This boat model represents a common, simple flat bottomed boat or small barge of the sort that would have been found anywhere on the American western river system around the time of the Civil War. The owners of these boats and their families lived aboard and bought, sold and transported anything they could make a profit on. They traded hardware, manufactured goods, foodstuffs, cloth and clothing, and other goods up and down the rivers until small steamboats gradually replaced them in the later part of the 19th century.
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