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1853 |
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| South America & Caribbean:Events of this year in this region influencing Louisiana. | |||||||||||
| North America:Gadsden Purchase: $10 million completes the area of the first 48 United States. President Fillmore sendsCommodore Mathew Perry. Women's suffrage petition in Massachusetts. Plans for transcontinental rail transportation begin to form. Clipper ships rule the seas. First mass produced pocket watches appear from Massachusetts factory, Samuel Cold sets up a weapons factory. Yellow fever in New Orleans. Safety match, first hotel rooms with private bath. Concord grapes, potato chips, Keebler biscuits, Borden condensed milk. Washington University in St. Louis, University of Florida in Gainsville. Fiction by Hawthorne, songs by Stephen Foster popular. Crystal Palace duplicated in New York's first World's Fair. Central Park is born. King Ranch in Texas begins. | |||||||||||
| Europe: Napoleon III marries his empress Eugenie from Spain. First underground railway plans in London. Cholera in London, aspirin in Alsace. Fiction by Dickens, Charlotte Bronte; music by Verdi, Liszt | |||||||||||
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January 1853
Paul Octave Hebert takes the oath as governor and guides the legislature toward improvements in water commerce and railroad construction. |
February 1853
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March 1853
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April 1853
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October 1853
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November 1853
Grace Elizabeth King (1853-1932) is born on November 29, 1853 at what is later 1749 Camp Street in New Orleans. When she was 10 Grace's mother fled the Union occupied city with her eight children and sailed upriver to L'Embarasse a plantation that had been purchased by her grandfather. After the war they returned to the city. King's literary career began when she was an adult. Her first short story Monsieur Motte is published in the New Princeton Review in 1885. She never knew the agony of repeated rejections and once in high gear, she never slowed down. She never married, though she did not lack for suitors and her autobiography Memoirs of a Southern Woman of Letters reveals little about the woman who surrounded herself with people. She remains a distant, although charming and intelligent person. She dies in January 1932. |
December 1853
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Isaac Delgado (1839-1912) arrives in New Orleans at 14 years of age, to live with an aunt and uncle in the garden district. He was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1839. He joins his uncle's sugar business, becomes a charter member of the Louisiana Sugar Exchange, belongs to the Boston Club, the Chess Checkers and Whist Club, and the Opera House Association. The Isaac Delgado Museum of art opened on December 16, 1911, but by that time he was blind and too ill to attend. He dies January 4, 1912. He leaves his plantation, Albania, and nearly $1 million for a trade school for young men. It becomes Delgado Community College, located in New Orleans. The Art Museum in 1968 becomes the New Orleans Museum of Art. |
New Orleans city government abandons its division into three municipalities. Yellow fever strikes the city killing 8,000; affecting 40,000. The disease, carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, is a mystery to all. The virus first attacks the liver causing victims eyes and skin to turn yellow, followed by backache, headache, rapidly rising fever and vomiting. The disease was also called black vomit, yellow jack, bronze John and the saffron scourge. Toutant Beauregard buys 400 head of cattle from Texas cattleman Samuel A. Maverick. |
Second St. Charles Hotel is built. Gallier Hall is dedicated. It will be City Hall for a century and is one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the country. It is named in honor of its architect and is used today as a meeting hall by the city. It also has a prominent part in the Carnival celebrations. Figures on the facade are America, representing Liberty and Louisiana, representing Commerce and Justice. The Protestant Orphans Home or the Seventh Street Asylum is established on the 3000 block of Magazine street in the wake of the latest yellow fever epidemic. In 1883 it will encompass the entire block. It goes through many bad times but is not sold until 1974. |
The area around Tangipahoa in the parish of the same name is settled in early 1800s. The New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad builds a station here this year. A one square mile town is formed around it in 1866. It includes part of the former Confederate Camp Moore. The town and parish are named for an Indian tribe. | Unionville General Store (Union
Parish), originally established in 1853 overlooking Bayou D'Arbonne.
Moved location in 1888, when the present building was constructed . This
country store has been a community focal point.
Jean-Sylvain Gentil (1829-1911) settles in St. James Parish after being imprisoned, then exiled by Napoleon III. He will be a resident of Louisiana for the rest of his years, except for one year back in Spain after the downfall of Napoleon III. Gentil enjoys challenging the accepted precepts of church, state and society. He is known as a newspaperman and gadfly, but is also a prolific and largely unpublished poet. |
Christ Episcopal Church congregation in Assumption
Parish is organized and the church is constructed on the site of Elm
Hall Plantation, donated by Dr. E. E. Kittredge. Frank Willis, Architect.
It is consecrated by the Rt. Rev. Leonidas
Polk in 1854.
Isaac Delgado Jean-Sylvain Gentil Grace Elizabeth King Isaac Johnson |
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