Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

sailed down the Ohio at the end of April 1801 with the river at an ideal springtime high, dragging anchors at the ‘Falls of the Ohio’ to guide his vessel stern-first over the middle chute of the rapids to open water and then sailing 1,000 miles onward to New Orleans and the sea. Additional ocean ships would be built by both Steven Devol and Joseph Barker at Marietta (McCullough, 2019, 136-7). According to the Liverpool Saturday Advertiser for 9 July 1803, the Dean of Philadelphia (built in Pittsburgh) was the first vessel that ever came to Europe from the western waters of the United States. “A conservative estimate put a value of one million dollars on the sailing craft built on the Ohio during the first eight years of the last century” (Ambler, 1932, 97-8) The size of the Ohio watershed should not be underestimated, since the total flowrate of the Mississippi River at its confluence with the Ohio more than doubles. The cost of transporting goods in wagons east to the Atlantic states by land was so exorbitant that the southwest Ohio/Mississippi waterway system became the main highway for excess agricultural produce and manufactured goods east of the Appalachians, and security of the Port of New Orleans became vital for American trade. Between 1800 and 1840 two million Americans would migrate westward towards the Mississippi, many of German, Scots, and Scots Irish origin, populating countryside, towns, and cities along the way. The migrant and commercial one-way flatboat was uniquely suited to circumstance and era. Commonly called Ohio flatboats, they were also named Kentucky flats or Mississippi flatboats, depending on location, size, function, and navigational challenges of specific rivers. There existed a bountiful supply of timber at the up-river construction sites and river flowrates sometimes supported voyages of up to one hundred miles a day. Original investment in construction could be recouped at a profit. “At the end of their journey, most flatboats were broken apart and sold as salvage beams, sidewalk planks, and furniture stock that built the boomtowns along the water route. Cincinnati’s first schoolhouse, the first residence in Maysville, Kentucky, and countless Creole cottages in some of New Orleans’s most charming neighborhoods were built with ‘bargeboards’ from dismantled flatboats.” (Buck, 2022) This riverine migration far exceeded the four hundred thousand that would venture westward after 1840 by covered wagons on the Oregon Trail. 1785-95. The Northwest Indian War. The Northwest Territory, west of Pennsylvania and between the Great Lakes and Ohio River, was ceded to the US in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Previous agreements by the French and British with tribes had supported Indian rights in the region. Later, when US migrants laid greater claims on the region, the southwest Great Lakes Indian Nations became united in 1885 as the Northwestern Confederacy and were supported by the British military in resisting settler incursions. The British wished the region serve as a buffer-zone between the US and BNA and happily backed the Indians in their struggle. Tribes became openly hostile in 1790 , and a poorly organized US military responded, suffering embarrassing defeats by the Indian Confederacy between December 1790 and November 1791, causing George Washington to charge General Anthony Wayne to build a more professional fighting force in 1792. Wayne's subsequent campaign led to a major victory in 1794 at the Battle of Fallen Timbers near the southwest shore of Lake Erie and the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, ceding extensive Indian territory to the US (McCullough, 2019). The 1794 Jay Treaty, signed in 1795, further clarified British perception of their territorial rights, and their need to withdraw forces north of the border set through the Great Lakes. 1790. Slavery in the US was distasteful for many Irish emigrants, who easily empathized with slaves in these early times. The United Irishmen drew parallels between mistreatment of