This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
There must have been steamboat men who suspected that Captain Joseph Throckmorton was an elaborate practical joke being played on them. As many as three different Upper Mississippi steamboats in a single season listed Throckmorton as their captain. And said Throckmorton always seemed to be at the right place at just the right time.
Even his arrival on the Mississippi as a young man of 26 in 1829 was timed right. Throckmorton had brought his small steamer, “The Red Rover,” down the Ohio and up the Mississippi. He arrived at the Des Moines Rapids near Keokuk just in time to rescue Caleb Atwater, an Indian commissioner whose supplies had been dumped all along the rapids by an earlier steamboat trying to lighten its load. Throckmorton carried Atwater and the cargo safely to Prairie du Chien.
Could this be the same Captain Throckmorton who, three years later, now captain of the famous steamboat “The Warrior,” who arrived at the mouth of the Bad Axe river just in time to prevent Black Hawk and his Sauk followers from escaping across the Mississippi on the last day of the Black Hawk War? Or the same Throckmorton who a few weeks later just happened to be at Fort Armstrong in time to take General Henry Atkinson back from that war to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis?
And would these Throckmortons be the same one who captained the largest boat on the Mississippi, the “St. Peters,” as it took the famous French geographer, J. N. Nicollet, to his explorations of Minnesota in 1836? Or the Throckmorton who was captain of the “Burlington” that same year as it took the painter George Catlin on his famous tour of the Mississippi, as well as giving rides to John C. Fremont and the widow of Alexander Hamilton? Or the Throckmorton who captained the “Cecilia” in 1846, and who happened to be at Fort Crawford just in time to take troops down to the Mexican War?
It's no wonder the Sauk Chief, Keokuk, was so impressed with Throckmorton that he offered him the site of Flint Hills, where Burlington, Iowa, now stands.
And it's no wonder the said Joseph Throckmorton had to refuse the offer. There would have been too much of a fight between all the Throckmortons as to which would become mayor.
Rock Island Lines is underwritten by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and Augustana College, Rock Island.
