Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

people of this city, but with men and women, some of whom are famous in literary and
artistic circles…who have enjoyed a breakfast at Begue’s, and have returned home to sing the
praises of that excellent rendezvous of lovers of savory and original menus.” A few months after
her death, the New Orleans Item reveled in the memory of “a breakfast that, once tasted, would
never be forgotten; a breakfast that had power to call men and women back from foreign lands—
breakfast that was an ounce of poem and comforter.” 3 After his wife’s death, Hypolyte Begué married
again—to the widow of a French Market butcher. Today, their historic building houses
Tujague’s Restaurant.
Elizabeth Kettenring Begue.
MME. BEGUÉ AND HER RECIPES: OLD CREOLE COOKERY. SAN
FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: SOUTHERN PACIFIC, SUNSET
ROUTE, C1900, RARE BOOKS DEPARTMENT, HOWARD-
TILTON MEMORIAL LIBRARY, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
For Further reading, see Sally K. Reeves, “Making Groceries,” Louisiana Cultural Vistas, (fall, 2007), 24-35; Poppy
Tooker, Tujague’s Cookbook: Creole Recipes and Lore in the New Orleans Grand Tradition (New Orleans, 2015).
1 Elizabeth M. Williams, New Orleans: A Food Biography (New York: Altamira Press, 2013), 103-4.
2 The Daily Picayune, October 20, 1906.
3 New Orleans Item, June 20, 1907.
A LBERT
B ALDWIN
(1834-1912)
Albert Baldwin built the firm of A. Baldwin & Co. into the most significant hardware firm in
New Orleans. Born at Watertown, Massachusetts, and raised in Boston, he had a reputation as a
gifted mathematician that served him well in business. At twenty-four (1857) Baldwin migrated to
New Orleans with his first wife Rhoda Maria Griffin and their son Jacob to work as an accountant.
His employer was a firm known as “Richards, [Cuthbert H.] Slocomb & Co,” where Albert’s brother
Henry Baldwin was a partner. Founded in 1822, Richards, Slocomb and Co. were “Importers and
wholesale dealers in Foreign and Domestic Hardware.” Some items from their inventory reflect the
needs of a growing nineteenth century city:
“700 tons of Snede and American Bar iron, 500 tons of Hollow Ware and Castings, 800
dozen Axes, 900 dozen shovels, 9,000 ploughs.”
Sorrow beset Baldwin’s early life in New Orleans. As chronicled by Bouligny family historian
Fontaine Martin, “In the autumn of 1858, about a year after the Baldwins’ arrival in New Orleans, both
mother and child died of yellow fever.” Martin also reports that a few years later Baldwin’s older brother
Henry also lost his life in a storm on Lake Pontchartrain. The death occurred during the Union occupation
of New Orleans, during which time Cuthbert Slocomb was serving in the Confederate Army. 1
“To keep the firm going on the death of one partner and the absence of the other,” Martin writes,
“Albert as executor of his brother’s estate gave up his previous positon and took over the temporary
management of the firm. When the war was over and Colonel Slocomb returned to New Orleans,
Albert was formally made a partner and the firm became Slocomb, Baldwin, and Co.” In 1874, the
firm became A. Baldwin & Co., by which it was known until Baldwin’s death.
In 1862, Baldwin remarried to New Orleans-born Arthémise Bouligny with whom he would
engender thirteen children. In 1869, the Baldwins purchased the most elegant home on Esplanade
Avenue, known today at the Dufour-Baldwin House. Designed by prominent architects Henry
Howard and Albert Diettel in 1859, the Italianate mansion dominated the 1700 block of
Esplanade, where its monumental mass and galleries still command the interest of local citizens
and visitors. The Baldwin family remained there until 1912.
Surviving Reconstruction, in the 1870s Baldwin purchased controlling stock of the New Orleans
National Bank. Over the next four decades, the bank grew explosively, the share price opening at
$40 and reaching $750 a share by 1912 when Baldwin died. Baldwin became vice-president of the
Times-Democrat Publishing Company, and also served as director of the American Brewing
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