Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Frederick Baker to Walt Whitman, 23 April 1860

Date: April 23, 1860

Whitman Archive ID: loc.00848

Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, Vanessa Steinroetter, Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Heidi Bean, and Nicole Gray



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New York
April 23/60

Walter Whitman Esq.
Dear Sir:

I1 trust you will pardon the liberty I have taken to trouble you with a matter of no personal interest to yourself. My excuse for writing to you is, that it is a matter of the utmost importance to a client of mine. The Deed executed to Lazarus Wineburgh in 1854 does not express the consideration money. Wineburgh has recently effected a sale of the propery conveyed by that Deed; but objection is made to the title on the grounds of such omission.

I have drawn another Deed which I send together with the old one. Will you be so kind as to execute this new Deed before a Commissioner of Deeds for the State of New York; and Mr Wineburgh will be under the greatest obligation to you. As the execution of this deed and its speedy return is of great importance to Wineburgh, I respectfully request that you execute it at your earliest convenience.

If you will inform us what your charges and disbursements are we will remit by return of mail, or will arrange the matter on your return to this city.

Yours most respectfully,
Fred'k. Baker, 15 Nassau St. N.Y.


Notes:

1. Frederick Baker, attorney at law, wrote on behalf of Lazarus Wineburgh, who bought a house on Cumberland Street from Whitman in 1854. See Whitman's response to Frederick Baker from April 24, 1860. See also Whitman's letter to Albert Johnston, March 27, 1882, mentioning the sale to Wineburgh. See also Cleveland Rogers, "The Good Gray House Builder," Walt Whitman Review 5.4 (December 1959), 63–69. "He sold the two-story house [on Cumberland Street] to Lazarus Wineburgh on 15 March 1854" (68). According to Joann Krieg's Chronology, Whitman built a house on Cumberland Street in Brooklyn in May 1852, and he sold the house in March of 1853. See Joann P. Krieg, A Whitman Chronology (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998), 23. [back]


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