New Albany as a Commercial and Shipping Point Victor M. Book* Details of New Albany’s early history as a river port are meager and elusiv+a fragmentary municipal record, an oc- casional note in a stray newspaper, a brief reference in a con- temporary river guide, or a line or two from some traveler‘s account. Yet, a piecing together of these bits of miscellaneom data gives a fair picture of We evolution of the town as a commer- cial and shipping point. Even before the Scribners came there was a ferry running back and forth to the Kentucky shore, and the increase in ferry traffic during the first two decades of the settlement indicates that there was a growing freight and passenger intercourse between New Albany and Louisville. The record of the launching at New Albany of some of the first steamboats on the Ohio signified a growing demand for river conveyances in the area, while the establishment of for- geries and foundries dong the river front testified that steam- boat repairing was engaged in by the local “mechanics." Ad- vertisements of town merchants, with listings of wares shipped in by passing steamboats, showed that some of the regular packets paused at New Albany at least long enough to drop off freight. Regulations reserving the river front as a wharf area imply that from the beginning there was a consciousness of river commercial activities. And the design of the first Floyd County seal, an engraved steamboat, speaks eloquently enough for the fact that early New Albanyians closely allied themselves with the river and the craft which plied its waters.’ The Falls barrier made necessary two separate lines of steamboats on the Ohio River. Above they ran between Pitts- burgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville ; below, from Louisville to New It was, as observed by the Scribners, the trans- shipment of river cargo at this point that gave the towns in the region their real commercial importance. The Pittsburgh, or up-river boats, had to be unloaded, the cargo transferred to

avidor M. Bogle is a resident of Washington, D.C. pis.artiele is a revised chapter of his Ph.D. dlesertation at Boston Umver~~ty,1961, written under the direction of Warren S. Tpmn. 1Minutes of the Commissioners of Flo d County, Indian A 13, 1821, p. 134: “Ordered that the County &eamrer pay to J%n x$ man five dollars for cutting a Steam Boat as a device to the County Seal of Floyd County & insertmg the word Indiana to the same.” 2 There came to be many local runs between these points, but those memtioned above were the chief diviaiona 370 Indahnu Magazine of History wagons or smaller water conveyances, and then reloaded on the down-river boats. There are no statistics to show what percentage of the transshipment business passed through New Albany during the early period, but it was sufficient to instill hope among New Albany mercantile people that their town would sometime surpass Louisville in this respect. The towns of Shippingport and Portland on the Kentucky side served as Louisville's lower shipping station^,^ but the problem of connecting these settle- ments to Louisville proper was not entirely solved until the latter half of the century. In the meantime, New Albany tradesmen publicized their town as the real head of navigation on the Ohio-Mississippi system. They sought to divert the lower traffic to their wharf, pass the contents by road to Jef- fersonville, and on across by ferry to Louisville. This scheme on the part of New Albany traders was desultory, and, to say the least, not organized. But it began to unfold at an early date and grew in prominence as the century proceeded. Had specific enough action been taken in the 1820's, particularly in the improvement of the crude road between New Albany and Jeffersonville, the future of these Indiana towns might have been different. It must be added, however, that topographical conditions on the Kentucky side of the river did give Louisville a distinct advantage in attaching her western suburbs to her and combining the whole into an adequate port for both up river and down-river shipping. The first newspaper printed in New Albany ran a regular column on arrivals and departures at the local wharf, setting a precedent that was to be followed in the New Albany papers till almost 1880. The following notice appeared on May 6, 1821 : STEAMBOAT NEWS Arrived on Thursday, Steam Boat Vulcan, A. Butler, master, eighteen days from New Orleans, with full freight and 35 cabin & 168 deck pamengem. The Comet and Hero came up the Falls on Tuesday last, bound to Cincinnati. Wednesday the Maysville in attempting to aseend the Falls, fell back, & lodged on the rocks.+ By 1827 there was nu mention made of Cincinnati in the New Albany Recorder and Advertiser, thus hinting that the traffic at the Falls had already divided between the upper and the lower commerce.

3 Portland was almpIjt directly o posite New Albany and came to be in a correspondm position on the l!entuelrJl side. "he earlier town of Shippingport waa%y-passedby the canal in 1831. 4 New Albany Chronicle, May 6,1821. New Albany as a Commerciat and Shipping Point 371

RIVER LIST February 2’7-Passed up S. B. Belvidere Beckwith master, (from New Orleans) 28-Cleopatra, Hill (from St. Louis) March 1-Benj. Franklin, Shrader (from New Orleans) Passed down February 27-S. B. Florida (N. Orleans) New York (New York) 28-Grampw, Voohrees (N Orleans)5 Cumings’ Western Pilot supplied the following informa- tion on the Ohio’s channel along New Albany for the use of 1825 rivennen: “At low water you must pass to the left of Sandy island, below Shippingport. Keep close to the head of the island, and when near its foot, incline a little to the left.- Portland is about a mile below Shippingport; keep near the left shore at the lower part of New Albany, and avoid Falling run, then steer short across, to one third from the left shore, to avoid an ugly rocky bar below the mouth of the latter. . . . Five miles below Falling run commences a bar on the left: keep towards the right shore.”e The date of New Albany’s settlement almost coincides with that of the extension of the steamboat to the waters of the Ohio. But the steamboat did not suddenly take over all the western transport business. For many years after its intro- duction, barges, rafts, and flatboats still were common, par- ticularly in the down-river run. The Austrian traveler and fugitive monk, Karl Postl, recorded in 1828 that New Albany was “the resort of sailors, boatmen, and travellers, who go down the river in their own boats.”‘ What this type of tran- sient population did for the social life of the town can only be imagined, but it is suggestive of the cosmopolitan atmosphere, the hustle and bustle that is known to have marked the town during the later years of its attachment to the river. New Albany had ferries to connect it with life on the river before it had roads to join it with the scattered settle- ments in the interior. The ferry that was running when the Scribners came was a scow propelled by oars. It is not likely that this ferry made scheduled runs, but it was available for

5 New Albany, Indiana Recorder and Advertiser, Marc$S, 1827. The reference to New York as the home port of the boat beamg this name, is probably an error. dince the other boats mentioned were New Orleans boats, it is likely it also belongd to this group. 6 Samuel Cumings, The Western Pilot (Cincinnati, 182!5), 21-22. 7 Charles Sealsfield, The Amarica? As They Are (London, 1828) 41. When Karl Postl came to America, he wrote under the name 04 Charles Sealafield. 372 an occasional through-traveler or one of the farmers in the area who wanted to get his prduce over to Kentucky. The Scribners operated a horse-propelled ferry, composed of two flatboats and a tramp wheel in the center on which the horses paced to furnish the propulsion: A number of boats were licensed by the county officers to run back and forth across the river, and the frequent exchange of proprietorship suggesb that the business was not always too stable. Ferries operating from the town proper were taxed higher than the ones operat- ing from the outskirts. In 1823 the tax rates were: “Conner $15.00, Fitch $15.00, Newman $5.00, Oatman $5.00, Jones $5.00, Snider $5.00, Silver Creek ferry $5.00.”o There was some rivalry among the ferryboat operators, especially after roads were sufficiently improved to connect the settlement to the back country.10 The county commis- sioners endeavored to keep the rivalry regulated by setting forth a toll list applicable to all the operators : 4 wheel waggon or carriage $.SO Every horse of said waggon .eo Every 2 wheel carriage or cart .S7% Every single Horse, Mule or Ase .12% Every person exmpt the driver with team .12% Every head of meat cattle .12?4 Every horse of mid [?] carriage .26 For every sheep Hog or Goat .06 36 For every barrel of Flour or Liquids when taken over without the carriage or waggon 12% All other articles in the same proportioxG1 Serviceable roads to connect New Albany to the interior developed slowly during the first two decades. The early roads were little more than old trails which the settlers from time to time tried to mame from the forest. That the problem of roads was a vital one from the beginning is clear from the space devoted to it in the early records. The numerous county roads were laid out by committees appointed by the commis- sioners after the residents in a specified area had agreed that

A. and Kate Ford, Hie- of th8 Ohio Fa& Cities and Th& &tEYs ( vols., Cleveland, 1882), 11, 146. 0 Minutes of the Codseioners of Floyd Comty, May 18, 1828, p. 219. 10 Jamb Oatman used the pages of the New Albany ChrolriclS to keep the advantages of his ferry before the publlc: “Jao~bOatman wishes to inform those who. travel from Louisville to Vintenne~& corpdon, & to dl other places leadmg on those route4 that hu f ie the nearest & beet way, especially in the wet muon of the pear %fIt mdthe west mad, hle ferry is two miles be@ the New Albany em.. N. B. His boate am 88 god as any on the nver.” New Alby Chvontcle, November 18, 1820. 11 Minutes of the Commieeionere of Floyd County, 1819, pp. 28-39. New Albany a8 a Commercial and Shipping Point 378 the roads should be built. Labor for building and maintaining them came from those who would be directly benefited.** Sometimes the officials concluded that everybody in the town benefited; for a road built in 1819 they ordered “all the hands living in Township within the bounds of the Grant Line, Ohio River and Falling run to assist . . . in opening the same.”la Since the town was almost totally surrounded on its land side by the “knobs,” the task of building good wagon routea over the two to three hundred foot elevations was too formid- able to be tackled on aq elaborate scale. And, too, there were not many places in the far back country that attracted the New Albany settlers. The town of Corydon held some interest, for the state capital was there till 1825, and as early as 1820 the state government authorized an improvement of the trail to this place. After a few years of prompting, work was finally begun, and a macadamized totoll road, considered adequate for the contemporary needs, was completed. Fording was the customary procedure in crossing small streams, but in 1828 money was appropriated to build a stone-arch bridge on this road over Falling Run Creek at the lower edge of town. For many years this engineering achievement was regarded as “most excellent and substantial.”l* Vincennes, which had been the old Indiana territorial capital, was one of the few strategic settlements in the interior of southern Indiana, and it had long been the western terminus of a road running to the northwest from Louisville. The east- ern end of the Indiana stretch had originally been at Clarb ville, three miles up the river; but as New Albany rose to a higher place of commercial dignity, a branch of this road swung down into the town and then rejoined the original trail westward.16 The Vincennes Road along with that to Corydon became important not only for the increased immigrant travel on them, but also for the service they rendered in enabling farmers to get their produce to New Albany. In the following decades serious efforts were made to develop the roads and trails into real tentacles of commerce, and it was primarily the area touched by these two roads that.served as the best source of produce for New Albany merchants. Aa mentioned, the failure to maintain a suitable mad to Jeffersonville on the upper end of the Falls was partly re-

12New Albany ChronieL, March 31, 1821; FIoya Coimtv Gaattew (Chicago, 1868), 8. 1‘ Minutes of the Commissionere of Floyd County, Augu~t9,1819. 14 Ford, Hietmy of UM OhFaUS Cities, II, 153. 16 ZW, 162-58. 374 Indiana Magazine of History sponsible for the Indiana towns losing out in the natural trans- shipment business taking place around the Falls. In the early years the merchants of these towns were not sufficiently ad- vanced in their thinking to see roads as anything more than rambling channels into the interior for draining farm produce into local markets. Throughout the century New Albany and Jeffersonville were to remain separate economic entities, each evolving in its own independent manner. New Albany’s rivalry with other towns in the area became an important feature in the history of the next few decades, but even as early as 1820 there was evidence that the citizens of the town were aware of the economic threat of their neigh- bors. The most immediate rival of New Albany in the early period was the town of Providence, located one mile up the river beyond the eastern limits of the Scribner tract. This was almost exclusively the project of one man, Epapharas Jones, the Clark veteran who had refused to sell out to the Scribners. Jones maintained that his town had the same right to exist that New Albany had, and that, if anything, it had a more advantageous site because it was nearer the Falls and nearer to Louisville. There is a popular anecdote that he came down to New Albany every morning to see what progress his rivals had made during the preceding night.l6 The only offi- cially recorded evidence of the rivalry, however, must be gleaned from the old County Minutes. New Albany being the seat of the county government, the men from this town obviously controlled the governing ma- chinery for the entire county. They did not see fit to act against their own self interest by letting the town of Provi- dence prove a real threat to their own town. When Jones ap- plied for the right to run a ferry across the Ohio River, the board “upon mature deliberation and consideration, are of opinion that the said ferry ought not to be established, there- fore the motion of the said applicant is overruled.” When he applied for a road right-of-way, the reviewers reported: “The said Road if opened would be useless and bothersome.” Jones wm persistent with hi5 applications, and finally did succeed in obtaining the privileges he desired ; but he had to be exclusively responsible for maintaing the road and post a five hundred dollar guarantee that he would do s0.l’ Presumably Jones’s object was to tie his road in with the trail to Vincennes, drain

~ ~~

16 Ibid., 154. 17 Minutes of the Commissioners of Floyd County* Ma 22, 1821, p. 121; November 14, 1820, . 99-100;March 13, 1821, p. 13q; Aup& 14, 1821, p. 144; August 13, l& p. 143. New Albany as a Commercial and Shipping Point 376

the traffic down through his town, and thus cut off New Albany from the normal stream of interior traffic. Whether he was too late in getting his plans into action, or whether New Albany’s advantages simply outweighed those of Providence, the contest was relatively short. Within the next few decades New Albany had moved up the river and swallowed up Jones’s settlement.l8 Closely allied to the river and the Falls there is another theme running through the history of the Falls towns which played a part in the development of these towns that eludes measurement. This was the question of the canal-the canal around the Falls that would allow river craft to by-pass the hazardous rapids and proceed up and down the river unmolest- ed by the three mile obstruction.lg Could it be built? Should it be built? By whom? On which side of the river? These questions had been asked by rivermen as soon as the Ohio River showed promise of becoming a major thoroughfare to the West. Whatever the answers, they would have a vital effect on the t~wnsin the area which owed their raison d’dtre to the obstruction which the canal was proposing to erase. The question which first confronted the infant towns on both banks of the river was whether a canal would benefit or hinder their individual progress. There were considerations to be weighed on both sides of the issue : If the canal became a reality, the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and New Orleans traffic, now forced to halt in this locality, would pass by the Falls towns and thus remove them from their envious role as ship- ping terminals. If the canal were built, the traffic on the Ohio would increase at an unprecedented rate, and these towns,

1BThat Jones waa not too far wrong in his ambitions for his town can be ~eenby a limpse at modem Vincennes Street, which was the main &,re&of the old$rovidence. As New Albany expanded eastward to ita present limits Vmcennes Street developed into an uptown business sec- tion. The buhding of the bndge t~ Louisville in the last quarter of the century on the line with Vincennes Street gave thls section of New Albany an importance that would have prompted an “I told you so” from Epapharaa Jones. 19 This description of the Falle fpm Ford, H+tW of the Ohw FaUS Cities, I, 42: “Scarce1 a bTeak. or npple occurs m the tranquil flow of the great river, until Auisvllle is reached. Here an outcrop of limestone from the hidden depths-the mefoundation which underlies the Falls cities and the surroundin$ country on both sides of the river-thmwe itself boldly across the entire stream, prqducing, not 80 much a fall .as a ra id, descending for about three desin the central lme of the nver, before resuming the usual moderate pace and ~oothnessof the current. careful observations have been made of the ddference in the atand or height of water at the head-and that at the foot of the Falls, at different stages of the river. .. . It is . . . seen that the greatest fall, as reckoned between the extreme head and extreme foot of the Falls, is twenty-five feet and three inches, and that the fall steadily diminishes a8 the river rim.” 376 Indium Magazine of Hiatory as well as others up and down the river, would benefit on a scale heretofore unconceived. By the second decade of the nineteenth century it was obvious that some kind of canal would be built, and to hold the first view was no longer in keeping with reality. Cities above the Falls, most notably Cincinnati, were determined that they would no longer suffer the inconvenience to their shipping and to their pocketbooks. The only time the Falls, “whose terrors have paralized the arm of enterprize,”zo could be gotten over with any degree of safety was during the brief semiannual periods of high water. The wrecks strewn in the area were fair warning to those who had the idea of “shooting” the rapids when the river was at its normal stage. Surveys of the area had been made as early as 1793,*’and corporations for building the canal had been formed in the legislatures of both Indiana Territory and Kentucky as far back as 1804 and 1805.22 Henry Clay had laid the matter before Congress in 1807, and Albert Gallatin had made recommendations to the federal government in 11308.2~ But it was not until several years later that the increased traffic on the river, the pressure from the up-river towns, and the rivalry between the Ken- tucky and Indiana interests combined to make the building inevitable. When it became clear that the canal would be built, the important question came to be on which side of the river would the artificial channel run. If on the Kentucky side, Louisville, already having a head start on the Indiana towns, would draw whatever additional benefits accrued from the building. This would guarantee its future superiority over Jeffersonville and New Albany. If built on the Indiana side, the normal flow of traffic would have to cling more closely to the Indiana shore and give the Indiana towns the advantage. Indiana’s Ben- jamin Hovey had written a pamphlet back in 1805 which had done much to establish the belief that the canal would best be dug on the Indiana side. Henry M’Murtrie ridiculed this ab

20 Henry &I‘Murtrie, Sktche.8 of Louiu& and Its Envkons (Lo& ville, 1819), 177. 21 Gdbert lmla , To graphical Description o the WeshTerriimy of North Am- [2 vocNew York, 1793), I, 6l-65. 22 Francis S. Philbrick, The Laws o Zndiunu Tdtoly (Indiana lis, 1931 , 164-63.; Lawe of Kentucky, 18d-1807, pp. 22134 259-72, 3&4 The best outllne of the early efforts 111 both statea IS in tie Report of t& Indiana Canal Company on the Improvement of the Falla o the Ohw (Cincinnati, 1866 . A record of the canal issue 88 it appeared from time to time in the K!entuc~Legislature can be found in Ethel C. Leahy, Wb’8 Who 011 ths Ohio iver (Cincinnati, 1931). 28 Report of the Indiana Canal Company, 4-5. New Albany as a Commerciul and Shipping Point 8’77 tempt to publicize the rival shore, poking fun at Hovey’s mis- take in referring to the Indiana and Kentucky sides of the river as the “east” and “west” banks.% There was no popular plan at this date to bring the canal as far down as New Albany, for this town was really located a considerable distance below the worst of the rapids. But the Indiana visionaries saw the entire area between Jeffersonville and New Albany as one great river metropolis. At this time industry in the area was, meager, but there were those who dreamed of a day when the power of the Falls would be har- nessed for industrial purposes. Either side of the river was eligible for these developments whenever they should come, and the future prosperity of the towns would in part depend on whether it were to ba an Indiana or a Kentucky In 1818, after the proposals had lain dormant for years, a sense of immediacy seized the interested parties on both sides of the river and a race ensued to see which could get a canal dug first. The Indiana gr~~p,given at least moral support by Cincinnati commercial people, was the first to take active steps.26 The Jeffersonville Ohio Canal Company was incor- porated by the Indiana state legislature with a capital of one million dollars. In addition to this money, the new corporation received permission to raise one hundred thousand dollars more by a lottery. Still further state assistance came in the form of a supply of labor from the newly established state prison at Jeffersonvi1le.l7 Early in 1819 surveyors laid out the route and contractors went to work on what was then a gigantic excavation project. The canal was to begin a short distance east of Jeffersonville, go through the back edges of that town, and come out at the eddy at the foot of the rapids at Clarksville.28 It was to be two and a half miles long and one hundred feet wide. The twenty-five foot fall through the two and a half mile course was to furnish power to drive the future “manufactories.”

24 M’Murtrie, Sbtches of Louisville, 179-80. 25 Zbid., 171-92. M’Murtrie’s writings leave no doubt Fat at I+ he was concerned with this phase of the issue. A large section of his book could be cal!ed propaganda to swing the canal project to the Kentucky side of the nver. 26 Indiana House Journal, 1817, . 8. Cincinnati’s fear of LouidJle’a prosperity prompted merchants of tfe Ohio top su rt the Induma roject. See Benjamin Casseday, Hzstory of Lawvalle rguisville, 1852), !or details of this rivalry. 27 Laws of Indiana, 1816-1817, p. 219-28; Laws o Indiana, Speoial, 1817-1818, pp. 57-67; New Albany &mnkle, January f3,1821. 28 Ford, History of ULe Ohio Falls Cities, I, 47. 378 Indiana Magazine of History But the hard limestone turned out to be more than the contractors bargained for. It was necessary to blast out ten or twelve feet of stone over most of the projected course, and the task simply proved too much for the energies and facilities at hand. The project was abandoned and Kentucky was given an opportunity to go ahead with its plans without fear of further competition. What proved to be too big a job for the Indiana people did not deter those of Kentucky. In 1826 they received a new charter from their legislature and supported by capital from Philadelphia, as well as a $290,200.00 purchase of their stock by the federal government, they eventually carried their canal to completion in 1831.29 This canal was far from perfect, and its dimensional limitations were to cause much trouble in years to come. But it confronted the Indiana towns with a condition that was bound to affect their future develop- ment. New Albany and Jeffersonville passed up their oppor- tunity to build their own canal when such a project would have had a most determining effect on their relative status around the Falls. Louisville did not suddenly bloom forth after its canal was built-and the Indiana towns shrivel away. And had the canal been placed on the Indiana side there is no guar- antee that New Albany and Jeffersonville would have sur- passed the Kentucky city. On the other hand, some of the greatest cities of the West were in their infancy or not even thought of yet. Some of the leading towns of that day were destined to remain just towns, while inconspicuous villages were to become great cities.80 It was the building of the canal on the Kentucky side of the river which more than any other single factor determined that Louisville, not New Albany, was to be the great city of the Falls area.

29 Logan Esarey, “Internal Improvements in Earl Indiana,” Indiana Historical Society Publications (Indianapolis. 1895- 1. V (1915). 66-69. An Indiana hidrian, Lo n Esarey, in. d%mg the causeS of the failure said: “In their zerthe projectors overlFked two very important consideratiowneither the labor nor the eapltsl could be had in the vicinity at the tune and the amount of commerce was not eufficient to attract outside ca ital.” Htstoly of Indiana, (2d ed.; 2 vols., Indianap- olis, 1918), I, 267J9. *one population figures from the Cvof 1890 show what an open race there was among the future great cities of the We&. Chi- and other modeni leaders were not yet listed. New Orleans 27,176; Louis 10,049; Cincinnati 9,642; Pittsburgh 7,248; Louisville 4,012; De- troit 1,422; Cleveland 606.