It was the summer of 1828. New Englanders were flooding into western New York; the population was burgeoning and the commerce on the Hudson was booming. Like his father and grandfather before him, Josiah Hamrick’s vessels sailed in the coastal trade, as they had since well before the Revolution and, while he knew precious little about steamboats, shipping was shipping he told himself. He had discussed this with his own father, Jonathan, now eighty-one, the retired patriarch of the Hamrick family, and was encouraged. Even the old man could see that it was time to seek new directions, to make a new beginning, just as the nation itself was about to do. The west was blossoming before their eyes, as his own son Tom so often said, offering opportunity beyond their dreams. All of this urged him to go and see for himself.
He had been away for nearly a month when the news arrived and Thomas knew instantly that his father would be gone forever. The envelope held the few things that had been recovered, his small notebook and some other papers, a letter, and his pocket watch, smashed and stopped at 3:45.
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