[14] The Hunt brothers sold a wide variety of items, ranging from cotton and woolen goods to nails and gunpowder, to local customers.

French said he could construct steamboats that would run five miles an hour, against the current of the Mississippi river, and an arrangement was made with him by which he sold to the company the right to use his patent west of the Allegheny mountains.

"[18]In December 1812, Elisha and Caleb Hunt transported Daniel French, his three sons and a steam engine from Philadelphia to the valley of the Monongahela River in western Pennsylvania.

The services of French were engaged, shops were erected at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, tools for working in iron were made, logs were cut into plank with whip saws, and with the ferry boat above mentioned as their model, they began to construct the steamboat Enterprise.

Elisha Hunt wrote, "The little office connected with our Brownsville store was the rendezvous of many intelligent and enterprising young men, and there all the recent inventions for improving travel, etc., were argued and discussed.

[23][24] Latrobe responded to the arrival of the Enterprise at Pittsburgh by publishing a public notice threatening the shareholders of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company with litigation.

He planned to process raw cotton and wool into finished goods in Bridgeport and then ship them to southern ports aboard the company's steamboats.

By August, the shareholders of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Co. had decided to expand their business by adding another larger steamboat to make round-trip voyages between New Orleans and Louisville.

[33] Duncan argued that this federal patent protected all of the defendants – French, Shreve and the shareholders of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Co. – from the charges by the monopolists.

A letter announcing the news of Judge Hall's decision and proclaiming its significance to the growth of steamboat commerce and the economy of the West was published in a Louisville newspaper.

[36] From the arrest and seizure of May 1, 1815, throughout the preliminary legal procedures, to the last testimony before Judge Hall during the Enterprise trial, Grymes and Duncan represented opposing positions.

Out of court, however, they worked together as aides-de-camp for General Andrew Jackson during the recent siege of New Orleans and as conspirators engaged in profiteering from illegally seized Spanish property.

[40][41] Historian Thomas Shourds used firsthand information provided by Elisha Hunt, the principal founder and shareholder of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company, to chronicle the final days of the Enterprise: "The Enterprise finally reached Shippins Port, below the Falls of the Ohio river, and the river being low above, and freights dull, the Captain anchored the boat in deep water, and hiring two men to take care of her, went by land to Pittsburg.

One of the men went ashore and the other got drunk and neglected the pumps, the weather was hot, the seams of the boat opened, and the Enterprise filled and sank to the bottom, where, as Elisha Hunt, in a letter written in the year 1851, says 'she still is.'

During August of 1816, an announcement that assets of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company would be sold was published in Brownsville's newspaper, the American Telegraph.

[43] During the waning days of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company, Caleb Hunt exchanged his share of stock for a fine English watch.