"We finished making & launching the boat in about 4 weeks; we loaded the boat with barrell pork; corn & live hogs, and left Sangamon twn." Interview of John Hanks by William H. Herndon, 1865-66, in Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 457.

Lincoln describes himself as "a strange[r], friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flat boat—at ten dollars per month."Abraham Lincoln to Martin S. Morris, 26 March 1843, CW, 1:319-21.

Flatboat journey to New Orleans is reported to have taken a month. John Hanks left boat in St. Louis, but Offutt, Lincoln, and Johnston continue to New Orleans and appear to have stayed a month. Lincoln and Offutt may have returned together to Springfield, for license to retail merchandise in Sangamon County is granted Denton Offutt July 8, 1831. Five-dollar fee indicates stock in store was valued at $1,000.Autobiography Written for John L. Scripps, [c. June 1860], CW, 4:60-67; County Commissioners' Record C, 256.