Little Egypt Heritage Articles Stories of Southern Illinois © Bill Oliver 12 March 2006 Vol 5 Issue: #10 ISBN: pending Osiyo, Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen of Little Egypt, The other day, someone mentioned that I was old enough that stories from my youth are “stories of old”. Well, I guess I am an ancestor to my grandchildren and stories of my youth do go back a bit. Speaking of my youth, I was reading a bit of history about Abraham Lincoln which took me back in time and the adventures I did and did not experience. At a time when I had left from under my parents roof but still much under their influence, I rather wanted to take a summer and float down the Ohio and Mississippi River from old Fort Duquene to New Orleans. Not on a flat boat or raft but in a canoe. Dad didn’t really like that idea and gave me many reasons why I shouldn’t attempt it. Dad was Superman in my eyes – I thought that danger was not a vocabulary word that he recognized. He had a story about jumping out of the upper level of a barn into a hay stack, so I had to try that – it really sounded like fun. It was a long way down to the top of the “stack”, but I closed my eyes and dropped. I guess I should have kept my eyes open to see where I was going. I landed on the stack all right – right on the edge and slid right off that mound like it was greased. What a surprise and since I wasn’t quite prepared for this, I sprained an ankle. Feeling like it would have been just my luck to have found the “needle” in a haystack, I hobbled off to the house for an ice pack. Dad said it was not a good idea for a person to attempt that long a trip by one’s self. About that we agreed, for didn’t “Huck” have “Tom” and/or “Jim”. It really would be better to have someone to share with. So, I made plans, for equipment and food. My idea was to have a maximum of four of us and a minimum of two of us. Plans were made even to avoid staying in “rough” areas by preparations to lash the canoes together and sleeping anchored in the middle of the river. Well, the trip never came to reality. My salesmanship failed to gain partners to join in the adventure. However, way back in April 1828 Abraham Lincoln and a young companion floated down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Indiana to New Orleans on a flatboat. I can imagine them yet passing Fort Massac [or even stopping there]. History, nor any writings of Mr. Lincoln, doesn’t mention whether they “tied” up there or not. In my mind, they would have stopped there, because years earlier a certain George Rogers Clark left there to secure the Illinois Territory from others. He had crossed the swampy terrain that would remind one from northwestern Ohio of the Great Black Swamp. There is no footnote in history to confirm or deny it; still they passed by it. Using a bit of logic, about the timing of this trip and the history of the old northwestern territory, one has to ask the question – was there anything at this point in the river to cause these young men to stop there. For Clark was there in 1778 – fifty years earlier. The old fort had once again been abandoned and this time for a dozen years, or nearly. Massac City would not be platted for another eleven years and Metropolis also hadn’t been established. In 1855, Governor John Reynolds reported that Fort Massac still had strong bastions. So there was still something to see as the young men passed by. Still if they were to land anywhere, they surely would have sought out Shawneetown, as it was a settlement of 200 or more people. Then there is Cave-in-Rock, the infamous den of outlaws. Paducah, Kentucky [then called Pekin] was almost across the river from the Fort. They also soon came to the meeting of these two great waterways and continued their adventure southward to New Orleans. Towhead Island [Barataria Island] might have enticed them to tie up. Young Abraham Lincoln was employed sometimes by James Gentry, the wealthiest man in Pigeon Creek, Indiana. Lincoln had worked for several people including Mr. Gentry. The two lived less than a mile and a half from each other. Mr. Lincoln, at the right mature age of sixteen, operated a ferry boat crossing the Ohio River. During this period of time in his life, Mr. Lincoln established a reputation for physical strength, humor, adroitness and cleverness in reply [repartee], intelligence and reliability. And, at nineteen years of age, Mr. Gentry hired Mr. Lincoln to travel with his son, Allen, on a flatboat loaded with produce to that Cresent City. The two left from Gentry’s Landing on the Ohio near Rockport. With youthful vigor matched only by the Spring of the year they set off to do adventurous things. How, as a youth, I wanted to experience the joy – I possessed the spirit. Dad must have read the same account that I had, for along the way when the two lads had camped for the night they were set upon by a half dozen or more folks with an idea of taking the flatboat from them. Though they were both wounded to a degree, they managed to chase the intruders away. They quickly untied and floated out for fear that the intruders would return, maybe with reinforcements. One can conjure up the dialogs these two young men indulged in from this trip. By June the young men had returned to Indiana. The experiences they had – seeing the exotic beauty of the scenery, seeing the cultural and racial differences that existed, the varied dress of this mix of humanity, and the commercial activity they witnessed – including slavery – had to impress them. In the summer of 1958, the “Pride of Indiana”, a flatboat, stopped at Fort Massac, Illinois during the “reenactment” of the trip mentioned above. The flatboat, 43 by 16 feet, loaded with wheat, flour, grain, tobacco and such, was built by the Rockport, Indiana Jaycees, to make the 13 hundred mile trip to commemorate the trip of 1828. The difference between these two trips down the rivers was that the new “flatboat” had different balance and was powered by two 35-horsepower motors. Oh, yes, and they had a stove and refrigerator operated by gas. The newspaper article was quick to assure the readers that the bunks, however, were as hard as the ones the two young men slept on 130 years earlier. History also doesn’t tell us whether these two slept aboard or camped ashore. Nor does it tell us if they ever traveled at night – called “night-running”. Sure, history doesn’t tell us much more about this adventurous trip down the great rivers. Many possibilities are there, and our minds can conjecture what our hearts desire as if we were one of the participants of the adventure. e-la-Di-e-das-Di ha-wi nv-wa-do-hi-ya nv-wa-to-hi-ya-da. (May you walk in peace and harmony) and Wado, Bill -=- PostScript: Other sites worth visiting: http://www.deannedurrett.com/codetalkers.html PostScript: = = = = http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/SOIL http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/ILMASSAC http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/state/BillsArticles/LittleEgypt/intro.html