HISTORY: Agriculture & Manufacture Development in early KY 1800's, James Rumsey & 
Edward West & John Fitch

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Date:  24-Feb-99 
From: AUPQ38A@prodigy.com (MRS GINA M REASONER)
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY, The American Historical Society, 1922
Volume I, page 500, 501 is the following paragraph that mentions James
Rumsey. Chapter XLI, AGRICULTURAL AND MANUFACTURING DEVELOPMENT AROUND
1800, 7th paragraph reads:

        Governor Garrard in his message to the legislature in 1802,
referred to this prosperity and the contentment that was going with it:
"Vessels built on our rivers, calculated for transporting our commodities
to the most distant quarters of the globe, afford us a flattering view of
the resources and future greatness of our country. -Harmony prevails among
our citizens, and confidence exists in the national government." But as
easy as it was to carry Kentucky products to a market, the satisfaction of
the people's wants in imports was not so easily solved. An enterprising
shipowner announced in 1804 that he had a barge of forty tons ready to go
to New Orleans and that it would ply back up the river. He offered to
receive freight in new Orleans for Kentucky at  $5.50 a hundred weight. he
admitted that this was a "Measurably new" undertaking; but he believed that
a number of articles could be brought up the river "for what they will cost
_______ at Philadelphia. But transportation was a fundamental problem which
could not be easily solved. It was an underlying condition for the welfare
of the state along almost every line. Boats might return up the river, but
it was with great difficulty, requiring much time. it took at least three
months to bring a barge or boat from New Orleans to Louisville. It was in
part the consciousness of this great handicap to commerce that led John
Fitch, a Connecticut Yankee removed to kentucky, to seize the idea while
sitting on the banks of the Ohio that steam could be applied to the
propelling of boats on the rivers. This was in June, 1780. His subsequent
struggles, which were transferred to the East, produced for him nothing but
disappointments. he built a number of boats between 1787 and 1789 which had
temporary success on the Delaware River, but the practical application of
steam to navigation remained for Fulton. However, James Rumsey, a Virginian
who migrated to Kentucky, had his imagination fired about the same time
with the possibilities of steamboat navigation on the great rivers and
lakes and the seacoast. By a peculiar contrivance he applied steam to the
propelling of a boat on the Potomac in 1786; but again without practical
results. Edward West, another Kentuckian by adoption was the first to carry
on his experiments in the West. He constructed a small steamboat which he
successfully ran in 1794 on the Town Fork of the Elkhorn Creek near
Lexington, made navigable by damning the stream. He received a patent for
it from Congress in 1802. But the practical touch had not been given, and
so it came to nothing.

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