Topic starter
05/05/2009 11:52 pm
don't know where else to put this. There seems to be some differences as to when the Cora #1307 was snagged. Way has it as 5 May 1851, all the standard Missouri river sources has it as 17 April 1851 (most likely all copying what Joseph LaBarge put in his list for Chitenten Corps Annual report about 1894) but Lytle gives her lost as snagged 4-28 1850 below Council Bluffs, Iowa. with the lost of 15 lives. There may be some confusion with Cora # 1306 as one source puts the loss of Cora #1307 as being in Howard's Bend above St. Charles on the lower river.
To bad that I never got beyond 1849 in reading the Missouri Republican. There were no papers in Omaha or Council Bluffs if I remember right in this early date.
These two Cora's seem to get confused in the records and maybe even in the news papers of the times. Cora #1306 first home port was New Orleans and reported abandoned 1850. and Cora # 1307 first home port was St. Louis. I found a good description of her in the "Missouri Republican" 30 Sept. 1846 Page 2 col 1. Any one what to short this out?
06/05/2009 1:29 pm
This isn't that uncommon. I have a number of boats in my database that have exactly the same sort of confusion about when and where they were lost, and that are confused in records with other boats of the same name, even official records. Sometimes it stems from the time lag as news, or newspapers were passed up and down the river. Papers picked up the news and printed it with their own publication date rather than the actual date of the event. If that paper is the one that survived, or that a researcher had access to, the date can be recorded incorrectly. I have also found locations with several different names or descriptions of what turns out to be the same place. Also, it was not uncommon to salvage and rebuild boats, sometimes after a considerable time lapse, leading to one source recording the original loss and another recording a later loss of the same vessel. There are a number of these in Lytle. And, as you have noted, sequential boats of the same name, same owners, same master, etc. only add to the confusion of those of us who try to sort it all out lifetimes later. I have a series of boats named Black Hawk and another series named Swan that I am having a devil of a time sorting out. Then there are the boats, like Rantidotler, or Gem of the Antillies, that were known as well by their nicknames as their registered ones.
06/05/2009 2:09 pm
I have Cora (No. 1) shown as listed in Way, Llytle and Norman, all with 1850 as the year of loss. Phillip Norman gives the Red River Republican (no date given), and the papers of Capt.s F. L. Wooldridge and Ben S. White of Shreveport as his sources. Wooldridge's correspondence with Norman, and, I think, Capt. White's papers are in the special collections library at LSU in Baton Rouge. I did not find Wooldridge's source for Cora, but was not able to get through the entire correspondance the last time I was there, so it may be in a portion of the papers I did not get to. I have yet to search the Red River Republican for 1850.