The Rivers Collection located in the Duggan Library provides many unique resources for students, staff and the public.

Library Update
Rivers Collection Announces a New, Rare Addition

The Rivers Institute at Hanover College has acquired an 1832 edition of The Western Pilot by Samuel Cumings. The Western Pilot contains charts of the Ohio River and the Mississippi, from the mouth of the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico. It also includes directions for the navigating those rivers and a description of the town on the rivers’ banks and tributary streams. The book is in excellent conditions and contains several images of paintings and drawings of the rivers and surrounding scenery. The book is available through the Rivers Collection in the archives of the Duggan Library at Hanover College.

Library Update
Hanover College Acquires Rare 1811 Book

The Rivers Institute at Hanover College, in celebration of the bicentennial of the first successful steamboat to navigate the Ohio River, has purchased a very rare copy of The Navigator.

The 1811 edition of Cramer’s The Navigator gives an early account of the Lewis and Clark expedition and contains 27 woodcut charts of the American inland waterway. The book also holds directions for navigating the Monongahela, Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and includes descriptions of river towns, villages, harbors and settlements.

2011 marks the bicentennial of an event that changed the course of history in North America and the world. The Steamboat The New Orleans travelled down the Ohio River from Pittsburg encountering along the way the Great Comet of 1811, the greatest earthquake ever recorded in the continental United States and even a vast squirrel migration. Coming upon the Falls of the Ohio, The New Orleans was forced to turn around and go back up river, proving that it could be done and helping to bring North America into the Industrial Revolution.

To access the Rivers Collection, click here and search for the exact phrase "Rivers Collection"