A flatboat is a simple, flat-bottomed boat designed to float downstream on rivers, carrying cargo and passengers. Picture a large wooden raft with walls and sometimes a roof: that's basically what a flatboat looked like. These boats had flat bottoms so they could float in shallow water without getting stuck on sandbars or rocks.

Flatboats played a crucial role in American history during the 1700s and 1800s. Before railroads existed, farmers and merchants used flatboats to ship goods down rivers like the Mississippi and Ohio. A family might load their flatboat with barrels of flour, corn, or salted meat and float hundreds of miles to cities like New Orleans to sell their goods. The trip downstream took weeks, and since flatboats couldn't travel back upstream against the current, people usually broke them apart and sold the lumber once they arrived.

Young Abraham Lincoln worked on a flatboat as a teenager, floating cargo down to New Orleans. The journey was often dangerous: flatboats could hit snags, run aground, or be attacked by river pirates. But for frontier families, flatboats offered the only practical way to get their products to market. Once steamboats arrived in the 1820s and 1830s, they gradually replaced flatboats because steamboats could travel both upstream and downstream.