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Isaac Hardin Jones
Steamboat Captain Isaac Hardin Jones (1818-1889),
a Southerner, born in Virginia, was a well known and
respected Mississippi River captain whose career
spanned for nearly three decades. His parents
were Garrison and Martha Houston Jones. The
family owned and operated the Washington Hotel,
which was the first hotel in Moundsville, West
Virginia. They also conducted the Beech Bottom
Hotel in nearby Beech Bottom. Both hotels catered
to early Ohio River travelers. Jones received his
education at private schools in Maryville, Ohio. He
started out his steamboat career as a clerk. One of
the steamboats he was clerk of was the
Monongahela. Jefferson Davis once road aboard
this steamboat on a trip to Washington, D.C. After
working on the Monongahela he became captain of
the Telegraph No. 1. Over his career he was also
captain of the General Pike, the Southern, the Olive
Branch, the JC Swon, the Dexter and the Lady Gay.
Through the years, he and his wife Annie Irwin Jones lived in Louisville, Kentucky; New Orleans,
Louisiana and later St. Louis, Missouri. Like many
other rivermen he, too, was well aquainted with Sam
Clemens. Both spent time on the JC Swon. During the
Civil War, Captain Jones ran the Dexter. It was a
steamer known for it's speed and agility. It was
seized from him by the Union Army. His brother was
Confederate General Alexander Caldwell Jones
(1830-1898), a graduate of the Virginia Military
Institute.
After the war, the Mississippi River slowly returned
to normal. It was then that Captain Jones and two
business partners decided to purchase the
steamboat Lady Gay from it's owners. One of
the partners in the purchase was Theodore Laveille
of the Southern Hotel in St. Louis. The sale was
finalized on June 17, 1869. The Lady Gay was
a magnificent steamboat launched in 1865, in
Cincinnati, Ohio, for Captain John A. Williamson
and others. Some say she was named after a
famous race horse. The Lady Gay was the second
largest steamboat in tonnage on the Mississippi
River at that time. It was very well constructed
and one of the most elegant passenger steamers
afloat. The outside of the boat boasted a large
pictorial statue of Sabrina the Severn River Nymph
in Milton's Cosmos and Fletcher's Faithful Shep-
herdess. Many successful trips were made on the St.
Louis to New Orleans route until January 17, 1870,
when the steamboat's hull hit an obstruction in
the river outside of Grand Tower, Illinois. Another
pilot was at the wheel. The steamboat broke in the
middle and sunk within minutes in about fourteen
feet of water. No lives were lost and it was fully
insured. At the time railroads were taking the place
of steamers so Captain Jones decided to leave the
river for a farm, where he and his family lived for
many years.
He died on October 26, 1889, and is buried at
Bellfontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.
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