Steamboat Arabia: A Historian’s Blog

On page 133 of Greg's book, Treasure in a Cornfield, this case of canned oysters was found in the stern (rear end of the steamboat). The box reads 2 Doz 1 lb. Cans Fresh Cove Oysters Price & Littig Baltimore. The side you don't see say T & P St Louis...(Tracy & Papin Logan on the other side- if memory serves me). 
Below- see the 1860 Wood's City Directory which shows several listing for the business- Price & Littig

Augustus Price operated the cannery at McElderry's Wharf which is now in the tourist section of the Baltimore Inner Harbor. Luther Littig was the salesman for the firm. Years ago, a wonderful historian sent me her PhD thesis on Oyster Canneries in Baltimore and thanks to her here's an add for their store on West Pratt Street. (Littig was the salesman and Baldwin was listed as a previous partner, but I think they were somehow still connected when Arabia sank.)

 I attended graduate school in the mid 1980s only a few streets away from the Inner Harbor and recall before the area was renovated Townhouses were being sold for $5,000.


In my St Louis Salesman's story, Oysters were one of his delicacy's he enjoyed in while on his trip east,

"Stopped off at the Brandseth House in New York.  It is kept on the European plan -- i.e. you can eat when you please and what you please and pay only for what you call for.  -- the charge is 75 cents per day for room. I had the best one there that I have had since I started this trip. 6 1/4 cents for boots blackened and regular printed prices for every dish on the bill of fare.  -- For one half dozen good large oysters stewed and plenty of crackers -- 12 1/2 cents.  So I ate chiefly oysters.  -- I found that about one dollar per day furnished me fare that I greatly preferred to any I can get in a No. 1, $2 per day Hotel.-There is no hotel of this kind in Boston.  -- Had there been I would have stopped at it. - I predict that ere many years such hotels will be more numerous and our cities then such as we have now."

For those who have been reading my blog since the very beginning, I posted for weeks this man's journal. He was a St. Louis Salesman visiting chinaware manufacturers in the east. If you haven't read this go back to my early postings, you won't regret it.

Since this salesman never wrote his name in his journal, I wrote many, many blogs titled, "Seeking a Name for my Salesman". Haunted, I spent hours, days and weeks on a wild goose chase for any solid evidence uncovering every stone. I narrowed it down to several men a few months ago and now based on the facts (City Directories, Patent documents, Law Suits, and the Journal)  I can make announce to the world his name is Amos Broadnax!

What a relief to finally see the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Amos was thrilled by the US Patent Office and seemed to be interested in everything from arts, architecture, culture and the antislavery movement. He seemed to be drawn to science as he wrote,

"January 1^st 1857

I noticed in a newspaper recently that some agricultural society in the South Have offered a reward of $10,000 to any person who will discover a remedy or prevention for the boll worm. It occurs to me that inoculation of cash plants at the proper time with some salt, alkaline, acid, resin; oil or other mineral, vegetable or animal product might and probably would prevent the development of the eggs of the insect or so change the qualities of the vegetable fiber on which it feeds as to hinder its growth and cause it to death.  -- -- I think the idea is worth experimenting on."  

Harriett Beecher Stowe's book, Uncle Tom's Cabin may not have been published or as widely read unless it first printed in installments in Dr. Gamaliel Baily Jr. newspaper, The National Era.

Doctor Albert C. Koch is a paleontologist and operated a museum in St. Louis during the 1830s- 1840s and who's dinosaur bones are still in the British Museum.

Rev Theodore Parker Unitarian minister, who preached to thousands at the Boston Music Hall and actively was part of the Vigilance Committee who aids fugitive slaves.

Mr. Oliver Byrne, a well-known and justly celebrated engineer, both civil and military. He built bridges.

Mr. Jonathan Koons and his spiritual room where people were tricked into seeing ghosts.

Amos Broadnax left the clay works and became a St Louis patent agent helping inventors file their patents just like Mr Robbins did for him. Broadnax's own idea for a patent to transport freight by balloon never got off the ground but this experience made him an expert in preparing all the required forms. In 1860 he was still working as a Patent Agent in St Louis, but relocates east some time after- possibly when the Civil War broke out.