| Description: |
These interviews were conducted by poet John Knoepfle around Cincinnati, Ohio and elsewhere in the late 1950's and early 1960's. The narrators discuss life and work on the Ohio, Mississippi, Illinois and other Midwest rivers from the late 1800's to the 1950's: steamboats, packetboats, showboats, ferries, wrecks, explosions and fires, river lore, jazz music, saloons and prohibition, freight, locks and dams, river towns, navigation lights and conditions, floods, fog and ice jams, barge and boat construction, government regulation and licensing, duties of steamboat crew members, wages, salaries and living conditions, wildlife, hunting and fishing, minority groups, the Amazon River and the Spanish-American War. Knoepfle, professor of English at Sangamon State University, donated the collection to the Oral History Office and University Archives in 1986. Material related to this project may also be found at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio. |
