[Autograph Letter, Signed, from Abner Phelps to Gilmer Marston, a Friend Back Home in New Hampshire, Describing Life in New Orleans]

New Orleans: June 30, 1832. Good.. [3]pp. on a single folded sheet, addressed on verso of second leaf. Old mailing folds, minor foxing, tiny hole in second leaf from removal of wax seal costing a couple of words, significant fading to text. An informative and content-rich manuscript letter from Abner Phelps, a transplanted New Englander living in antebellum New Orleans, written to Phelps's school fellow and close friend Gilman Marston, later a Civil War Union General and U.S. Senator from New Hampshire. Abner Phelps is a notable but still somewhat obscure historical figure in the lore of New Orleans and San Francisco. He worked as a lawyer in both cities (truncated) and served in the Mexican-American War before moving to California during the early Gold Rush. He and his wife built a house in San Francisco in 1850 that retains their name, and is considered to be among the oldest private residences in California. In the present letter, Phelps describes his experiences after moving to New Orleans, first taking a job teaching school "from six in the morning till nine in the evening. Very few of my scholars speak English, but [only] French and Spanish. I have a hard task as they are very ungovernable fellows. I shall however relinquish this employment in the fall and commence the practice of law." The temperature had already risen to ninety-six degrees and "most of the northern merchants have left the city" for the summer, leaving the streets to "appear desolate and forsaken." He had already suffered from Yellow Fever and comments that "I now consider myself acclimated" to the unhealthy climate, though "I am not without apprehensions for my health."

Phelps then offers a hint about why he would be willing, seventeen years later, to join the Gold Rush to California. He had found "the advantages of traveling...much greater than I had anticipated," having "corrected" some of his opinions and prejudices and "given me a better acquaintance with all the intricacies and varieties of the human character. I have spent some time in Mexico...[a] beautiful and interesting country" which he liked "much better than Louisiana," where the government, left over from Spanish colonial days, persisted in "sheltering despotism."

Despite an abiding interest in the life of Abner Phelps by Judge William Newson - father of the current Governor of California - still little is known about this pioneering New Orleans and San Francisco lawyer. Several Phelps diaries are held by Tulane University, but they do not begin until 1837, after he was settled in New Orleans as a lawyer and became known as a somewhat controversial politician. Interestingly, the Phelps House in San Francisco was supposedly built first in New Orleans and then moved to the West Coast in pieces because Phelps's wife was homesick for Louisiana; this story is perhaps apocryphal, but certainly fits the romantic nature of Phelps's far-flung life. The present letter appears to be the earliest known Phelps epistle, written at the tender age of twenty-seven. . (Inventory #: 4161)