Clarke County Democrat

Mobile historian to speak on Alabama’s steamboats at Historical Society meet





The steamboat “John Quill” was a popular steamboat of the early 1900s on both the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers.

The steamboat “John Quill” was a popular steamboat of the early 1900s on both the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers.

“Steamboats on Alabama Rivers,” will be the topic for the January meeting of the Clarke County Historical Society.

Tom McGehee, a Mobile historian who is curator of the Bellingrath Gardens Home museum in Mobile County, will be the speaker.

“Long before there were highways or railroads in Alabama, the rivers provided the only choice to move passengers and freight,” said McGehee.

“Walter Bellingrath [of Bellingrath Gardens and Home who was the local Coca-Cola bottler] shipped his Coca-Cola cases on many a river steamer in the early 1900s and his father in-law was a shipwright.”

McGehee will detail the triumphs and tragedies of the boats, the latter including boiler explosions, fires, drownings in the rivers and the suicide of a prominent Mobile steamboat owner.

He’ll relate the beginnings of the era of river steamers, their peak in the 1890s and their decline and end by World War I.

McGehee also writes a history column for Mobile Bay magazine and is involved with preservation efforts at Mobile’s historic Magnolia Cemetery.

The meeting will be at Grove Hill Town Hall at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 28.

Everyone is invited.

You do not have to be a member of the historical society to attend.


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