The changed river

Ohio River at New Albany, Indiana

One looks at the Ohio River between Kentucky and Indiana and sees river traffic through the day and night and roadways crossing the river for auto and truck traffic.  The Ohio River has changed over the history of this nation.   When Abraham Lincoln was growing up the Ohio River was different.   Thomas Lincoln was in debt.  He decided to move the family to Indiana.  In the year 1816 Thomas Lincoln began the trip.  At Joeville the family crossed the Ohio River likely using the ferry that linked Indiana and Kentucky.   The crossing was done in obscurity.  The family was poor and stressed. The Lincoln family settled in Southern Indiana in Spencer County, Indiana.   

History has come full circle.  The new bridge at Louisville, Kentucky is named the Abraham Lincoln bridge.   Every February students in school learn about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. 

Many of the hymns of the Christian church were written by the poet Fanny Crosby.   The era of Fanny Crosby was the era of the steamboats on the nation’s inland waterways.  This was about twenty-four years after the Lincoln family ferry crossing at Joeville in Breckinridge County, Kentucky.  Steamboats usually had to stop at the Falls of the Ohio at Clarksville, Indiana and unload any goods and passengers.  The river dropped twenty-six feet at the falls.  The Portland Canal around the Falls could rarely accommodate the steamboats of the day.  If the river levels were high the falls could be crossed and the river journey continued if going toward New Orleans was the direction of travel.

Some steamboat captains were frustrated with the unloading of goods and passengers at the falls of the Ohio.   Some captains took the risk to run the river over the Falls.  Many of these steamboats wrecked scattering goods and passengers in the river. 

The scene became a disaster scene as injured swimmers tried to get to safety.  It happened because of danger at the Falls.  The Falls of the Ohio was one of places of great danger in the nation.

One learns from history of the risks that people took and the consequences.   There are dangers in every time.   Some people in history were wise and navigated around the dangers of the time.  Some people took great risk and caused not only danger to themselves but to others that depended upon them.