A Portrait of the 1826 Steamboat Tecumseh

FALL 2009 59 T he history of early river steamers is poorly recorded. Records of the riverboats that plied the Ohio River before 1850 consist largely of lists containing the vessel’s name, where it was built, the date, tonnage, and a few words about its disposition. Fortunately for researchers, William M. Lytle (1859-1944) preserved documents of the federal government’s Bureau of Navigation. First published in 1931, the list has been expanded by subsequent editors and remains a basic reference for anyone interested in early steam vessels. It provides only a skeleton history for thousands of steamers, but will not satisfy anyone wanting a narrative account of any particular boat. Unless the boat was involved in a major disaster, such as Moselle or Sultana, the odds are slim that one will find additional primary sources. Occasionally, early writers recorded such details in a source that has survived, generally accounts written by elderly rivermen who served on a vessel and thought its history was worth remembering. This was true for the steamer Tecumseh. In the June 10, 1869, issue of the Cincinnati Commercial appeared a short item reprinted from the St. Louis Republican referencing a lithograph of Tecumseh, drawn by A. McLean of that city and published by Wolff and Haynes from a painting owned by the St. Louis Pilots’ Association. (Fig. 1) The news item listed a number of details about the boat and its crew. Three days later, a correction appeared in the Commercial written by a correspondent who signed himself “N.” His personal recollection of Tecumseh suggests he may have been part of its crew. He also noted that the boat’s original clerk lived near Cincinnati.1 Six months later, N submitted a more detailed account of this pioneer riverboat . Published in two parts in the Commercial on January 8 and 10, 1870, the article roundly criticized the inaccuracies of the St. Louis article. Among others, that the surname of the boat’s builder was Stephen Weeks (the previous article had identified him as Wix) and the 1869 lithograph was a poor likeness of Tecumseh. (In truth, N might here have been too critical, for except for a few details it agrees with a second likeness of the vessel. See Fig. 2) N went on to claim that while still in service a French artist had drawn a portrait of the boat at the request of its clerk, Ira Athearn. Athearn gave the drawing to a friend of the boat’s A Portrait of the 1826 Steamboat Tecumseh A PORTRAIT OF THE 1826 STEAMBOAT TECUMSEH 60 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY captain, who lived in Shippingport, Kentucky, near Louisville. Athearn could not remember the man’s name, but N believed it might have been Sam McKenzie. At the time of N’s recollection, the location of the painting was unknown. The input of Thomas J. Weeks, the son of the boat’s builder, and who helped to build the hull, was essential to N’s contentions.2 In 1826 Cincinnati was yet far from being the West’s Queen City. It was in many ways a provincial frontier outpost. Incorporated only seven years earlier, the city’s population was then fourteen thousand. It boasted a college, orphan asylum, museum, and contained around 2,500 buildings, the best of which were four-story brick. It had neither city hall nor bridge spanning the Ohio. The water works was privately owned and depended on wooden pipes for delivery purposes. At the same time, Cincinnati was a fine place for business and many enterprising men were coming west to make their fortunes. Among these ambitious individuals were Stephen Weeks and his sons, Harry, John, Thomas, and Sylvester,3 who established their boat yard in Fulton on the bank of the Ohio River about threequarters of a mile east of Broadway Street. When they commenced their operation in the early 1820s, the steamboat trade was in its infancy and the demand for new boats was limitless. Not surprisingly, competition was strong, and new boat yards already lined the riverbank in Fulton. Such competition kept prices low. Figure 1. Steamboat Tecumseh. This photograph shows the early lithograph of Tecumseh known to be...