Flatboat

A flatboat (or broadhorn) was a rectangular flat-bottomed boat with[1] square ends used to transport freight and passengers on inland waterways in the United States.

Yoder's ancestors immigrated from Switzerland, where small barges called weidlings are still common today, having been used for hundreds of years to transport goods downriver.

Other flatboats would follow this model, using the current of the river to propel them to New Orleans where their final product could be shipped overseas.

[6] Flatboats carried a variety of goods to New Orleans, including agricultural products like corn, wheat, potatoes, flour, hay, tobacco, cotton, and whiskey.

Indiana native May Espey Warren recalled that as a young girl she saw a flatboat loaded with thousands of chickens headed down the Mississippi.

[7] Many American cities along the river network of the Mississippi boomed due to the opportunities that the flatboat trade presented.

Flatboatmen brought tales of antebellum mansions lining the Mississippi and of the Cajun culture of lower Louisiana.

[8] The invention of the steamboat greatly reduced the costs of flatboat journeys, and caused the trade to boom through the antebellum period.

[9] The flatboat trade stayed vigorous and lucrative throughout the antebellum period, aided by steamboats (and later by railroads) in returning crews upriver.

Steamboats and railroads simply carried freight much more quickly than flatboats, and could bring cargo upriver as well as downriver.