Tag: history
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The “City of Louisiana”: A Floating Hospital in the Civil War
By Gregg Andrews In 1857, the St. Louis and Keokuk Packet Line added the City of Louisiana, a sidewheel steamboat, to its growing fleet on the Upper Mississippi. Built expressly for passengers rather than freight, and named for the town of Louisiana, Missouri, the boat’s hull was built in Madison, Indiana, and towed to St.…
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The Murder of a Slave on the Ralls County Harris Plantation
For nearly two centuries, the blood-splattered fate of Anderson has remained a dirty secret.
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Food for Hannibal’s “river rats” and “negroes”
“I have never seen a store like it. Cluttered with heaps of cheap groceries of every description, shelves sagging under the weight of canned goods of ancient vintage, flour piled high in sacks on the plank floor, candy greasy with age, and cheese that swells and moves! Foodstuff rotting in barrels and in sacks, dirt…
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Doctor Espanto
One of the slickest hucksters and patent medicine peddlers on the Mississippi River. You’ll meet him in Shantyboats and Roustabouts.
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The St. Louis Levee and W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues”
“I slept on the cobblestones of the levee of the Mississippi. My companions were perhaps a thousand men of both races.”
Lost River Stories 