On April 1, 1865, the steamboat Bertrand, a sternwheeler bound from St. Louis to Fort Benton in Montana Territory, hit a snag in the Missouri River and sank twenty miles north of Omaha. The crew removed only a few items before the boat was silted over. For more than a century thereafter, the Bertrand remained buried until it was discovered by treasure hunters, its cargo largely intact. This book categorizes some 300,000 artifacts recovered from the Bertrand in 1968, and also describes the invention, manufacture, marketing, distribution, and sale of these products and traces their route to the frontier mining camps of Montana Territory. The ship and its contents are a time capsule of mid-nineteenth-century America, rich with information about the history of industry, technology, and commerce in the Trans-Missouri West. In addition to enumerating the items the boat was transporting to Montana, and offering a photographic sample of the merchandise, Switzer places the Bertrand itself in historical context, examining its intended use and the technology of light-draft steam-driven river craft. His account of steamboat commerce provides multiple insights into the industrial revolution in the East, the nature and importance of Missouri River commerce in the mid-1800s, and the decline in this trade after the Civil War. Switzer also introduces the people associated with the Bertrand. He has unearthed biographical details illuminating the private and social lives of the officers, crew members, and passengers, as well as the consignees to whom the cargo was being shipped. He offers insight into not only the passengers’ reasons for traveling to the frontier mining camps of Montana Territory, but also the careers of some of the entrepreneurs and political movers and shakers of the Upper Missouri in the 1860s. This unique reference for historians of commerce in the American West will also fascinate anyone interested in the technology and history of riverine transport.

The Steamboat Bertrand and Missouri River Commerce

History

Switzer, Ronald R

Americas

The Arthur H. Clark Company

In the first decades of the 1800s, white Americans entered the rugged lands of Arkansas, which they had little explored before. They established new towns and developed commercial enterprises alongside Native Americans indigenous to Arkansas and other tribes and nations that had relocated there from the East. 
 This history is also the story of Arkansas's people, and is told through numerous biographies, highlighting early life in frontier Arkansas over a period of 200 years. 
 The book provides a categorical look at commerce and portrays the social diversity represented by both prominent and common Arkansans--all grappling for success against extraordinary circumstances.

Arkansas, Forgotten Land of Plenty: Settlement and Economic Development, 1540-1900

Business & Money

Economics

McFarland

A Study of 19th-century Glass and Ceramic Containers

The Bertrand Bottles: A Study of 19th-Century Glass and Ceramic Containers

Historical Study & Educational Resources

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Judge William Gaslin has been compared to Judge Isaac Parker and Judge Roy Bean because all three sternly handed out justice on the western frontier in the 1800s. Gaslin administered the sixth judicial district of Nebraska, more than 70,000 square miles infested with gangs, horse and cattle thieves, and other criminals. Ronald R. Switzer and Jerome E. Petsche recount Gaslin's story rollicking prose underpinned by scholarly rigor.

When Justice Came to the Plains: Judge William Gaslin, Jr., and Frontier Law in Western Nebraska, 1876-1889

Petsche, Jerome E

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Books by Switzer, Ronald R