LDS DOCUMENTS, PART 12
Jan. through Dec. 1899 & Aug. and Sept., 1900

Source: LDS Microfilm No. 0205602, Vol. 31, No. 1 (4 Jan 1899) - Vol. 31, No. 57 (27 Dec 1899), "The Ravenswood News", Ravenswood, Jackson county W. Va.

Issue dated Wednesday, 22 March 1899:
"The 'Avalon' passed down Friday morning and has entered the Charleston and Cincinnati trade."

Issue dated Wednesday, 5 April 1899:
"The new 'City of Pittsburg' came down at 11:25 Wednesday night and probably a hundred people watched on the bank to see her pass. The young people spent the time dancing in the Cotillion Club hall until she came and the older crowd waited at the Ravenswood House."

Issue dated Wednesday, 5 April 1899:
"Hon. Charles L. Brown and wife left Wednesday evening, on the 'City of Pittsburg' to make the round trip to New Orleans."

Issue dated Wednesday, 12 April 1899:
"Capt. B. T. Flesher, proprietor of the Excel Docks at Middleport, was here Wednesday, looking for timber. He reports business very brisk. He had bought 1,200,000 feet of lumber in four days and wanted 300,000 more."

Issue dated Wednesday, 16 April 1899:
"A telegram received at Murrayville, April 6, stated that Pearl Jones fell off a boat at Manchester, the day before, and was drowned. He left home on Wednesday to help bring a boat up from the Tennessee River. He was 17 years old. We have not heard of the recovery of his body."

Issue dated Wednesday, 26 April 1899:
"The towboat 'B. D. Wood' lost eight loaded coal boats on Belleville bar Thursday."

"Capt. C. W. Knox, of the 'Keystone State', left his boat here Saturday and proceeded to Marietta, by rail."

"Excursion to Pomeroy. Next Friday evening the Philomathean Literary Society will go to Pomeroy to discuss in joint debate with the East End Literary society the question 'Resolved that the United States is in greater danger from internal dissensions than from foreign complications'. Miss Lulu Sayre, E. L. Hogsett, and Claud Hall are the debaters for the society.

"The Society will go down on the steamer 'Sun', leaving here at 3 o'clock Friday afternoon, arriving at Pomeroy, at about 6:30. The boat will return immediately after the debate. The fare for the round trip is 25 cents and tickets are for sale by the Society."

Issue dated Wednesday, 10 May 1899:
"Just as Senator Brown was leaving on his trip to New Orleans on the 'City of Pittsburg' we exacted a promise from him to contribute a description and some observtaions of his trip. As time rolled on we feared he had forgotten it, but at last he found time to furnish us an installment. We publish it in this issue. If any one fails to read it we are sure it will be a misfortune. The article is of great interest and is full of information."

Issue dated Wednesday, 10 May 1899:
"To New Orleans by Water. Points of Interest Along the Route - General Observations. (Written by Charles L. Brown). Ed. 'News':

"A visit to New Orleans from Ravenswood by water is one of great interest, especially in the early spring during the annual inundation of the Mississippi, the 'great sewer', and 'father of waters'. One can form no adequate preconception of the mightiness of this vast body of turbulently moving water, now a mile wide and hundreds of fathoms deep and again stretched out to a width of fifty miles. Two or three weeks may seem a long time to spend on this great river by some unacquainted with its magnitude, but in that time one can get but a faint and inadequate idea of it, and the territory drained into its bosom. There is something peculiarly fascinating about our waterways and travel by boat. True there has been a decadence in the steamboat. The universal law of progression, which has governed in all other things, seems not to have asserted itself during the past quarter of a century in the matter of the steamboat. For instance, there is no finer boat than the 'City of Pittsburg' on all the length and breadth of the Mississippi; and yet, if one will carefully inspect her, and compare her with the fine boats of from 30 to 50 yearrs ago, she will suffer in the comparison.

"Improvement has been a desideratum in the matter of speed, and inventive genius has sought improved methods for the creation and utilization of steam and a bettering of the model to be propelled, but, thus far, it would seem, to have been a vain research so far as the Mississippi and its tributaries are concerned. More than a quarter of a century ago seven different boats ran from New Orleans to Cairo, a distance of 1024 miles (at that time) in less than four days, and more than fifty years ago (1844) the 'J. M. White' made this run in three and one-half days, and to St. Louis (1218 miles) in a little less than four days. Nearly 30 years ago the 'R. E. Lee ran to Cairo in three days and one hour and the 'Natchez' in three days and four hours. These old records have never since been equalled. And in the matter of the model and general architecture there has been remarkable conservatism and but trifling of any improvement. Still this mode of travel has its charms. There seems to be an innate love of water implanted in the human breast. from the savage who worshipped the Mississippi and trembled in awe at its mighty flood or when convulsed by the earth quake, to the learned engineer who sought to confine it within artificial banks, or the geologist studying the secret of its great age in the alluvial layers of earth over which it runs and spreads, and which deposit at Cairo (1000 miles from its mouth) is five hundred feet in depth, or the surveyor bewildered by the number of its tributaries and bayous and crooks and windings, or the poet impressed with the beauty of its many willow covered islands and the areas of unbroken cotton wool and cypress on either side crowned with mistletoe and smothered with the long Spanish moss hanging like whiskers on all kinds of trees, listening to the mocking bird, noting the splendors of a plumage afloat on its bosom, this great waterway has ever been a most interesting study; and yet it flows on, and will flow on as long as Time dumping into the Gulf each year 640 acres of sand and mud 240 feet deep. Just think of it if you can! A river made up of the waters from twenty-five thousand miles of navigable water pour into the gulf at its mouth. The river, (it has been observed), if the Missouri be included, is forty-three hundred miles long. It narrows and deepens at the mouth. It shortens itself by 'cutoffs'. It moves bodily sidewise, and, according to Mark Twain who used to be a pilot on that river, 'Nearly the whole of that one thousand three hundred miles of Old Mississippi river which La Salle floated down in his canoes, two hundred yearrs ago, is good, solid, dry ground now.' Islands appear and disappear. 'Island No. 10', noted in the history of the late war, no longer exists. A new island threattens to cut off Vicksburg. Some islands grow rapidly from a few to thousands of acres. Once in a while the boat will leave the great river and run through a narrow channel no wider than the Little Kanawha and regain the old river probably 30 miles below. In a few years this new channel or 'cutoff' will be the Mississippi proper and the old bed will fill up or become a lake or bayou. The river is now two hundred miles shorter than it was 200 years ago. Towns which were on the bank are now miles away, others were washed away. It is remarkable how this river sweeps away the trees along its banks. One will see great trees sink foot by foot down 50 feet into the water leaving the gren top only visible after a few minutes and then be carried away by the swift current root and branch. Thousands of trees on either bank were thus carried away with their green leaves just put out. The roots of the trees seem to afford no adequate hold upon the earth which produced them. The soil is very sandy and the eddies of the river cut it easily and undermine the trees. Great sand bars form in a night and the channel constantly shifts. A pilot of to-day would not be able to steer a boat twelve months hence. The government, however, has done much to mark out the channel by post-lights of which there are 484 between Cairo and St. Louis. These in the time of the flood are maintained with difficulty. One will see occasionally the keeper of the light with a small tent built on piling up in the air, or upon rafts. And the few little miserable houses one will see in stretches of hundreds of miles of wilderness are generally built on rafts or boats, to float in freshets and provision is made for a few hogs and other live stock thereon. Where this precaution is not taken the houses are submerged and lost or ruined.

"Cotton is the product in the very small and meagre settlements and bales of cotton will be found raised above the flood on piling awaiting shipment by some boat brave enough to risk her existence in trying to land in the timber where such temporary wharf may be, against a swift current. The Captain of the 'Pittsburg' with the wisdom of an old navigator declined an earnest hail from one of these wharfs on the tree tops, about a quarter of a mile in the timber where about 20 bales of cotton and other traps were piled for rescue and shipment. (To be continued)."

Issue dated Wednesday, 31 May 1899:
"Ravenswood To New Orleans by Water. Points of Interest Along the Route - General Observations. (Continued from a previous letter by Charles L. Brown).

"Our rivers will always be for very great utility as highways for the promotion of commerce and the people of the Ohio Valley as well as of the entire country will be peculiarly blessed when the great scheme for the improvement of the Ohio by locks and dams are finally consummated. As an illustration of the importance to the South as well as to the North of river transportation as compared to transportation by rail, we remind our readers of a fact mentioned originally by the 'Cincinnati Commercial' with reference to a single towboat, and which towboat by the way is still running, and we passed her on the Mississippi with another of her great fleets of coal. This boat has been running many years and it would be interesting to know how many trips she has made to New Orleans and how many bushels of coal she has transported. We quote as follows:

"'The towboat 'Jos. B. Williams' is on her way to New Orleans with a tow of thirty-two barges, containing 600,000 bushels (seventy-six pounds to the bushel) of coal exclusive of her own fuel, being the largest tow ever taken to New Orleans or anywhere else in the world. Her freight bill, at 3 cents a bushel, amounts to $18,000. It would take 1800 cars, of three hundred and thirty-three bushels to the car, to transport this amount of coal. At $10 per ton, or $100 per car, which would be a fair price for the distance carried by rail, the freight bill would amount of $180,000, or $162,000 more by rail than by river. The tow will be taken from Pittsburg to New Orleans in fourteen or fifteen days. It would take one hundred trains of eighteen cars to the train to transport thi one tow of six hundred thousand bushels of coal, and even if it made the usual speed of fast, freight lines, it would take one whole summer to put it through by rail.'

"Among the points of interest along the route below Cincinnati are Louisville, Troy, (formerly Macksburg), Evansville, Cairo, New Madrid, Memphis, Helena, Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans.

"Louisville is a beautiful and substantial city surrounded by a fine agricultural country, and would be a desirable place to live in. Two hundred and fifty-six miles below Cincinnati, at the mouth of Anderson's River, on the bank of the Ohio, stands the former home of Abraham Lincoln in a good state of preservation, with a large outside chimney abutting against it. It was here where Lincoln's father had a ferry. It is a small place now called Troy, a very pretty location and the Ohio at this point is a mile wide. Evansville is another beautiful and flourishing city worth visiting.

"About eighty miles below Evansville is a point called 'Cave-in-Rock' opposite an Island of the same name. This is a beautiful place. There is a large cave in limestone rock at the edge of the river, about 125 feet long, 20 feet wide and 10 feet high. Immediately above this is a second cave, entrance to which is by a small hole in the ceiling of the first. There are thousands of names inscribed on the walls as it has been a noted place for 100 years. Originally this cave was concealed from the river by trees growing at its mouth but which have been destroyed. It was (it is said) at one time the headquarters of the notorious John Murel, the horse thief, negro-stealer, murderer and counterfeiter, whose history doubtless is familiar to your readers, and a better hiding place could not be found. There was a ferry nearby operated by Murel's confederates and many a person supposed to have money was murdered and sunk in the river by the ferryman. Fragments of human bones can now be found near that cave supposed to have been the bones of the victims of Murel and Ford buried there in the sand.

"Paducah is said to be the second town in Kentucky. It is quite a large town at the mouth of the Tennessee. It is a coaling point for steam boats and we laid there all day. A number of the young ladies and gentlemen came down to the boat and enjoyed the time with music and dancing. The river at this point was about ten miles wide, the country on the opposite side being low and subject to inundation. Cairo is a great business and railroad point which at the time of our visit seemed to be on a plain about ten feet below the Ohio and Mississippi rivers protected from destruction by levees surrounding it, something on the order of an immense circus ring. There are some fine hotels and business houses here. They use artesian water from wells put down to a great depth through the alluvial deposits and which are ever flowing.

"New Madrid is a small place on the Mississippi. This was settled in 1780 by the French who expected to make a great city out of it. But very little of the original site is left, having been washed away by the river. It was the scene of the great earthquake of 1811 which caused the bottoms to sink eight feet in that locality, thus suggesting to us a possible explanation of the inequalities of the surface of the river bottoms near Ravenswood and elsewhere.

"Memphis is not only the leading city in Tennessee but also of the South. It has the appearance of a northern city. It is well paved, full of fine business houses and enjoys evident prosperity. It presents a commanding appearance from the river with its esplanade several hundred feet wide along the bluff and covered with large elevators and warehouses.

"Vicksburg is a very old settlement. It is said that before the advent of railroads cotton was hauled 200 miles by wagons to this point. It is well located above high water at the mouth of the Yazoo, which river with its tributaries comprise 800 miles of navigable water through a very fertile country. Vicksburg is quite a trading point, its cotton receipts, meaning cotton actually compressed there, average 70,000 bales. It handles 100,000 tons of coal annually. The exchange bought and sold by its banks foots up a total of $40,000,000. The Standard Oil Company has its depot here and the Armour Packing Co. is similarly provided for and distributes immense quantities of its products from this base of operation. While it has railroads, Vicksburg is pre-eminently a river town, and it boasts the largest fleet of river craft south of St. Louis. Some 22 boats operate in and out of Vicksburg with a total tonnage of 20,000.

"Vicksburg is noted as the scene of one of the most desperate sieges in history and of important military events that decided the fate of the Southern Confederacy. About a mile north of the city on the east side of the Yazoo, on which it fronts, is one of the most magnificent of the National cemeteries, in which repose the remains of 16,618 Union soldiers of whom 12, 719 were unknown. This cemetery is a masterpiece of landscape engineering and is a grand memorial to those who died for the Union. A series of terraces rise from the river. Avenues of trees bordered with Spanish oaks lead in and out among these terraces and these are supplemented everywhere with tropical plants and picturesque patterns of blooming flowers. Cosy nooks here command a vast panorama that stretches across the peninsula to the Louisiana shores.

"Baton Rouge is a pretty little place, the capital of Louisiana, situated on high land, and well shaded by trees. Its capitol looks like a castle with turrets and towers, but is a cheap structure of wood. It was suggested, it is said, by Walter Scott's romances. The legislative halls are cheap affairs as compared with any of our northern halls of like character. The country from here to New Orleans is beautiful and embraces sugar plantations exclusively. There are many fine plantations under a high degree of cultivation, controlled by brains and intelligence.

"New Orleans has a population of 300,000. It handles 500,000 bales of cotton per year. Its exports amount to about $75,000,000 per year. It imports about $15,000,000 per year. Railroads handle in and out 4,000,000 tons per year. Foreign and domestic exchange annually handled by the banks, $220,000,000. Receipts of sugar about 1,200,000 barrels per year. To those interested in the industrial features of the city-s life, New Orleans will appeal with force. Its miles of river front harbor the shipping of the world, and during the winter season the flags of all nations float from the peaks of the ships loading and discharging freight, while the river steamers represent the commerce of 20,000 miles of navigable waterways. The steamer landing is at the foot of Canal street where the levee is covered for miles with cotton, sugar, rice and molasses. Near the bend of Thalia street is the fruit landing, where the product of the tropics, bananas, pine apples, coconuts, lemons, etc., are discharged daily from ports on the gulf and the Caribbean sea. Below Canal are the wharves of the line flying to New York, little further those of the line to Liverpool. The lugger landing further on swarms with Greeks, Italians and French fishermen. The sugar sheds upon the levee, the elevators, sugar refineries, cotton compressors, rice mills, ice factories, etc., are all industries of interest to the tourist. There are several cemeteries, one of which, the Metaire, is one of the finests in the world. The dead are deposited in magnificent mausoleums above the surface of the ground. These depositories of the dead are made of marble or granite and appear to be much more expensive than the residences of the living. New Orleans is an old-fashioned, crowded place, with narrow streets and upon the whole does not create a very favorable impression to one who has seen places like Cleveland, Denver or Detroit. Still there is a fine country surrounding it and one might learn to like it.

"It is but a few miles out to Lake Pontchartrain, a place of resort. This lake is of the same dirty chocolate color as the Mississippi and almost gives one the ague to look at it. Surrounded as it is by miles of low, swampy land, full of slime, filth and stunted vegetation, it is not an inviting place by any means. But there are some pretty streets in New Orleans and some few fine residences and other nice places; among the latter I must mention 'Jackson Barracks' situated on the river near the suburbs. These are beautiful quarters, kept scrupulously clean and white, with ample lawns and courts and shaded walks. On the levee in front a soldier constantly patrols. I visited these 'barracks' and here I had the pleasure of meeting Hiram Long of Ravenswood. He recognized me at some distance and gave me a cordial greeting. Away off there in a strange clime, 1600 miles from home and friends, enlisted as a soldier of the National Government, with a possibility of never meeting an acquaintance again, and at best, obliged to be absent for many months, it cannot be wondered at that he was glad to see me and inquire of home and friends. Hiram looked exceedingly well and he makes a handsome soldier in his uniform. He desired that he might not be forgottten by his friends during his absence.

"I will close with some facts I gathered relating to the chief crop of the South, cotton, of which 10,000,000 bales are annually produced on 20,000,000 acres. The seed is sown in April in straight furrows made with a small plow. Picking begins in August and lasts until the approach of spring. The cotton is gathered in bags suspended from the pickers' shoulders. It is spread out, dried and ginned. Every large plantation has a gin which separates the seed from the cotton and then it is pressed and baled for market. It is claimed that there is but little profit in this crop of late years. The following is an estimate as made by one planter of a year's expense account:

"Basis, one acre, yield, 450 lbs. list.

"Preparing land for seed $2.00
Planting 3.00
First plowing 1.25
Second plowing 1.00
Third plowing 1.00
First chopping 1.50
Second chopping 1.50
Laying by 1.50
Ginning 1.00
Picking 7.50
Hauling .75

Total $32.50

Cotton Seed. A phase of the cotton industry is the manipulation of the cotton seed for oil, as food for stock and as a fertilizer. Twenty years ago there were few if any mills making cotton seed oil and meal. Now the annual product is worth $75,000,000. In 1861 the material used was a nuisance. It is now worth two cents for every pound of cotton. It has been worth on an average about $15 per ton. The refined oil is popular for cooking purposes. The oil is said to be sweet, wholesome and fine, and preferred to hog's grease by many for the kitchen. It is now known that it is used under the name of 'olive oil', the cotton seed oil being exported to Italy and brought back labeled as 'olive oil'. It is said that it will make anything from butter to axle grease, and half the vasoline and ointment we procure from the druggist is made of this wonderful fluid to say nothing of toilet soap, a large percentage of the finest of which is made from this material. The price of this oil varies from 20 to 60 cents per gallon. The seed is worth $8 a ton at the gin. The products of the seed as now utilized are oil, meat, linters, hulls and ashes. The seed is worth from $5 to $20 a ton, making a very fine cattle food and great fertilizer. Linters is the second quality of cotton taken from the seed and used for cotton batting and shoddy goods. The hulls formerly used for fuel are now sold for feed at $3.50 a ton. The ashes are used for the fertilization of tobacco land.

"It is generally supposed that but few potatoes are produced in the South. This seems to be a popular error so far as the Vicksburg territory is concerned as hundreds of thousands of barrels are annually shipped out of there."

Issue dated Wednesday, 14 June 1899:
"The Popular Belle. W. Arste, publisher of the water-ways 'Journal of St. Louis', the great marine publication of this country, recently made a trip up the Ohio River. He was entertained over Sunday at Middleport on the 'Valley Belle' concerning which boat he writes:

"The 'Valley Belle', one of the trimmest little packets afloat, is doing a big business between Marietta and Gallipolis. She is owned and commanded by Capt. 'Wick' Hayman, one of the finest, whole-souled good fellows to be found anywhere. James Williamson is clerk; Cad Price, who has steamboated on the lower Mississippi and Yazoo rivers is in charge of the engine room; his cousin, Jack Price, is pilot, and Scott Greenlee is steward. The crw on this boat is like a happy family - all working together harmoniously and for the interests of the boat. Long may the 'Valley Belle' live."

Issue dated Wednesday, 21 June 1899:
"Ed. McLaughlin and brother, pilots on the 'City of Pittsburgh', arrived Monday to visit the former's wife, who is here visiting her parents, G. W. Prudence and wife."

"Capt. Del Matthewson, of Centra City, has already developed into one of the swiftest wheelmen in this section, and will enter for the road with many backers here on July Fourth. - 'Huntington Herald'."

Issue dated Wednesday, 5 July 1899:
"Did He Go Ashore? We can't say that it is the truth, but a gentleman down the street tells us that not long since a Ravenswood young man took a fair lass skiff riding. While under the mellow moon-light the maiden looked so bewitching that the youth timidly remarked, 'If we were not in a skiff, I would kiss you.' The young lady looked around somewhat surprised and commanded, 'Take me to the shore at once.'"

Issue dated Wednesday, 13 December 1899:
"An incident occurred last Thursday evening which goes to show that at times ignorance is bliss. A couple of men working for the Marietta Torpedo Company came down the river in a skiff with 165 quarts of nitro glycerine. They tied their skiff near the wharf and left it there all night alone with its cargo of explosives sufficient to have demolished every building Ravenswood. Had that been known there would have been little sleep in town that night."

Issue dated Wednesday, 27 December 1899:
"The 'Little Queen' leaves for Middleport at 6:30 a.m. and returns at 7 p.m. every day except Sunday."

Issue dated Wednesday, 27 December 1899:
"Millwood. The 'Oneida', the regular Ravenswood and Middleport packet passes Millwood at 7:30 a.m. down for Middleport, and returns passing Millwood at 6:30 in the evening, for Ravenswood."

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