Reuben Gold Thwaites 
Afloat on the Ohio An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo [EPUB ebook] 

There were four of us pilgrims – my Wife, our Boy of ten and a half years, the Doctor, and I. My object in going – the others went for the outing – was to gather local color for work in Western history. The Ohio River was an important factor in the development of the West. I wished to know the great waterway intimately in its various phases, – to see with my own eyes what the borderers saw; in imagination, to redress the pioneer stage, and repeople it.