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1850 |
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| South America & Caribbean:The Clayton Bulwar Treaty makes agreements over interests in Central America including a proprosed canal across Nicaragua.. | |||||||||||
| North America:Omnibus bill introduced by Henry Clay in the Senate helps to ease admission of new states and territories to the union. It bans slavery in the District of Columbia but strengthens the fugitive slave laws by changing jurisdiction to state courts. President Zachary Taylor dies after 16 months in office and Millard Fillmore succeeds him. Cornerstone of the Washington Monument laid. California admitted as the 31st state; territories of New Mexico and Utah are created. American Express formed. Steamboats on the Rio Grande. Cornelius Vanderbilt expands his shipping line with California routes via Nicaragua. Illinois Central Railroad is granted 2.6 million acres by Congress to build a north-south railroad. 5,000 miles of track have been added in the last decade for a total of 9,000. Only half of the children born in the United States until now reach the age of five. Universities of Utah and Rochester. 245 daily newspapers up from 138 in U. S. a decade ago.The Portland Oregonian and Harpers Monthly begin publication; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Nathanial Hawthorne; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Mathew Brady's photography; Stephen Foster; P. T. Barnum engages Swedish nightingale Jenny Lind for a two year tour of the United States. Levi Strauss begins manufacture of pants for California miners. Pinkerton National Detective Agency. San Francisco burns. Cotton Crop over 2 million bales Jersey cows arrive in U. S. for dairy stock. New York City population 700,000; South has has 2 million whites, 1.8 million slaves. | |||||||||||
| Europe: Great Britain begins a golden age of prosperity. Second law of thermodynamics. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens; William Makepeace Thackeray; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Alfred Tennyson; music by Robert Schumann; Richard Wagner | |||||||||||
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January 1850
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February 1850
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March 1850
March 21 Proposed creation of Iberia Parish from the parishes of St. Mary and St. Martin La. A. 1850, 3rd Legislature No. 297. |
April 1850
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May 1850
May 21, 1850 Two of the daughters of Charles J. Durand are married at Pine Alley Plantation house simultaneously. He had large spiders brought in from China and sets them free in the alley a few days before the big event. The morning of the wedding he had slaves with bellows gild the resulting web with gold and silver dust. That night there was food and wine for two thousand guests. Civil War brought complete ruin for Durand and soon after, his death. All that remains of this fantastic tale is a mile of the fabled alley. |
June 1850
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July 1850
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August 1850
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September 1850
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October 1850
John McDonogh (1779-1850) dies of Asiatic cholera on October 26, 1850 and leaves half of his fortune to build public schools in New Orleans. He was an elegant member of fashionable society as a young man but later lived as a recluse and miser in a house in McDonoghville (now Gretna). He left $100,000 for colonization of freed slaves in Africa, but the bulk of his $2 million went to educate poor children, both black and white, in Baltimore, his birthplace, and New Orleans. New Orleans built 42 schools from the money. |
November 1850
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December 1850
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Louisiana Act No. 297, 1850 directs the State Engineer to ascertain the land contained in the proposed Iberia Parish, to be created from parts of St. Martin and St. Mary Parishes, however the establishment of Iberia Parish will be delayed until after the Civil War. |
Filibusters to Cuba were launched from New Orleans this year and next in an unsuccessful effort to annex Cuba and expand the number of slave states in the Union. Manifest Destiny found many a sympathetic ear in Louisiana. Glory, financial security, and property in Cuba were promised to participants when the Cuban Narciso Lopez established himself in New Orleans in the Spring of 1851. He leads three unsuccessful expeditions and is finally captured and executed. | Milneburg Resort on Lake Pontchartrain. Last Island Hurricane. | Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) is a half-blind writer whose work is admired in local literary circles as one of the earliest and most perceptive interpreters of Creole life. Hearn arrives in New Orleans in 1877 and leaves ten years later. After seven months of living hand-to-mouth he is hired as assistant editor by the New Orleans Item. In 1881 Hearn is hired as literary editor of the Times-Democrat. He wrote about everyday things, local food, French patois, folk remedies and superstitions. He moved for a couple years to Martinique, returned to New York to publish a book, and in 1890 moved to Japan where he wrote his most famous works. |
Mule-car service begins on Louisiana and Napoleon Avenues. Tracks have been laid for the last two years. | Bayside Plantation house is built in 1850 by Francis D. Richardson on Bayou Teche in the Greek Revival style of the period. Richardson , a classmate and friend of Edgar Allen Poe, purchased the land for a sugar plantation. It is named Bayside because of the dense growth of Bay trees nearby. Indian Camp Plantation home is near Carville in Iberville Parish, R. C. Camp builds it near the site of an earlier Houma Indian village in 1850. It will become the site of the Louisiana State Leprosarium in 1894. The U.S. Public Health Service acquired it in 1921. For many years it is known as the National Hansen’s Disease Center. Old Variety Plantation three miles from Plaquemine, La. on the Bayou Road is a Louisiana raised cottage built of solid cypress. Completely restored as a private residence, it is open by appointment only. John McDonogh Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini |
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