I found the following information just before we closed and had scheduled this post to go live on March 5th next year. I just can’t keep it under wraps that long! This is BIG! We have had the date of the first steamboat landing wrong for decades, if not over a century! So, to celebrate the opening of the new library, here is what I found!
Forgive me for how much information I am about to throw out here. I hope I make some sense as I go into the minutest detail about this boat’s arrival.
I was looking at what the newspapers reported on Henry Bry and found a weather report from Ouachita parish done by him, along with what plants were blooming and the birds that were migrating. This appeared in the Orleans Gazette and Commercial Advertiser on May 27, 1819, page 2. The above last paragraph of his report made me sit up and take notice. The official first landing of the James Monroe is recorded as May 1, 1819. The story goes that was the day the citizens decided to name the new town after the boat! A few years ago in 2019, that date was celebrated during the “Year of the River” as Monroe’s 200th anniversary naming day. It turns out May 1, 1819 wasn’t the first time the James Monroe landed at the Fort. Indeed, Dr. Williams mentions in his book, “Spanish Poste d’Ouachita the Ouachita Valley in Colonial Louisiana and Early Statehood”, page 278:
The James Monroe docked at the wharf at Fort Miro on May 1, 1819. It may have made one previous voyage to the area as Dr. R. F. McGuire, who arrived at the post about that time, stated in his diary that it was the vessel’s second voyage.
I found a transcript of Dr. McGuire’s diary on the Louisiana Digital Library and he says:
When I arrived at this place I found the steam boat Monroe at the landing upon her second trip which was the first steam boat that ever came to Ouachita.
Dr. William’s hunch was right. The first steamboat to ever arrive at what became Monroe was the James Monroe on March 6, 1819, almost two months before the official date!
I now think the May 1, 1819 date to rename Fort Miro is wrong, due to the below ad I found just a few days after the first landing. Notice anything strange?
Ad for the James Monroe in the Orleans Gazette and Commercial Advertiser March 22, 1819, Page 1.
Yep. A month and a half almost before the official name date and Fort Miro is already being referred to as “Monroeville”. McGuire states in the first paragraph of his diary that he had arrived at Alexandria from Kentucky in December of 1818 and left the town on a sailboat for Ouachita on March 13, 1819 and arrived at the former Fort Miro on April 3rd. The above ad is for the trip where he saw the James Monroe docked at “Monroeville” on it’s second trip. So, from deduction, the first trip of the James Monroe, when it arrived at Fort Miro was March 6, 1819 and the Fort changed its name in honor of that first trip, not the second. We have never had a correct date of that first trip (thank you Henry Bry!). The above ad appeared in March, but the settlement first started using “Monroeville” on courthouse documents May 6. By the end of the month, the name had been shortened to Monroe in official documents. The next year, the town incorporated. Another little detail that contradicts a part of the legend is the name of the captain. The legend states that first landing was captained by J.A. Paulfrey. Clearly, the above ad states the Captain’s name as “Capt. Mills”. I see Paulfrey’s name as the captain of the boat James Ross at this time.
This ad appeared in the Lexington (KY) Weekly Press, November 12, 1817, Page 3. There is the name of the builder/owner a “Mr. Whiting”. The November 26, 1817 issue states it had left Shippingport (now part of Louisville, KY) for New Orleans on November 16th. A New Orleans paper reported on it’s second trip down from Shippingport in a February paper. The first captain reported in those papers is a “G. Turney”. I see ads in New Orleans and Lexington newspapers all through the first half of 1818, then the James Monroe sunk.
Missouri Gazette and Public Advertiser (St. Louis, MO) June 12, 1818, page 3.
Capt. Reed informs us that the Steam-Boat James Monroe, bound to Louisville, (Ky.) struck a sawyer and sunk near the mouth of the Arkansas. $25,000 in specie was saved from the wreck, but it is supposed the cargo, consisting of a a [sic] valuable assortment of merchandise is lost.
The August 1, 1818 Natchez Gazette states it was undergoing repairs. By October, the Oct. 2, 1818 Louisiana State Gazette (New Orleans) reported it was back on the river trade. In the February 8, 1819 LA State Gazette, a 1/3 interest in the boat was being sold by Peabody and Chamberlain. This must have been when the route changed. By May 18th, it was being advertised as a Bayou Sara boat in a New Orleans paper. Starting in 1820, the ads show she was back on the Ouachita river trade. Then in the November 27, 1820 Courier (New Orleans) was this ad.
I see a steamboat James Monroe mentioned in 1836 newspapers, but I am unsure if it is the same boat.
The earliest reference to the naming of Monroe legend appears in the Daily Telegraph (Monroe, LA) April 16, 1886, sixty seven years after the event.
Leave a comment