Paula Shares A Ferry Tale
From Time to Thyme
By Paula Dunn
The next time you drive or walk across a bridge over White River, take a moment to reflect on how fortunate we are to be able to come and go from one side of the river to the other whenever we want.
It wasn’t nearly that easy for Hamilton County residents during the county’s first couple of decades. Until 1846, the only way to cross the river was either by canoe, or by venturing through the shallow water of a ford.
Imagine being a farmer from the Jolietville area and having business at the county courthouse during those early years. You could travel halfway across the county, only to discover when you arrived that the river was still too high from recent rains for your wagon to safely ford it.
That changed in March of 1846 when the County Commissioners granted William Carlin a license to build and maintain a ferry at Noblesville. To that end, Carlin constructed a flatboat big enough to carry a wagon and four horses.
As a young man, Augustus Finch Shirts, the author of the 1901 county history, operated the ferry for a while. He left a good description of how it worked.
A large rope was run across the river and secured tightly at each end. On this rope were a couple of pulleys. Whether the flatboat headed east or west was determined by manipulating smaller ropes attached to each pulley.
This is called a “reaction ferry” because the power of the river’s current propels it across the water. (If, like me, you have trouble picturing this, there are some good videos on YouTube of a reaction ferry at Basil, Switzerland.)
As the ferry neared its destination, a pole was used to move it through the shallows. An “apron” (a wooden plank?) attached to the boat provided a passageway to dry land.
The charges for a flatboat crossing were as follows: a man and one horse, ten cents; a driver and a one-horse vehicle, fifteen cents; a wagon and two horses, twenty cents; a wagon and three horses, twenty-five cents; and a wagon and four horses, thirty-five cents. Cattle were ferried across the river at two and one-half cents a head; pigs and sheep at one cent a head.
People on foot were taken across by canoe for five cents. Public messengers rode for free!
The one catch was, the water had to be high enough for the current to move the boat.
That criteria was certainly met during and shortly after the flood that took place in late December, 1846, and early January, 1847.
In his county history, Shirts referred to that as “the most destructive flood since the year 1828.” He wrote of watching a chicken and a hog float by on corn shocks.The hog was calmly eating corn as if he was in his own barn lot!
One day that January, the river was still very high when a couple and their two children approached the ferry in a wagon drawn by two horses. Shirts loaded them up and set off.
Their passage went according to plan until they reached the middle of the river. At that point, the boat was struck hard by something, possibly a log, and one of the smaller ropes broke.
With all its weight on only one rope, the ferry swung around, horrifying both the passengers and a crowd of onlookers on the shore.
Fortunately, they were past the deepest water by then. Thanks to “the puny arm of the writer,” and an extra long pole he’d brought along, they made it to the opposite bank amid cheers from the spectators.
The one thing Shirts omitted was the ferry’s location, but I’d guess it was somewhere south of Conner Street since the river bank is lower there.
The ferry was available until the Logan Street bridge was constructed in the late 1850s.
Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at younggardenerfriend@gmail.com
