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ACQUISITIONS
1 RECENT ADDITIONS
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j Island Flora, Jazz Pioneers, and WW1I
Samuel Smith	Smisr.	s-s.
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Flore pittoresque et medicate des Antilles....
j 2074.0252
; This eight-volume, early 19th-century botanical set focuses on the flora of the Antilles, the archipelago bordering the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean. The series was written by Michel Etienne Descourtilz (1775-1835), a French physician and botanist who traveled to South Carolina, Cuba, and then Haiti in 1798, in the midst of the Haitian
1	Revolution. Descourtilz became a prisoner of Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758-1806). a leader of the revolution who later became the first ruler of an independent Haiti. Many pharmacies had been destroyed during the revolt, so Descourtilz’s intimate knowledge oflocal plants and (heir medicinal uses made him valuable to Dessalines. who forced him to serve as a kind of medical adviser until his escape back to France, in 1803.
The volumes’ 600 entries of Antillean plants include local and scientific names, physical characteristics, natural history, chemical analyses, medical uses, methods of administration, and full-page engravings of illustrations by Descourtilz’s son, printed in color and finished by hand. The copy acquired by The Collection is a mixed-edition set (the first two volumes being from the second edition and the subsequent volumes from the first) that belonged to Gaspar Cusachs (1855-1929), a New Orleans businessman and former president of the Louisiana Historical Society.
—NINA BOZAK
Benjamin F. BuUes	‘uafc-: *"■ v
MSS 669
In May 1862 SU	Stmma F
Butler led l’a*oa ctog«h -s ac 11
the city of Nc»	Pit; t 3h*tcr t
process foj	tit prstr? '- papers
and conv'1-.?	sum**
eating	;v	-- >
In 2012 The C
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Smiths’ bwv;;.	F'jrwcn-';
between Butler ar-j h;t John K. Hackett. The	i-'t-r o* 'ix
case can be seen in sonte is* providing charactcr rciu'Tkti or- betils of the Smiths. includ*nr enc 3 man named Charles L.	»iio m turn Em a
note from Abraham Liftuwr;	ior
his own character. UhstnsieH. the o =dcoce provided in this collection—m an anonymous letter written so — seems to implicate the Smkh brethrr. and suggests that the seized gold »«*, in fact, intended to suppon the Confederacy. However, the court ruled against Butler and ordered that the money be restored.
—ROBERT TICKNOR
22 The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly