Keelboats Ohio River

Museum projects are 'hands-on' history

To start the dugout canoe now taking shape outside the Ohio River Museum on Front Street, museum historian Bill Reynolds worked with a tool not available to his pioneer predecessors.

Reynolds used a chainsaw to shape the bow and stern of the canoe from the 16-foot long log and remove large chunks of poplar wood. He expects the rest of the process - however long it takes - to be done by hand with axes and other tools.

"It's hard as heck," said Reynolds. "You think of the frontiersman, in need of a canoe to move his goods or his family. What he has is an axe and possibly a tomahawk or small hand tool."

And in many of the accounts Reynolds has read, those frontiersmen could cut, hollow out and fashion tree trunks into canoes in a relatively short amount of time.

"They're incredible. How did they do that?" he said.

The large trunk Reynolds and others are working on was donated to the museum by Jack Haessly, owner of Haessly Hardwood Lumber Co. in Lower Newport. The work to transform the donation into an authentic dugout canoe is as much of an exhibit as the finished product.

"This thing could be ongoing for several years," Reynolds said.

Visitors can not only see the work being done, they might get a chance to participate. Reynolds said interested parties can contact him or education specialist Glenna Hoff at the Campus Martius Museum, 373-3750.

Among the first to get a crack at the canoe will be children participating in the second Fridays at the Museum event this week. Participants will go to the River museum to learn about boats, make their own model keelboat and do a little work on the larger boat.

"We try to make (the activities) what they normally wouldn't do if they came with their school class," Hoff said. "It's giving them hands-on historical experience."

Children can still sign up for this week's event. There will also be two additional Fridays at the Museum events in July. The first, on July 8 at Campus Martius, will focus on Pioneer cooking, with children preparing period foods outside then having them for lunch. The second, slated for July 22 at the River museum, will deal with wild animals, with children actually making "edible scat."

"They like anything gross and disgusting," Hoff laughed. "It's made out of candy and cereal and things like that.

50 YEARS AROUND THE WORLD: QUAKERS 7 - A SLOWLY GATHERING STORM

Pulaski County:  When Mercer and his sons claimed their land along the banks of the Tippecanoe River they may not have been aware of its already rich history.  For centuries it had been the life blood of the Potawatomi Indians;  these Native Americans had fished its waters, canoed from village to village, knew intimately its every twist and turn.  Later pioneer hunters and trappers had taken freely of the country’s plentiful wildlife.  On arrival the top job on a settler's ‘must do’ list was to erect a dwelling, usually a rough hewn log affair  with wood taken from surrounding forest.   While the men gathered to assist each other, their families lived in the wagons they had arrived in.   Then corn and vegetables were sown, and before long where once had been prairie or forest was transformed into flourishing farmland. Much of this new land was occupied prior to the sale of officially public land; their occupants, including our Browns were called squatters.  Some newcomers, described as unscrupulous speculators, deliberately set out to rob these hard working farmers of their untitled land.   The Quaker families weren’t unaware of this and set out to ensure they had proven title. When Indiana’s Pulaski County was formally established in 1839 a Board  of Commissioners was formed that saw  several local men appointed to office, among them were many related in one way or another to the Browns;  Peter Demoss and Jesse Coppock, George Smith, and  Moses Washburn who was appointed as one of the Inspectors for White Post Township. This had been common practice in England for many years and properly governed would in many cases have saved a needy child from starvation or worse, or provided a sound grounding in a trade for others.  And it may have been practiced by our particular Indiana Browns in instances where I found young children with differing surnames included in their family census entries. In the 1860 census for Noble Township in Cass County, both Levi and his father Mercer have young children not of their immediate family living with them.  In both instances the Brown’s are shown to be relatively wealthy.  Were the ten and 12 year old youngsters distant kin:  or, as a charitable gesture were they indentured servants? But times were changing.

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Kentucky's Ohio River Boundary: from the Great Miami to the Wabash

The Keelboat Age on Western Waters