FLATBOAT JOURNEY

• By ED CULLEN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Oct 2, 2008 - Page: 1E - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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ABOARD THE JOURNEY OF REMEMBRANCE — The name of a flatboat making the 1,200-mile trip from southern Indiana to New Orleans commemorates river trips Abraham Lincoln made and a flatboat odyssey fellow Hoosier lawyer Ron Drake’s family made in 1810.

And there’s Robert Grose, 76, asleep in the sun on the foredeck, who made this same boat trip 50 years ago to celebrate a flatboat trip Lincoln made in 1828.

A union carpenter from Grandview, Ind., five miles from Rockport where this trip began, Grose came down the river when he was 26 with some other Jaycees.

“We welded barrels end to end and covered them with a deck. We had a little house on it. Cut a hole in the deck for a bathroom. They won’t let you do that anymore,” Grose said.

The flatboat Grose rode as a young man was about half the size of this one. The Journey of Remembrance is 14 feet wide, 60 feet long and weighs 25 tons. Drake’s boat, one of 14 similar hulls built by John Cooper, of Gallatin, Tenn., is 17,000 board feet of poplar and 1,500 board feet of white oak from Drake’s family farm near Fairbanks, Ind.

“It’s a floating lumber pile, what it is,” said Cooper, 62.

The Lincoln family moved to Indiana from Kentucky and Drake’s ancestors from what is today Ohio to Missouri because of defective land titles, a common occurrence in the 1800s.

The flatboat’s name is carved in a thick beam over the front entrance to the cabin. The beam is from Old Bethel Primitive Baptist Church near Jackson, Mo. “More than likely, a member of my family hewed that log,” Drake said.

Drake’s father, Elder Mervin Drake, was a primitive Baptist minister and farmer. Mervin Drake preached at Little Pigeon Primitive Baptist Church, now in Lincoln State Park, the church Lincoln’s family attended.

“My wife’s all involved with Lincoln history,” Grose said. “Everyone up home is. Name schools after him. Banks.”

When Lincoln made his trips isn’t clear, Drake said. Lincoln came down river in 1828 and probably 1832, each time to transport goods and livestock.

Lincoln, whose flatboat was attacked by slaves below Baton Rouge, was profoundly effected by a slave auction in New Orleans. For Grose, it was above-ground burial in low-lying New Orleans.

Grose’s flatboat adventure in 1958 was more like Lincoln’s than Drake’s.