|
|
1785 |
|||||||||||
| South America & Caribbean:Events of this year in this region influencing Louisiana. | |||||||||||
| North America: Congress establishes the dollar as the official currency of the United States. Thomas Jefferson is named minister to France to replace Benjamin Franklin. The previous year Franklin had convinced the French to set clocks ahead each Spring and back an hour each Fall to take advantage of the summer daylight. U. S. economic troubles worsen as English goods undercut American manufacturers and individual states begin to erect tariffs. U.S. begins sale of western lands at $1 per acre. U. of Georgia founded. | |||||||||||
| Europe: Steam powers textile machinery for the first time in England. Englishman makes first crossing of the English Channel in a balloon. Digitalis first used as a medicine. Works: The Marriage of Figaro presented by Mozart in Vienna. | |||||||||||
January 1785
Spanish Officials: Alcaldes Ordinarios Primer -Nicolas Forstall Segundo - Renato Hucher de Kernion. Nicolas Forstall also holds the post of Regidore Sencillo giving him two seats on the Cabildo. Sindico Procurador General Francisco de Riaño Mayordomo de Proprios Francisco Blanche. Esteban Estaban Rodriguez Miro becomes proprietary governor after serving as acting civil and military governor of the colony of Louisiana. |
February 1785
New Orleans population is almost 5,000. This number tends to swell during the social season All Saints Day (Nov. 1) to Mardi Gras and decreases during the summer to avoid what becomes yellow fever season. |
March 1785
|
April 1785
|
May 1785
|
June 1785
|
July 1785
|
August 1785
|
September 1785
|
October 1785
|
November 1785
|
December 1785
|
| Captain-General
Galvez in 1785 informs the Cabildo through governor Estaban
Rodriguez Miro that the city would assume the cost of cleaning and
repairing the city’s gutters. The city replaced destroyed gutters
after the fire of 1788 but the property owners replaced them after 1796’s
fire, a mistake because the city had to regrade them. In 1770 the Cabildo only had authority to maintain gutters that ran in front of public lots. For many years the city had done the work and charged the residents pro rata. Gutters ran along both sides of the city’s earthen streets in a deep V shape with wooden planks lining the two sides. Additional planks covered the top and butted up against the sidewalk and ran through intersections. Until 1799 the Cabildo called the covered gutters puentes (bridges). The same order gives the Cabildo street maintainance responsibility. |
Alexander Porter is born in Donegal County,
Ireland June 24, 1785. He settles in Franklin, St.
Mary Parish. and will be a political leader and Statesman. Constitutional
Convention (1811-1812); Louisiana Legislature (1816-1817); Louisiana
Supreme Court (1821-1833). He dies January 13, 1844.
Thomas Butler (1785-1847) is born. He will become a distinguished judge and planter in West Feliciana Parish, a member of United States Congress (1818-1821), president of first Board of Trustees, for College of Louisiana, located at Jackson, which later became Centenary College. Tusquahoma, chief of a Choctaw Indian tribe of fifty families lived on land in Ouachita Parish granted by the Spanish government from about 1785 to 1820. In that year the land was sold to Stephen Maddox and the tribe moved west. Choctaw refers to the flattened head of the tribes. This is an important tribe of the Muskhogean. The Choctaw were visited first by De Soto in 1540. These Indians were the most outstanding agriculturists of all the southern tribes. Most of their warfare was defensive. They lived in large towns, mainly for their mutual defense against their enemies, the Creeks. |
Paper money which first appeared in Louisiana in 1780 has depreciated 70 percent in value by 1785. The Cabildo asks the crown to retire the paper , but will wait two years with no reply. New Orleans is the site of another public execution, this time two participants in an abortive slave uprising in Pointe Coupee Parish. |
The Voisin family builds the Voisin Plantation that its descendants will occupy for well over a hundred years. The house is a typical Louisiana colonial plan with three rooms, one room deep on each floor and the only stairs rising under the front gallery. There are plastered brick walls on the lower story and massive cypress framing above with mud and moss between the hand mortised timbers. The house at one time was moved back from the encroaching Mississippi River. 1785 Governor Estaban Rodriguez Miro appoints Nicolas Forstall commandant at Opelousas. Forestall is a regidore and alcalde ordinario, again Forstall will be absent from his council post for long lengths of time. |
In 1785 the son of François Roquigny is dignosed with leprosy. Physicians have suspected the presence of the disease in the colony, but this case resulted in a facility to quarantine lepers. Shortly after completing Charity Hospital, Almonester designed and built the San Lazaro (St. Lazarus) Hospital for lepers. It was built on a canal on his farm (in Treme) on the edge of the city. The city treasury paid for the building, the site and the administration of the hospital. A serious smallpox epidemic is averted using variolation, a form of innoculation that has been used for almost one hundred years, but still requires careful isolation of patients to prevent spread of the disease. |
In 1785 Jose de Evia completes a survey of
the Gulf Coast (Jose de Evia Y Sus Reconocimientos Del Golfo De Mexico
1783-1796) for the Governor of New Spain,
Bernardo de Galvez which results in more accurate maps of the region.
The information is not published until 1799 as the Carta Esferica
que comprehende las costas del Seno Mexicano by the Deposito
Hidrografico de Marina of the Spanish Admiralty but is still a vast
improvement over previous maps.
|
||||||
Go to the year 1786 | Go to the year 1786 | ||||||||||