...you may see it here on the main website: First Street Family Gallery
This is a page I've decided to make to discuss one aspect of the history of 1239 First Street in New Orleans: those who first called it home. As you might have guessed, I have more than one reason to be interested in this. However, this page is meant to learn more about who these people were who built a mansion in the Garden District to call home, and their contribution to the history of New Orleans.
I was beyond thrilled to learn more about these people, AND to find pictures of them! One thing I noticed in one of the images of the First Street Parlor that was taken in 1964 was a picture on the wall beside the fireplace closest to the windows that open on the First Street end of the parlor. It looks like someone standing next to that same fireplace, someone from a time well before 1964.
It was hard to really tell much about the woman besides the length of her gown as a means of attempting to date the picture. Except that the fireplace in the picture on the wall and the fireplace in the room photographed appeared to be the exact same one. So I thought I would get a closer look at both, hoping perhaps there is someone who might know who the woman in the picture on the wall is.
It's easy to imagine this might be a portrait of Pamela Starr Clapp, the wife of Emory Clapp. As I understand it, the house was bought for her as a wedding gift from her husband, and she lived there until she died in 1934. Pamela Starr Clapp survived her husband by many decades, and remained in the house because she had loved it.
The house was then sold to Judge Wisdom and his wife, who lived there for many years. The house is still a private residence today, and for that reason, I will avoid mention of who lives there now or who has lived there since Anne Rice sold the house.
As I have begun to research the histories of the houses surrounding this one, and the histories of the houses in New Orleans that are similar to this one, one thing I've learned that I think is interesting is what business many of those owners were in.
Example: Emory Clapp, who was apparently a cotton merchant. A Connecticut native, Robert Slark Day had worked for him, which no doubt explains how he met Clapp's adopted daughter, Sarah.
The house across Chestnut, the Carroll-Crawford house, was built about 1869, a little over ten years after 1239 First Street had been built. Joseph Carroll had also been a cotton merchant from Virginia.
And after the Civil War, or the War Between the States, or whichever name you choose to refer to it by. The more I learn, the more significant that distinction appears to have been, especially in terms of economics.
When I was able to find pictures of the people shown here so far, I was extremely thrilled. When you can look at these people in photographs, that is the moment they cease to be merely names in history books. It's a bit like visiting a cemetery where there are actual photographs of the people whose graves you are standing at on their headstones or mausoleum crypts. No matter how long they've been gone, those pictures are what remind us that these were once living people just as we are right now.