Person:Robert Meadows (15)

Bob Meadows started working on the Cumberland River at Lee's Landing in Jackson County, Tennessee around 1900. His first job was loading firewood onto steamboats when the river as navigable. Later he became a "spark boy" on boats traveling from Nashville to Burnside, Kentucky then moved up to deckhand and fireman on the boat.

His older brother Captain Thomas Jason Meadows was a pilot and encouraged Bob to become a pilot also. At the age of 18 he was the youngest licensed pilot on the Cumberland River. At 21 he became Captain on the "Burnside" a show boat running from Clarksville, Tennessee to Burnside, Kentucky. He worked on the Cumberland through the 1920's as a pilot and captain on such boats as the Jo Horton Fall, Regina, Bob Dudley and Andrew Jackson. As river traffic subsided he became a freelance pilot and later worked for Nashville Barge Company.

in the 1930s he worked for the N C Lyons Boat Company and Hoagland Barge Company on the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee Rivers as well as the Cumberland. His first boat on these rivers was the Helen H, a gas powered stern wheeler. Around 1940 he became captain of a new twin screw diesel, the James H, until his retirement in 1947.

This information is based on a conversation with his son, Jack L Meadows of Gainesboro, Jackson County, Tennessee.

1.   U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current: [database on-line]. (Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012).