Webb Family Lives Lost in Steamboat Disaster 1844

 

My name is Sandra Walker; my grandmother was Augusta Webb Ford and her mother was Augusta Ware Webb, daughter of Cassandra Francis Ford and Dr. Charles Henry Webb, Jr.  Cassandra Francis Ford was the daughter of James Ford of Crittenden County, Kentucky.  My grandmother used to tell me stories, one of which was about the Lucy Walker steamboat disaster.  I was grown before I knew the stories were based on fact. 

 I thought you might like to know a little more about the disaster than was reported in the newspapers. The disaster happened on Wednesday, 23 October 1844 about five miles below Louisville when the boilers exploded, set the boat on fire and caused it to sink. On the Lucy Walker were Dr. Charles Henry Webb, two of his daughters, and his wife’s half brother, Jim Bobby.

 Dr. Charles Henry Webb had gone to visit his mother, Polly Ware Webb, and took his daughters,  Cassandra and Nancy Winifred, and Jim Bobby.  Fourteen-year-old Jim Bobby had gone to check on the horses when the boiler exploded. His body was never found.

 A piece of metal hit Dr. Webb in the throat and he knew he was dying.  The two little girls were running around what was left of the ship. A passenger threw a mattress into the water and threw the little girls after it. They couldn’t get on the mattress because it tipped. Sparks from the fire ignited the mattress.  The girls were on either side of the mattress and when the fire got too close, Nancy Winifred told Cannie not to be afraid and when she counted to 3, they would let go.

 Cannie had had diphtheria and her hair had been cut short. A man in a boat saw something in the water and reached down and grabbed hair and pulled up a little naked girl. The current had torn her clothes off; they gave her a dress and when she said that was a servant’s dress, they knew she was from wealth. She could not tell them who she was. The man took her upriver to where the survivors were. She didn’t recognize anyone. Her father was there with his throat in a bloody bandage, but obviously that was not what her father looked like. He motioned for paper and pencil and wrote this is my daughter and how to reach her mother.

 Dr. Webb’s wife, Cassandra, was expecting a baby and stayed home with the other children. She made the trip to claim her living daughter and identified her dead husband and her other daughter.

 When the new baby was born she was named Cassandra for her sister that died. She was also called Cannie and later Tonnie, possibly for Tante’ Aunt.  Cassandra Ford Webb lived with her niece Cannie Ford Trimble in Seattle until her death in 1924.

 Everything I have read says James Ford’s middle initial was N and his son by his second wife was Jr, however I have always heard him called Jim Bobby.  In a letter from my grandmother about what Papa told her of his parents, her Papa referred to Jim Bobby.

 

Submitted by Sandra Walker  

Copyright © Sandra Walker, 2020

Published 29 Oct 2020, Western Kentucky Genealogy Blog,  http://wkygenealogy.blogspot.com/