Bier und Brot, The Wehners of Southeast Missouri has been published
and future editions are not anticipated. But additional postings will appear
here from time to time.
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Our boat, Queen of the Mississippi, a diesel-powered
sternwheeler with no crates, barrels, or bales (2017).
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Mary Frances and I just finished a
paddlewheel boat trip from St. Louis, Missouri, down the Mississippi and up the
Ohio to Pittsburgh, duplicating (except for St. Louis) in reverse, a journey made by Nicholas Wehner 170 years ago.
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| Today, Pittsburgh's Point State Park marks the meeting of the Allegheny and Monongahela (2017). |
On 31 May 1847, 22-year-old “Nicolaus” Wehner, arrived in Baltimore on the Barque
Virginia from Germany with a gun, two chests, and his bride to be, Clara Schneider. Nicholas and Clara traveled from Baltimore
to Pittsburgh, where the Ohio River (“Gateway to the West”) begins at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers.
From there they traveled 981 miles westward by boat to the Mississippi,
and then 52 miles upriver to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. They journeyed by a steam-driven sidewheeler (rather than a diesel-driven sternwheeler used today), probably accompanied by caged chickens, barrels of lard, bags
of coffee, bales of cotton, crates of cabbages, hogsheads of tobacco.
The next few
postings continue with Nicholas and Clara's journey and its contrast with ours.
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