John Tatum - River Pilot

 

My great grandfather John Tatum walked home from Virginia and arrived in late May 1865 suffering from chronic diarrhea. He had been issued a mule at the surrender and he could have ridden it home and perhaps used it to help him plant a crop—but early in the journey he encountered a man with one leg also walking home. He gave that man the mule because he had two good legs. So the story goes, and it is said to be characteristic of his nature.

He was ill with the diarrhea for two years—and then he gave up tobacco and began to chew sweet gum sap instead—and was cured. His wife, Mary Smith Tatum, had been running the 800 acre farm without him through the war—so he undertook to deliver timber to the port of Charleston and left the farm operation in her hands. The story is told in the papers of his son W. O. Tatum, born in 1860, written by him in about 1936 when he was 76 years.

He tells that his father had the farmhands cut long leaf yellow pine logs on the place, and hauled them to a landing on the North Edisto River. The assembly point on the river was probably where Cooper Swamp joined the river, Izlar property, the lands of Mary Smith Tatum’s mother’s people.

W. O. Tatum writes that his father fashioned rafts of these logs in the river and piloted the “… floats which required skill, judgement, and a knowledge of the vagaries of the tides, [and of] the vicious cuts that had to be traversed for a good portion of the trip … The round trip from our landing where we put the timber together for the trip to Charleston took from two to four weeks.” His skill, knowledge, and integrity as a pilot and timber agent was soon in demand from others who had timber to float.

I was reminded of this story when reading Voices on the River by Walter Havighurst—which conveys a wealth of history and stories of the people on the watershed of the Mississippi River. I learned that for thirty years— from the Louisiana Purchase to the development of upriver steamboat schedules begun in the 1820’s— the farmers on the upper Ohio River would cut and saw their timber and haul it to the river where they built flatboats. Once their crops were harvested, they would load the flatboats with their production, including animals, kiss their wives goodby, and float away down the Ohio, selling as they went. If they survived the voyage by Cairo down to New Orleans, they would sell everything there, break down the flatboat, sell it as lumber for building houses, and hit the Natchez Trace walking home 800 miles or so by way of Nashville and Louisville. They would hope to make it home in time to plant another crop.
When the upriver steamboats took over, the downstream flatboat men could then buy deck passage back home for a few dollars, and the Natchez Trace grew up in brush and trees. The downstream flatboat trade continued to grow until war blockaded the rivers in 1861, and it restarted 5 years later when the war ended. By 1868 the flatboats could be 18 feet wide and 90 feet long hauling 1000 barrels of “…potatoes, apples, and salt pork.” There was a cabin where the crew slept and there was a large steering oar on the stern and one or two masts to support sails when the wind was right. The development of the railroads in the 1870’s ended the down river flatboat trade.

In 1870, John Tatum would have been operating his river commerce enterprise. The Edisto River is a winding blackwater system and would have constituted an obstacle course for his cumbersome rafts of logs. The North Edisto River from nearby Cooper Swamp downstream to the confluence (know as The Corner) with the South Edisto River is swift and twisting. The big Edisto River, from the Corner for perhaps 20 miles on down to what is now the U.S. 21 bridge, is a river in a state of flux with oxbow lakes and new cut rapids and a considerable population of spiders and snakes—venomous cottonmouth moccasins and rattlesnakes—and wasps and hornets. From there down the Edisto to the brackish water at Jacksonboro, about 80 rivermiles, would have been the easy part of the trip—and the hunting and fishing would have been bounteous for the entire trip. In the tidewater, the diet would have changed from red meat and panfish, venison and redbreast perch, to blue crab and redfish and such. Where the river re-divided around Edisto Island, the float route would take the salty North Edisto. From there John Tatum and his float would have followed a network of creeks, cuts, rivers and sounds up northeast through the waters behind Wadmalaw, Johns, and James Island to the Ashley River and Charleston—territory that has now been changed some by the further development of the intracoastal waterway. See NOAA Chart No. 11521. In 1870 it would have been an exercise in intelligent planning and positioning in order to harness the ebb and flow of the tides to propel the floating logs through the cuts and creeks. Upon arrival he would have changed hats and become a timber merchant, before heading home.

But let your imagination float the waters with John Tatum. I wonder if other trade was involved? A barrel of salt meat; or of sugar cane syrup, corn meal, grits, or flour to sell between his landing and Charleston harbor? I imagine he must have carried a barrel of provisions for the trip. How many logs comprised a raft, how many rafts made up each float, and how many men did he take with him on each float. Did they sleep, did they camp on the bank, did they time the trips with the moon, did they walk home with their bedrolls on their back, or take the stagecoach? It is a wonderful story but not one that we much know—because we were not there when he told the tales. And the tales were lost in time.

So much lost.

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