Payne Hollow Symposium Celebrates Shantyboaters

Hanover College of Hanover, Ind., hosted a symposium October 9 celebrating the legacy of Harlan and Anna Hubbard.

The Hubbards were uncompromising river lovers and practitioners of sustainable living long before it became fashionable. Harlan, a painter, and Anna, a librarian and musician, spent two years, beginning in 1944, building a shantyboat with foraged materials and five more years drifting down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the bayou country of Louisiana, which they explored.

They grew, foraged, fished or bartered for their own food, with help from the neighborly river folk they met along the banks. Shantyboating was not uncommon during and after the Great Depression, and many of the river characters they met were former or current shantyboaters, but it was a way of life disappearing even then.

Their leisurely journey was chronicled by Harlan in Shantyboat: A River Way of Life (1953), which was republished in 1977 by the University Press of Kentucky with a forward by Wendell Berry, who also wrote a long verse poem about the Hubbards.

In another memoir, Payne Hollow, Hubbard wrote about their later life ashore.

After they sold their shantyboat and johnboat, they bought a piece of land they had encountered in their journey, at Payne Hollow in Trimble, County, Ky., for $300 and hand-built a home on it, where they lived without running water or electricity for the rest of their lives. Harlan painted, and Anna played music, in between maintaining their house, growing their food and visiting and being visited by a host of friends and acquaintances.

With today’s interest in alternative living, the Hubbards’ legacy has come to greater attention. A foundation has raised money to restore and preserve the Payne Hollow property and open it up to the public. Harlan has been called “Kentucky’s Thoreau,” although in terms of their lifetime commitment the Hubbards actually out-Thoreaued Thoreau.

The inaugural symposium, titled “Payne Hollow Symposium: Drifting Forward,” took place Oct. 9-11, 2026, at Hanover College and in the surrounding communities of Hanover and Madison in Indiana and Milton and Bedford in Kentucky.

Attendees enjoyed “a day of intriguing and diverse sessions related to the legacy of the Hubbards, Payne Hollow, the Ohio River and sustainability.” They witnessed the dedication of a new Kentucky state historic marker honoring Harlan and Anna Hubbard and Payne Hollow, to be installed in Milton, Ky., at the foot of the Madison-Milton Bridge.

They also attended the opening of a refreshed exhibit of Hanover’s Hubbard Collection in the Duggan Library, with a special focus on the historic relationship between HC and Payne Hollow, as well as the Indiana premiere of Daniel Gilliam’s Piano Trio No. 2: “Payne Hollow” by the NouLou Chamber Players, and tours of the historic trails and structures at Payne Hollow.

Shantyboat and Hubbard’s other books are available on amazon.com.