Floating Shoeboxes

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Flatboats were used for trips down to New Orleans to sell excess farm products. These trips generally lasted about 90 days, not including the walk back north because the lumber in the flatboats was sold as well. These rectangular flat- bottomed boats had no keels making them more difficult to steer than an ordinary boat. In essence, they were just floating shoeboxes.

About 1827, the Dubois Brothers erected a large distillery in Lawrenceville and shipped their product down river. The slaughtering and packing house in town also sent barrels of pork down on flatboats also. In 1868 Mr Perry and Ed Tracy built a flatboat on the Embarrass River near Billett and took a load of merchandise to the south. The load consisted of 9,000 bushels of corn, 160 bags of potatoes, 4,000 pounds of bacon, and 200 bushels of meal.

 In the Rural Republican published in Lawrenceville September 3, 1880, was an article about such travel.

 “But the days when the only means of transportation on our great Western rivers was the flat boat have passed away….a voyage from Pittsburgh to New Orleans by flat boat was an enterprise--- one of as great a peril as a tour around the world is now. It was certain to be full of adventure. A shot from the shore by some Indians or reckless desperado might terminate abruptly the voyage and the lives of the navigators. A moment’s neglect by the steerman might wreck the unshapely craft and all the hopes of the voyagers, hundreds of miles from home and in an inhospitable wilderness. There was danger everywhere in the currents, eddies, whirlpools, bayous, and snags of the rivers but there was no less danger from the half- civilized dwellers on the banks. The outlawed criminals and the desperate adventurers from civilization skulked about the shores or prowled with light canoes among the bayous and creeks, watching for chances to plunder even if murder was necessary to aid them.

A flat boat voyage down the river was perilous enough from natural causes even if man’s inhumanity to man had not increased the peril. In those days the government had not thought of snag boats, and the rivers were full of half hidden dangers. The current was constantly changing. It was easy to be deceived into an old channel from which there was no return. Bayous were often traps--watery cul-de-sacs-- leading nowhere but to ruin. The organized river pirates and wreckers were always on the lookout for unwary voyagers, so that a slight mishap generally ended in complete disaster. If under such circumstances, the flat boatman reached his distant home footsore and weary but penniless, months after leaving it, he was lucky."

According to a story in the " Historical Notes on Lawrence County, Illinois, by  Mary Tracy White, in an article written for the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Volume 10, published October 1, 1917:  "About 1849 or 1850 Joshua Dudley left Lawrence County, Illinois on a trip by flat boat to buy livestock in New Orleans. While there he died of cholera. The money he had with him was never returned to the family and he was buried somewhere in New Orleans. He owned about 1,400 acres of land between Old Hadley and Sumner, Lawrence County, Illinois." On his death, his wife Barbara was left with seven children ages 20 to 1 year. Since Joshua had served in the Black Hawk War, with the 2nd Brigade, Illinois Mounted Volunteers in the Spy Battalion under Capt. Greer and Major McHenry, he was entitled to receive a military land warrant. However, he died before he could claim the land, so his wife, Barbara Clark Dudley, filed for 40 acres on the patent in 1852.