Jun 27, 2024 - Sale 2675

Sale 2675 - Lot 195

Price Realized: $ 812
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(LOUISIANA.) Looe Baker. Letter from New Orleans describing the military band concerts on the levee and the yellow fever epidemic. 4 Autograph Letters Signed to his friend and future brother-in-law Thomas Wardell of Crosswicks, NJ. Each 2 to 4 pages, 4to or folio, no postal markings; condition strong, 25 September 1799 letter apparently lacking a closing leaf. Trenton, NJ and New Orleans, LA, 1799-1801
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Looe Baker (1780-1854) was a native of New Jersey who spent the early years of the 19th century as a merchant in Louisiana. The first three of these letters are dated from Trenton, NJ in 1799, and are filled with discussions of local and national news. The big excitement is Baker's 6 September 1801 letter from New Orleans:

"I write to you from a sick room. I am in a convalescent state, after ten days illness with the yellow fever, and have been so unfortunate as to bury the young man I brought out with me. . . . I was attacked with a chill, and awaked in the morning with the fever on me, with scarcely the use of my limbs. They were completely palsied. Copious bleeding gave me immediate relief. . . . I was reduced pretty low by the fever, loss of blood, and the violent medicine which was constantly administered to me. The calomel alone is sufficient to set a person crazy when in a weak state. . . . Doct. Zerlan is the most successful physician in the city in treating the fever. He has restored persons to health in one or two instances after the black vomit had commenced. This will be thought incredible by some, but it is certainly a fact. The mortality among the Americans has been very great within six weeks. . . . Many of the American vessels lying here have been wholly unmanned."

He also describes New Orleans as having "about ten or twelve thousand inhabitants. The city is built in a low place. An artificial bank is formed in front of the city, to prevent the river from overflowing it. . . . The city is garrisoned by about 1,000 troops, and they have a noble band of music, consisting of a great variety of instruments which may be heard through the greater part of the city. They have been at immense pain to form it; every evening this band plays on the levee. At this time it is crouded from one end of the city to the other. The inhabitants have here the benefit of a little fresh air. The ladies appear to show their dresses, and the gentlemen their gallantry. All is gaiety, diseases and the sick are forgotten. You would suppose it was the happiest place in the world, but step into the interior parts of the city, and you will change your mind." Baker married Wardell's sister Eliza in 1805.