New Lotus Paddle Wheeler

My great grandfather on my mother's side, Arthur Waterhouse, was a big timber operator at the turn of the 20'th century. He had several mills in the Atchaflaya basin and homes in St. Martinville, Bayou Chene and Krotz Springs. He owned this paddle wheeler for some period of time. My parents have a number of old pictures some with men using cross cut saws to fell huge cypress trees. My grandmother is the little girl in the bonette in the center front of the picture. The chain with spikes is a log chain, it was used to connect logs into a raft to float them to the mill. This one was given to my father by a friend, who retrived it from a location very close to where my grandfather had a mill.