In 1828, Abraham Lincoln, at age 19, took a flatboat from Rockport, Indiana, to New Orleans, with his friend Alan Gentry, to sell the Spencer County area produce. In 2028, in honor of the 200-year anniversary of that trip, a not-for-profit group called the Scenic Lincoln Way will be doing a reenactment of Lincoln’s trip. A flatboat has been built and christened The Abraham.
When people think of pioneers, they automatically think of covered wagons. Covered wagons left from the western side of Missouri to go west on the Oregon or California trails. Five hundred thousand pioneers attempted that journey.
But there is a larger pioneer story. Three MILLION pioneers came west by flatboat from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania after the Revolutionary War. The Great Migration, as it was called, refers to those pioneers who flooded into the Midwest using the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Come and hear about that pioneer era, and more about the planned reenactment trip of 2028.