I'm interested in learning more about what life was like back around the 1850s for people who lived and travelled on Mississippi riverboats, along with any other specific information or accounts of what life was like back then.
I've considered contacting history professors from different Southern states to see if they knew of any archives, historical societies or other sources of information, but I don't want to come off as rude or be a bother to anyone (I'm Canadian).
So far, I've been reading The Devil in the White City, and George Devol's Forty Years as a Gambler on the Mississippi which have both proven to be quite illuminating.
I recommend Twain's Life on the Mississippi. It is thoroughly enjoyable book, clearly a subject dear to his heart when he wrote it. It's a nice addition to Devol. Though Devol helps to partially answer the question, what did those Southern planters do with all the immense money they were making ?, he was mostly telling anecdotes to a ghost writer. Twain really tries to evoke the world of the time.
There's also the Steamship Historical Collection. It was once a part of the College of Baltimore library, but since has been shifted to more restricted access in Warwick, Rhode Island.