The River Ran Backwards and Other Adventures of Robert R. Livingston's First Steamboat on the Mississippi River

Mississippi River icon

It is hard to imagine the Mississippi River without its iconic steamboats beating their way up and down stream. Even Mark Twain once wrote, of the steamboats on the Mississippi; “When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman.” But before all of those boats began to ply the waters there must have been a first steamboat on the river. What was the story of that boat? Why are you reading about the Mississippi River this blog about the Hudson River Valley? The short answer to that one is that, its my blog I'll change the rules if I want.

Robert R. Livingston, had probably been
planning this for years.

Within days of the first successful voyage of the North River Steamboat in 1807 Robert Fulton and Robert R. Livingston’s thoughts had turned to spreading their new form of transport to the Mississippi River. Fulton wrote “I think it would be well to write to your brother Edward to get information on the velocity of the Mississippi, the size and form of boats used, the number of hands and quantity of tons in each boat, the number of miles they make against the current in twelve hours, and the quantity of tons which go up the river in a year. On this point beg him to be accurate.”

Robert Fulton
For once not the craziest part of the story

It took Fulton and Livingston four more years to complete their plans but in 1811 they began construction of the New Orleans at Pittsburgh. They had added another partner to the endeavor in the form of Nicholas J. Roosevelt, a distant uncle of Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt had helped Fulton and Livingston in the construction of the side mounted paddle wheels for the North River. In Pittsburgh he supervised the construction of the new boat which would be 146 feet 6 inches long and 32 feet 6 inches wide. The engine was built in New York and carried in pieces overland to Pittsburgh because there were no facilities for constructing such an engine in the city at the time.

The steam boat made its first successful test trip around Pittsburgh on October 15, 1811. Just five days later, on October 20 the New Orleans set out for New Orleans. Aboard her were Nicholas Roosevelt who would act as captain for the trip, his extremely pregnant wife Lydia and their first daughter. Nicholas Baker was the engineer for the trip and Andrew Jack was the pilot. There were also six deck hands, two maids for Lydia, a cook, a waiter and a large Newfoundland dog named Tiger.

A large Newfoundland Dog. Newfoundland Dogs have webbed feet which
makes them excellent swimmers.

On October 28 the New Orleans docked at Louisville. The steamboat would have to wait at Louisville nearly a month before the water rose high enough in the Ohio River to allow the boat to traverse the Falls of the Ohio, which were more like a series of shallow rapids than an actual waterfall. During the wait Roosevelt took the steamboat on several small excursions including a return to Cincinnati to prove that the boat could travel upstream. On October 30 Lydia Roosevelt gave birth aboard the New Orleans to a son they named Henry.

The New Orleans enters the Mississippi

They departed Louisville in late November to make their way over the Falls and after stopping to resupply into the Mississippi River. It was hoped that the Mississippi River would be relatively easy to cruise down. Andrew Jack had experience on the river and knew the channel well.

It was not an easy cruise to New Orleans.

On December 16, shortly after the New Orleans had entered the Mississippi, the New Madrid earthquake hit. This earthquake, which was actually an extended period of severe tremors, has been estimated up to an 8.0 on the Richter scale basically reshaped the Midwest. The entire channel of the Mississippi was erased, the course of the river changed dramatically. For about an hour after the most severe tremors the river actually ran backwards. Jack, the pilot, had no idea where he was and soon found himself navigating the boat over areas that only hours before had been fields or forests. Whole sections of the shore were dropping into the river, islands appeared and disappeared.  Tiger the dog would often give warning of a fresh tremor by putting his head in Lydia’s lap before it hit.

The New Orleans had to navigate a river full of obstacles and unknowns after
the earthquake

A few days after the worst of the tremors the New Orleans arrived in New Madrid itself. Houses had fallen into the holes that opened in the ground. Many people asked to be taken aboard but the steamboat had neither the space for all the refugees or the means to supply them.

The New Orleans finally arrived in New Orleans on January 10, 1812. It had spent a total of 259 hours cruising on the trip and averaged 8 mph. The time announced for the trip did not include all of the time lost stopping to wait for the right conditions or for other reasons.

In less than two weeks the New Orleans set out on the first voyage along the route that Livingston and Fulton had envisioned for it, New Orleans to Natchez and back. The ship could make 3mph upstream and 10mph downstream meaning she could complete a round trip every three weeks.  Fulton and Livingston began to sell stock in their steamboat which realized a profit estimated to be about $20,000 in its first year in operation. Edward Livingston also helped his brother and Fulton get a monopoly on steam travel in the territory. Violating the law would mean having to pay Fulton and Livingston $5,000 for each violation and forfeit any unauthorized steamboats to them.

The Chancellor did not live long enough to enjoy the monopoly on the river to its fullest; he died in 1813. The New Orleans met its end in July of 1814. She snagged a log or some other obstruction near Baton Rouge which punctured her hull. The ship sank but her engine was removed and used in a later vessel of the same name.

In 1989 author Clive Cussler and his National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) set out to try to find the final resting place of the original New Orleans. They surveyed the shore and were able to come up with a “ballpark” location for the boat but unfortunately the Army Corps of Engineers had laid a steel and concrete revetment mattress over the site in 1971 to help control erosion. This made finding an exact location using various forms of metal detectors impossible.

1911 "replica" of the New Orleans
I mean they are both boats...

Sources:

NUMA Expeditions New Orleans www.numa.net

A Critical Account of the Beginning of Steamboat Navigation on the Western Rivers of the United States, Pittsburg Legal Journal, Vol 59 No. 42 (21 October 1911) pp 570-591

The Rambler in North America by Charles Joseph Latrobe 1832-1833

The Sea Hunters II by Clive Cussler and Craig Dirgo G. Putnam’s Sons 2004

"Wholly Addicted to His Pleasure": Lord Cornbury's Dress

Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon and Viscount Cornbury is perhaps the most maligned royal governor that the colony of New York ever had. His reign from 1702 to 1708 was marked with greed, bribery and rampant misuse of public funds. Yet the thing he is most remembered for is this:

Lord Cornbury as remembered by history. If I was more tech savvy Aerosmith's "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" would be playing right now.

That’s right. If one was to believe the rumors then Lord Cornbury really liked to dress in women’s clothes. Some historians believe that

Edward Hyde as he probably wanted to be remembered

Cornbury truly did parade around New York in full gowns. Other historians believe this was a started to discredit the governor by his political rivals in New York, chief among them Robert Livingston, 1^st Lord of Livingston Manor.

Livingston had been a fan of Cornbury’s when he first arrived in the colony, writing “My Lord is Extrem hearty to redresse all grievances, we must reckon it a duble mercy that God has been pleased to send him at this juncture.”[i]

Robert Livingston certainly had a way with words

Cornbury soon lost Livingston’s support though. After a harrowing trip to England that involved being briefly seized by French privateers and set adrift, Livingston spent about three years getting his accounts settled and getting his offices confirmed by the Queen. When he returned home in 1706 he found that the colonists were united against Cornbury who had been badly mismanaging the colony. When Livingston presented his commission as Secretary for Indian Affairs to Cornbury, Cornbury refused to recognize it despite Queen Anne’s signature. Cornbury apparently preferred to keep the money due to Livingston for his own use.[ii]

William Lowndes: this has nothing to do with Cornbury but this guy had at least 25 kids. So yeah...

 

 In June of 1707 Robert Livingston wrote to William Lowndes of the Treasury;

“Tis said he is wholly addicted to his pleasure…his dressing himself in womens cloths commonly [every] morning is so unaccountable that if hundreds of spectators did not daily see him it would be incredible.”[iii]

Livingston's letter was the first in a series of letters to officials in England describing Cornbury’s odd habit. Later that year Lewis Morris, ancestor of Chancellor Robert R. Livingston’s good friend Gouverneur Morris and owner of the Morrisania estate in the Bronx wrote his own letter. It said:

Lewis Morris; helped ruined Cornbury over New Jersey. We might need to question his judgement.

“The scandal of his life is…he rarely fails at being dresst in Women’s cloaths every day, and almost half his time is spent that way, and seldome misses it on Sacrament day, was in that garb when his dead Lady was carried out of the Fort, and this not privately but in face of the sun and in sight of the Town. But I’ll not enter into his Privacies, his Publick Vices are scandalous enough.”

 In 1709 Morris wrote about Cornbury again:

“...that is his dressing publiqly in womans cloaths Every day and putting a stop to all publique business while he is pleasing himself with that peculiar but detestable magot.”[iv]

It should be noted that Morris was also an opponent of Cornbury’s. Cornbury had suspended Morris from the New Jersey provincial council. Morris was not reinstated until Cornbury was done as governor.

The last about the governor’s dressing habits came from the pen of Elias Neau, a Huguenot refugee turned merchant and catechist. Neau wrote:

“My Lord Cornbury has and dos still make use of an unfortunate Custom of dressing himself in womens cloaths and of exposing himself in that Garb on the Ramparts to the view of the public; in that dress he draws a world of Spectators about him and consequently as many Censures, especially for the exposing himself in such a manner all the great Holy days and even in an hour or two after going to the communion.”

Neau went one step further than the other writers and commented on Cornbury’s style as well:

“I am assured that he continues to dress himself in women’s cloths, but now tis after the Dutch Manner.”[v]

Not only was Cornbury dressing like a woman but he was dressing like a Dutch woman, not even a good English woman!

            Historian Patricia Bonomi assures us that the rumor of Cornbury’s cross dressing did not gain much traction in England or elsewhere in the colonies, yet some people did hear of it. A merchant from Boston wrote to an associate in New York;

 Baron von Bothmer: Liked to imagine Cornury in drag.

“Muliebri Veste uti (women’s clothing), is instanced in as against the Law of Nature. It has been reported that a certain Gentleman at N. York used to practice that abomination. I should be glad to know the certainty of it.”[vi]

Several years later Hanoverian diplomat Baron von Bothmer wrote that he had heard that Cornbury “thought it was necessary for him, in order to represent her Majesty, to dress himself as a woman.”[vii]

            So it is at least possible that a royal governor of New York dressed like a woman. Perhaps he enjoyed it or, as Bothmer suggested, perhaps he took his job representing Queen Anne in the colonies a little too seriously. It is also possible that he was just an unpleasant man brought down in part by the combined efforts of Robert Livingston and a few other colonists whom he had offended. Either way Cornbury was replaced by John Lovelace, 4^th Baron Lovelace in 1708. Cornbury returned to England, spent some time in debtors’ prison and was briefly an envoy to the court of Hanover. He died in 1723.

---

[i] Bonomi, Patricia U. The Lord Cornbury Scandal p59

[ii] Leder, Lawrence H. Robert Livingston p 200-202

[iii] Bonomi The Lord Cornbury Scandal p 158

[iv] Bonomi The Lord Cornbury Scandal p160

[v] Bonomi The Lord Cornbury Scandal p 161.

[vi] Bonomi The Lord Cornbury Scandal p 162

[vii] Bonomi The Lord Cornbury Scandal p 17

Dangerous Companion: Chancellor Robert R. Livingston and the Traitor's Wife

Benedict Arnold
Traitor



          The story of Benedict Arnold’s treasonous actions at West Point is so well known that the man’s very name is synonymous with traitor in the United States. He planned to turn over the fort at West Point along with all the soldiers stationed there to the British in exchange for a great deal of money and a commission as a British officer. But how did Arnold get command of the exact position the British needed him to give up? The answer is his wife.

Peggy Shippen Arnold
She looked so innocent

            Arnold married Margaret Shippen (commonly known as Peggy) of Philadelphia in in 1779. Almost immediately she helped him contact the British to begin arranging the terms under which he would turn his coat. Their contact was a former suitor of Peggy’s, Major John Andre, whom she had met while the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777 and 1778. In a touch of irony for the Livingston family, Andre had been captured by General Richard Montgomery at Fort Saint Jean in Canada in 1775. Had he not been released later in a prisoner exchange perhaps none of what followed would have happened.



John Andre, self portrait done shortly before he was hung



            Peggy also began making friends with important Americans in the city in order to further her husband’s aims. One of these men was Chancellor Robert R. Livingston. Livingston was a fan of Arnold’s before Peggy got involved. His brother-in-law Montgomery had fought with Arnold in Canada. His brother Henry had praised and in turn been praised by Arnold for actions at the Battles of Saratoga. Livingston thought Arnold was a competent and active officer and much superior in comparison to Israel Putnam, for instance, who the Chancellor spent most of 1778 trying to have removed from the army for his inactivity. In February of 1780 when Arnold’s court martial sentence for corruption was sent to Congress for approval the Chancellor was one of only three members of Congress to vote against it.

            Peggy and the Chancellor spent a great deal of time together in Philadelphia. By the summer of 1780 he was convinced that Arnold was the man to command West Point, which was one of the most tactically important positions in the country as it commanded the Hudson River but for the Livingstons represented the only real barrier between their land and a repeat performance of the destruction wrought by the British army in 1777. On June 22, 1780 the Chancellor, long accustomed to providing welcome military advice to the General, wrote to George Washington:

A French Plan of West Point in 1780
nary a stream or a swain to be seen

“I might presume so far I shd beg leave to submit it to your Excellency whether this post might not be most safely confided to Genl Arnold whose courage is undoubted—who is the favourite of our militia, & who will agree perfectly with our Govr”

General Philip Schuyler of Albany also put his support behind Arnold to command West Point and soon Washington responded to the Chancellor that he would give command of the fort to Arnold at the first opportunity which came in August of that year.

            The Chancellor’s closeness with Peggy Arnold had not got unnoticed though. On September 4, 1780 Arnold’s sister Hannah wrote him a gossipy letter, now in the collection of Harvard, from Philadelphia that included the following warning:



Robert R. Livingston
dangerous companion

“As you have neither purling streams nor sighing swains at West Point, tis no place for me; nor do I think Mrs. Arnold will be long pleased with it, though I expect it may be rendered dear to her for a few hours by the presence of a certain chancellor; who by the by, is a dangerous companion for a particular lady in the absence of her husband. I could say more than prudence will permit, I could tell you of frequent private assignations and of numberless billets daux, if I had an inclination to make mischief. But as I am of a very peaceable temper I’ll not mention a syllable of the matter.”

It is important to note here that Arnold’s sister was a bit of a busy body. No one else has ever accused the Chancellor of anything more than flirtation with pretty ladies. Furthermore Arnold probably knew and encouraged Peggy to spend time with the Chancellor as it furthered his goals.



            Arnold was now in command of West Point though and events began to happen very quickly. On September 20, 1780 Andre came up river on the Vulture to make the final arrangements with Arnold. They met on September 21. On September 22, a distant cousin of the Chancellor’s, Col. James Livingston was in command at Verplanck’s Point. He took offense to the Vulture idling in the river in front of his post and ordered his men to open fire with a small cannon. They holed the Vulture several times forcing her to fall back down the river. Andre could no longer return to New York City by river and was forced to try to go overland. He was captured and documents he carried revealed the entire plot. On September 24 Arnold slipped aboard a British ship. Peggy was sent to New York City to join him a few days later. Andre was hung as a spy on October 2.



            In the immediate aftermath of the revelation some accused both Schuyler and Livingston of being involved with the plot to turn over West Point to the British. Both men had pushed for Arnold to receive the post and some no doubt remembered how close Peggy and the Chancellor had been in Philadelphia. Washington however refused to believe that either man could have had anything to do with the plot and the matter was dropped.



In the mid to late 19th century Clermont or John Henry Livingston
purchased this candelabrum depicting the capture of Andre which
now resides in the library of Clermont State Historic Site

The letter from Hannah Arnold to Benedict Arnold can be viewed on Harvard’s website here



A transcription of the letter from the Chancellor to George Washington can be viewed here

For more information see

Secret History of the American Revolution by Carl Van Doren

Treacherous Beauty: Peggy Shippen, the Woman Behind Benedict Arnold’s Plot to Betray America by Mark Jacob and Stephen M. Case.

The Lord of Vice

John R. Livingston. If you were looking for a soundtrack for this post I would suggest "Big Pimpin"

John R. Livingston was an unrepentant businessman. During the Revolutionary War he had made quite a bit of money selling supplies to the continental army. Anything from gunpowder to rum. After the birth of the new nation John moved into a more tantalizing trade. As one historian put it John became the “Lord of Vice” in New York City. Another, less generous historian has called him a “whoremaster”.

John had cut his teeth as a merchant during the Revolutionary War. After a brief stint in the army during the Canadian campaign of 1775 he returned to his family’s land in 1776 to rebuild his father’s gun powder mill. He went on to buy and sell rum and other supplies for the army. John joined Benedict Arnold in a scheme to buy property from New York City loyalists which left him scrambling to prove his patriotism after Arnold turned his coat. He also bought up large quantities of depreciated Continental currency and encouraged his brother Robert R. Livingston to get Congress to buy it back for its full value.

To put it as simply as possible John R. Livingston was a businessman who placed profit above almost everything else once saying “Poverty is a curse I can’t bear.” So it should come as no surprise that when he saw an opportunity for profit in New York City after the war he jumped in with both feet.  

Edward Livingston mayor of NYC, brother of pimp

He began buying up property by 1802 and continued for years at every opportunity. He bought some of his brother Edward’s properties at auction when Edward fled the city following a scandal while he was mayor of the city. He later converted some of his older brother, Robert’s, city property into brothels after the Chancellor’s death in 1813. He even turned one property he bought from his mother, Margaret Beekman Livingston, into a den of iniquity. Most of John’s properties were on Thomas, Chapel, Anthony and Orange Streets making him the “most prolific entrepreneur of five points vice.” By the time John died in 1851 he owned at least 30 houses of ill repute. From a purely business perspective renting property to ladies of the night makes very good sense. There is little chance they would not have money on hand to make the rent, which is what John was mainly concerned with.

Five Points 1831

Some of the most famous courtesans of the day worked in John’s brothels including Abby Mead, Rosina Townsend, Mary Wall and Elizabeth Brown. Despite this John was still powerful enough that most people left his name out of condemnations of the trade. An 1836 publication described one of his houses as “so genteel in its exterior” but when on to say it was “one of the gateways to death and hell.” The houses, they claimed, were “knowingly let out for such purposes by one of our most respectable and pious citizens”, yet John was never mentioned by name.

Five Points in 1827, some of the women in this painting probably worked in John's houses

Only one time was John really called out for his activity. In 1830 a group of neighbors filed a complaint against some of his houses on Thomas Street. The complaint was not that the houses were being used as brothels but that the girls were displaying themselves in the windows of the houses nude. The complaint was against the madams who ran the houses but listed John as their “agent”.

John’s brothels also garnered the wrong type of attention in 1836 when a prostitute was found

The murder of Helen Jewett

murdered in her room. Helen Jewett had been struck in the head three times by a sharp object, most likely a hatchet, and set on fire. A suspect, Richard P. Robinson was quickly apprehended. During his trial most of the witnesses against him were other prostitutes. The Judge in the case ordered the jury to disregard their testimony. Robinson was soon found not guilty setting the dangerous precedent that it was fine to murder a hooker as long as you paid her first.

John R. Livingston lived in a golden time in American history when being associated with less than ethical business practices did not necessarily preclude a person from being a leading citizen. Despite having been known to have been involved in the prostitution trade in some form or another and being peripherally involved in several scandals John is remembered, when he is remembered, as a businessman and little more.

Sources and more information:

The Murder of Helen Jewett by Patricia Cline Cohen

City of Eros by Timothy J. Gilfoyle