Caribbean Leonard B. Smith US Consul at Curacao 1870s-1900s antique photos Lot For Sale

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Caribbean Leonard B. Smith US Consul at Curacao 1870s-1900s antique photos Lot:
$950.00

This is a one of a kind collection of photographs documenting the life of US Consul in Curacao and major figure in the history of the island. The photo archive includes dozens of photographs of life on Curacao, workers, architecture, landscapes, and the Smith family, etc. 

Leonard Burlington Smith (born in 1839 in Mill Creek, Maine) was a 19th century US Consul on the island of Curacao, whose great vision and ambitious projects helped lay the foundation for the development of the island’s modern infrastructure.

Mr. Smith's early career started as a cabin boy in the USA at age 14, after which he worked his way up to Captain. By the age of 23 he was sailing and trading around the Atlantic on his own schooner. Smith sailed into Curacao’s Saint Anna Bay for the first time in 1876. He saw an opportunity and returned that very same year locked and loaded with timber and ice from the Penobscot river in Maine.

Though Smith’s sea voyage took several weeks, his ice always arrived intact because he would pack it in sawdust from Maine’s timber mills.

Smith set up two “ice houses” on the Saint Anna Bay wharf and sold ice for 2 Dutch cents a pound. Locals were skeptical at first, believing these novel cold drinks unhealthy. But Smith persevered and kept serving the skeptics cold beer, quenching their thirst and instantly converting them into veritable ice lovers.

Smith knew he had struck gold and returned with his wife and 4 children in 1877. He became the official Curacao agent for the US company Joseph Foulke & Sons, Vice Consul of the US (1881) and US Consul (1884). In fact, Curacao’s US Consulate was considered one of the most important in the Caribbean at that time.

Smith continued to import ice from Maine and expanded his trade over time. He added makeshift ‘cool boxes’ for private use. Then he imported coal from the US to serve US and British steamships docking in Saint Anna Bay. He also exported salt from neighboring island Bonaire to the US for good measure.

Some of Smith’s accomplishments include:* Connecting the Punda and Otrobanda side of Willemstad for the very first time by constructing Curaçao’s original pontoon-bridge in 1888* Curacao’s first hotel in Otrobanda for US tourists fleeing cold winters.* Curacao’s first waterworks.* Curacao’s first electricity plant.

Smith was one of Curacao’s wealthiest inhabitants when he passed away in 1898.

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