Today beer remains the favored alcoholic beverage of the common man in the New Orleans area.
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Few persons swim in the Mississippi. Grown people bathe at home; children bathe themselves back of the town, in the flat ditches. Alligators occupy the river and scare men off.
The Governor … warned them that, if he would catch them violating this law … would proceed against them with the full rigor of the law. That his Lordship cannot personally watch the excesses committed in this or any other case, as he did it several times before he became Governor, as besides of his poor health, he cannot keep awake all night as it is necessary, as he has to keep a clear head in order to attend … the various affairs coming before his office.
I also sleep on deck, indeed I am grossly hearty.
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Marginal note for Baton Rouge: We constantly hear the croaking or roaring of alligators.
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You may, perhaps, remark, that I have of late been silent on the subject of curiosities. this country is destitute of them; or at least, possess none of any distinction.
The first movement in that direction [of providing burial grounds for the poor] was made by Common Council, Sept. 21, 1705. The minutes say—‘It is ordered that the mayor, recorder, and Alderman Wilcox … apply themselves to the Com’rs of Property for a publick place of ground in this city for a burying-space for strangers dying in this city, and report their doing therein to the next meeting.’ The commissioners met this request by persuading the corporation to accept the Southeast Square, which had been dedicated to the public use by the original plan of the city in 1682, and a patent was issued Jan. 29, 1706, which recided that an application had been made ‘by the mayor and commonalty of the city of Philadelphia to the commissioners, that they would grant some convenient piece of ground for a common and public burying-ground, for all strangers and others who might not so convenient be laid in any of the particular enclosures appropriated by certain religious societies to that purpose.’ The commissioners therefore stated that they had appropriated ‘a certain square belonging to those squares which at the original plotting of the said city were intended for public uses.’ The ground was bounded north by Walnut Street, on the south by a street forty feet wide, and on the east by Sixth Street.
John Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, vol. 3, p. 2355.
Almost as soon as the property was vested in the corporation, interments were made there of the wretchedly poor, the slaves, and the free blacks. In times of festival it has been said that the slave blacks of both sexes used to go to the square in considerable numbers, and amuse themselves by dancing, singing, and speaking.
John Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, vol. 3, p. 2356.
