Wisconsin (Steamboat), 1840

      The Western Transportation Company. which was to control much of the shipping on the lake, came into being when the proprietors of the Commercial, the Transportation, and the Telegraph lines of canalboats on the Erie Canal united their interests "for the purpose of conducting a general FORWARDING AND COMMISSION BUSINESS on the Erie and Ohio canals, and on the Western Lakes." Six canal boats were started daily from Albany and Buffalo carrying freight and passengers; a daily line of steamboats maintained a schedule from Buffalo to Detroit, touching at Toledo and Perrysburg as well as other intermediate ports; a semi weekly line of steamboats left for the upper lakes. The steamboats of the Western Transportation Company were the WISCONSIN, CONSTITUTION, ANTHONY WAYNE, COMMODORE 0.H. PERRY, COLUMBUS, VERMILLION, RHODE ISLAND, and others. The RHODE ISLAND, a ship of two hundred tons and the smallest in the fleet, put in at Lower Sandusky and Monroe to deliver and receive passengers and freight.
      (from article entitled "Navigation at the foot of the Maumee Rapids, 1815 - 1845 by Maurer Maurer, published in Morthwest Ohio Quarterly, July 1943, pp. 158-173)