took the first flat-boat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans in 1782; "the late Capt. Jos. Pierce of Cincinnati, Ohio, had erected over the remains of his old friend Capt. Jacob Yoder, an iron tablet (the first cast west of the Alleghanies) thus inscribed:
'JACOB YODER
Was born at Reading, Pennsylvania, August 11, 1758; and was | a soldier of the Revolutionary army in 1777 and 1778. | He emigrated to the West in 1780; and in May, 1782, from Fort Redstone, | on the Monongahela river, in the | First Flat Boat. | That ever descended the Mississippi river, he landed in | New Orleans, with a cargoe of produce. | He died April 7, 1832, at his farm in Spencer County, Kentucky, and lies | here interred beneath this tablet.'"
Flat-boats were, both in early and modern times, always used or sold at their destination for lumber. Thus the early bargemen and flat-boat men who made down river trips returned largely on foot, until the era of steamboats. The long journey across country from New Orleans through the low fever-infested country and
