#1200: Dessalines nominated as emperor -- reported in 1804.

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

>From Bob Corbett

Lately I'm been collecting old newspapers, and today I finally got
around to entering a few of them into my library program, thus discovering
for the first time what things I had purchased!

One I found  especially interesting.  On Oct. 16, 1804 the New England
Palladium reported that the army of Hayti had nominated J.J. Dessalines
as emperor of Hayti.   I was surprised by the early date.  Were others
aware of how long the plans had been laid before Dessalines became emperor?

Another one I was recording is from Jan. 15, 1801 and is a very long set
of "regulations" proclaimed by Toussaint L'Ouveture for the colony
of St. Domingue.  It is a story reported in the General Advertiser, a
newspaper from Philadelphia.

I have several more yet to do this evening.  The quality of these old
newspapers, nearly 200 years old, is astonishing.  They don't feel like
paper, they feel much more like course linen.  I don't know what they
are made of, but there are very nice.  I haven't acquired these from a
single dealer, rather one by one from dealers all over New England.
I must have more than a dozen now and I keep looking for interesting stuff.
One that I worked on earlier was a report of an earthquake in 1842 that
is quite interesting as well.

Ah, how Corbett spends the chilly pre-winter evenings, and with a lovely
bottle of merlot along side, and a simply awesome sea-food pizza whose recipe
my partner pirated from a restaurant we visited in Paris!  Not a bad
way to pass the time.

Bob Corbett