The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 50, July 1946 - April, 1947 Page: 374

                                
Southwestern Historical Quarterly

a lot of goods, went down to Washington, then an important
town on the Brazos, and he chartered a steamboat to make the
trip to Cameron." The boat was duly loaded and came up the
Brazos to the mouth of Little River and thence on up that
stream. There was plenty of water, the river being high, but
it took a good deal of wiggling to get the steamer up the
crooked, narrow stream where in places the overhanging boughs
almost touched across the river.
The coming of the boat had been duly heralded, as Mr. Mc-
Cown even at that early day was keenly alive to the value of
advertising, and the people came for miles and miles and lined
the river to watch the boat as it slowly puffed up the swollen
stream. The boat landed safely where the McCown bridge now
stands, and after discharging its freight, Captain Hatfield
turned the boat over to the young people, and for two days
there was continuous feasting and dancing. Then as the river
was falling, the captain took command and the boat silently
and swiftly glided down the muddy waters into the Brazos,
and no echo of the steamer's whistle has ever awakened those
sleeping quietly on the banks of the Little River.
In 1847, the Methodists, who since the days of Wesley have
followed the frontier and have been the advance agents of
civilization, held their first quarterly meeting in Cameron. Rev.
J. W. Whipple was the presiding elder in charge.9 Before that
time we had had preaching every month, but so far as I can
8In 1936 the Commission of Control for Texas Centennial Celebrations
had a marker erected near the site of the landing of the boat, on which was
inscribed:
In the winter of 1850-1851 the steamboat, Washington, Captain Basil M.
Hatfield, commander, landed here with a shipment of merchandise from
Washington-on-the-Brazos to J. W. McCown and Co., merchants at Cameron
The first, last and only steamboat
to navigate Little River
9Josiah W. Whipple was born in Bennington, Vermont, in 1813. His
parents moved to northern Illinois when the children were young. He was
licensed to preach in the Methodist church by John Clark and admitted to
the Rock River Conference in 1840. He was transferred to the Texas Con-
ference in 1841, and on October 19, 1841, he set out from St. Louis for
Texas. He was accompanied by Bishop Thomas A. Morris, Reverend John
Clark, Mrs. Clark and little son, John Mory Clark. Traveling in a covered
wagon, they reached Gaines Ferry on the Sabine, December 17. Morris
held the second session of the Texas Conference at San Augustine and
appointed Whipple to the Austin Circuit. At the third annual conference
at Bastrop in December, 1842, he was assigned as pastor of the Bastrop
Circuit, with Austin as his home. He was appointed successively to the
Houston, Rutersville, and Washington Circuits. He died in Austin on May
8, 1894.

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