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Historical Society receives diary
Impressions of early coast life revealed in diary of a seafarer
4	By JAKE JACOB Alligators are here in terrible flocks, but they are not so lavage as "In South America.
“I have never heard of them attacking a man, except one old man who stretched his mosquito net close to the bank of the river and went to sleep.”
“Pearlington is a small, insignificant town. The only trade is in wood and cotton with New Orleans. There is no church so there is service only twice a year when a Methodist preacher comes from another town and holds services for three or four days.”
These were the words of Christian Koch, Danish seafarer who came to Pearlington about 1834. Koch, who made the trip from New Orleans in a lumber schooner, kept a diary (albeit undated)
I covering his experiences in ( Mississippi and Louisiana.
A copy of this diary, later edited and translated by Koch’s family, was made I available Monday to the | Hancock County Historical \ Society through the kind s auspices of the family.
Jerome Boudreaux chaired the historical society’s meeting and gave a reading from the diary. Cover dates Istate it covers activities between 1831 and 1836.
Koch, in the diary, wrote, “I had now taken hire on a little schooner of about 30 tons which sailed on Lake Pont-:hartrain to Pearlington, where it belonged.