Unfortunately, there is no definitive passenger list telling us the names of the 75 to 100 passengers who rode the Hartford steamboat from Cincinnati, Ohio to Manhattan, Kansas (called Boston in 1855). Here are a few of the notable passengers who we know were aboard:
Andrew J. Mead was one of the leaders of the Cincinnati and Kansas Land Company. Alongside fellow investors Judge Pipher and Hiram Palmer, he rode the Hartford as far as Kansas City before disembarking. The three men went ahead to prepare for the Hartford's arrival. He was crucial in the name change to Manhattan, and he was elected as its first mayor in 1857 after it was incorporated as a city. He eventually left in 1868. He died back in New York in 1904.
John Pipher was one of the original investors on the Hartford. Alongside him came his only son, John W. Pipher IV. His daughter Sarah may have been aboard, though it is unclear. He was the town's first postmaster, he owned a store, and he was also an elected judge. He died in 1900 at the age of 88, and is buried in Manhattan's Sunset Cemetery. A street in Manhattan is named after him: Pipher Lane.
Amanda Arnold was Manhattan's first schoolteacher! She was born in 1837 in Cadiz, Ohio. When she was 18 years old, she came to Manhattan on the Hartford alongside her father Rezin and older brother. She got her first teaching job in 1857, and her first class ranged in size from 2 to 16 pupils depending on the day. To aid her educational career, she later enrolled as one of Bluemont Central College's first students in 1860. She went back to teaching for the next several decades, before dying in 1923. The newspapers reported that she was the last of the Hartford passengers to die. In 1983, sixty years after her passing, Amanda Arnold Elementary School was named in her honor.
Hiram Palmer was one of the original investors in the steamboat Hartford. He came on the boat alongside his son, Benjamin Franklin Palmer. Though Hiram went back to Ohio and died there in 1864, Benjamin and his children stayed in Manhattan. Benjamin died in 1891 and is buried in Sunset Cemetery near both his wives: Hannah and Jane. Today, Palmer descendants still live in town.
