Mill Boy [Steamboat]
The Mill Boy was a small commercial steamboat that served as a portable grist mill and was later put in the service of the Union army during the Civil War. The Mill Boy was an eighty-six-ton sidewheel paddle boat constructed on the Monongahela River in 1857 at Chambersburg, Ohio, by Captain Josiah Cornwall, who equipped the vessel as a floating grist mill and general store. The Mill Boy was initially powered by horses pacing on treadmills attached to the sidewheels, but in 1860 a boiler and small engine were added. Cornwall sold the vessel to other investors at about the time the Civil War began. On December 17, 1862, the Mill Boy, then under the command of Captain L. C. …
