious encroachments upon their rights: And an order that ignorance may not be pleaded as to what those rights comprehend, the following specification is quoted from the patent granted to Livingston and Fulton, bearing date 11th Feb. 1809:

    "Hitherto, I (Mr. Fulton) having placed a propelling wheel on each side of the boats, with wheel guards or frames outside of each of them for their protection; a propelling wheel or wheels may however be placed behind the boat, or in the center between two boats," &c.

    On the 23d Sept. 1809 following, Mr. French took out a patent and selected for its subject the position of the wheel behind the boat. It is easy for any one who can pay $30 into the treasury, and is willing to swear that he believes himself the first and sole inventor of the thing patented, to obtain a patent, but the priority of invention of the right to an exclusive privilege, is not in a court of law to be decided on legal grounds.

    This therefore is to give notice that actions will be brought in the district court of the U. S. against each individual concerned in making, vending or using the patented rights of Fulton and Livingston to the injury of themselves or their assigns.

    B. H. Latrobe. Agent for the Patentees. July 8, 1814."

  25. Ellis, p. 476.
  26. American Telegraph [Brownsville, Pa.], 9 August 1815:
    "The Monogahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company, of this place, we are pleased to learn, intend to lay the keel of a Steam Boat of one hundred and thirty tons burthen, as soon as sufficient stock can be sold. The shares in this company are five hundred dollars each, one hundred paid on subscribing, and one hundred at the end of each succeeding sixtieth day until the whole be paid; the new stock holders to draw a dividend of the profits of all the boats after the one proposed shall be in operation. This boat is intended as a regular trader from New Orleans to the falls of Ohio, which with the Enterprize which is destined to ply between the falls & Pittsburgh, and the Despatch from Pittsburgh to Bridgeport, will form a complete line from New Orleans to this place."
  27. American Telegraph [Brownsville, Pa.], 5 April 1815:
    "WAS LAUNCHED,
    In Bridgeport, adjoining Brownsville, last Thursday, the Steam Boat DESPATCH. This boat is owned by the "Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company." We understand she is intended as a regular packet between Bridgeport and Pittsburgh."
  28. New Orleans Wharf Register:
    On February 13, 1816, payment of the wharfage fee, in the amount of "$6", for the "Steam Boat Dispatch" was recorded.
  29. Commonwealth [Pittsburgh, Pa.], 15 May 1816:
    "From a Kentucky paper we have copied an account of the detention of the steamboat Dispatch, and the interruption she met with in New Orleans. We have endeavored to see Captain Bruce since his arrival, in order to obtain more correct information on the subject, but have not had the good fortune to meet with him. We conceive the act of the legislature under which Mr. Livingston has proceeded in this business, as an infamous violation of the constitutional privileges of the citizens of all states lying on the great Western waters. We know not what construction the above act will receive from the courts at Orleans. But it is much better to trust to our own power of retaliation than to the justice of courts two thousand miles from us. If the system of oppression under which Captain Bruce has suffered, is to be continued, it is to be hoped that the powerful State of Pennsylvania will not submit to a legalized system of plunder and robbery, maintained by the State of Louisiana. It is to be presumed that she will rise in the majesty of her strength, pass retaliatory acts, and subject to attachments and seizure, not the vessels merely which may belong to its citizens. This would be an act of vengeance worthy of her; and if this should not be able to put a stop to the impudent pretensions of the new State to an exclusive jurisdiction over the navigation of the waters within her boundaries, force must!"
  30. Daniel French granted US Patent (October 9, 1809), Propulsion of Vessels, 1791–1810, US Patent Office Scientific
  31. Duncan, Abner L. "Supplemental answer to the Judge of the District Court for the First Judicial District of the State of Louisiana, filed January 22, 1816". LeBoeuf Collection, Calendar of the Mississippi Set, The New-York Historical Society.
  32. Western Courier [Louisville, Ky.], 13 June 1816:
    "Copy of a letter from a gentleman in New-Orleans, to his friend in this place, dated
    New-Orleans, May 26, 1816.
    'Having understood you are interested in the Steam Boat building at Louisville, I have the pleasure to inform you that the suit depending between Livingston and the proprietors of the steam boat Enterprize, has been decided in the district court of this state against Livingston & Co. on the plea that the legislature of this (then) territory, exceeded their power in granting an exclusive privilege. Mr. Livingston has appealed to the superior court of this state, where it is generally supposed he will meet with a similar fate. I hope this information will be of service to your company, and cause them to progress more rapidly in an undertaking which is calculated to be of such importance to the Western country.'"
  33. Slaughter, Gabriel (1817). Acts passed at the first session of the twenty-fifth general assembly, for the commonwealth of Kentucky. Frankfort, Kentucky: Gerard and Kendall, pp. 280-1:
    "Resolutions relative to the free navigation of the river Mississippi. Be it resolved by the general assembly of the commonwealth of Kentucky, That they have viewed with the deepest concern, the violation of the right guaranteed by the federal constitution and the laws of congress, to navigate the river Mississippi, in the seizure of the Steam Boat Enterprize, under the pretended authority of a law enacted by the legislature of the late Territory of New Orleans. Resolved, That they will maintain inviolate by all legitimate means the right of her citizens to navigate said river, and its tributary streams."
  34. Davis, pp. 261-64, 276-78, 303, 310-15, 232:
    "They found ardent support in what Morphy and others referred to as an 'association' of men in New Orleans bent on gaining personal profit through encouraging assaults on Spanish property. Never a formal organization, the 'association' had a fluid membership in which the constants were Livingston, Davezac, Grymes, Abner Duncan, Nolte, Lafon, merchant John K. West, and of course the Laffite brothers."
  35. Head, p. 135, The author identifies Abner L. Duncan, John R. Grymes and Edward Livingston as members of the New Orleans Association.
  36. Louisville Correspondent, 5 August 1816
  37. McMurtrie, p. 159:
    ",,,, where all ascending boats must, during three-fourths of the year, of necessity, be compelled to stop, which they can do with perfect safety, immediately in front of it [Shippingport] is a basin called Rock Harbor, that presents a good mooring ground, capable of containing any number of vessels, of any burthen, and completely sheltered from any wind."
  38. Cramer, p. 108:
    "THE RAPIDS OF OHIO" "Near the bottom on the left side of No. 63 [Rock Island] is a mooring place for boats, called Rock Harbor. It is opposite the upper end of Shippingport, and has water enough at all seasons for vessels of any burthen."
  39. Henshaw, p.57:
    "The Monongahela and Ohio Steamboat Company eventually failured to raise enough capital from the public to continue building steamboats. The company began selling its assets such as tools (chest and cupboard locks, knob locks, hinges) on August 17, 1816."
  40. Warren, Dorothy J. (10 April 1955), "History wanted on riverman's watch", St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, p. 4

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