On or near this date, Lewis and his crew move down the Ohio River in the stretch between Augusta, Kentucky and New Richmond, Ohio. While here, Thomas Rodney describes settlements, a ferry crossing, and treats a sickly settler with mercury pills.[1]Because of a gap in Lewis’s journal, his exact location for this date is unknown. He was at Letart Falls on 18 September and arrived in Cincinnati on 28 September. Based on Thomas … Continue reading
Chilo-Bradford Ferry
The horses in the photo are powering this ferry’s side wheels. The ferry was located about eight miles below Augusta.
The morning foggy but not so bad as usual. We weighed ankor at day light . . . . [There is] something like a village, and a ferry over the river. There are good settlements on both shores along here which is about 8 miles below Augusta.
—Thomas Rodney, 5 October 1803[2]Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), 98.
Mercury Pill Treatment
. . . weighed [anchor] and went a little lower down to a spring on the Kentucky shore near a house and came to and got diner. The owner of the house come on board and asked assistance for a sick child which lay ill with worms. I went up and prescribed and furnished mercury pills which I got of Shields, and the woman gave some eggs . . . . It is very sickly all along the river on the bottom land and all its inhabitants are very pale colord.
—Thomas Rodney, 5 October 1803[3]Ibid., 99.
A Fine Tract of Land
In my rout on shore before diner I passed through a fine tract of land. The chief groth was honey locust and cycamore. The honey locust trees were frequently 5 and 6 feet in diameter.
—Thomas Rodney, 5 October 1803[4]Ibid.
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Notes
| ↑1 | Because of a gap in Lewis’s journal, his exact location for this date is unknown. He was at Letart Falls on 18 September and arrived in Cincinnati on 28 September. Based on Thomas Rodney’s journal of his similar trip down the Ohio and Cramer’s 1802 river guide, The Navigator, one conjecture is that Lewis stopped for the night near New Richmond, Ohio on this date. |
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| ↑2 | Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), 98. |
| ↑3 | Ibid., 99. |
| ↑4 | Ibid. |
