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Barron P. DuBois delivered American provisions to the Jamaican earthquake survivors. However, the company’s buildings were already crowded with provisions. Small amounts of rations were given to “several parties of destitute Americans.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-01-19
Rear Admiral C. H. Davis writes to Robley D. Evans, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, regarding the situation in Jamaica. Much of Kingston has been damaged by the earthquake and ensuing fire, and is a scene of total confusion, although shipping has not been disturbed. The governor, James Alexander Swettenham, seems to have the situation under control, and has declined assistance from Davis’s men. Davis has respected this, but believes that Swettenham has overestimated the security of the situation, especially away from the main city, and feels that the Missouri should remain until the situation is clearer.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-01-17
President-elect Taft encloses a letter from Sir Harry Johnston about the dreadful conditions at the Hotel Imperial in Colón, and his own reply. He found Johnston’s decision to complain at length about his personal discomfort to another country’s head of state perplexing. Taft’s wife, Helen Herron Taft, did not share his “intense amusement” at Johnston’s “extremely English” tone. Taft also encloses the self-explanatory letter he wrote to President Jose Domingo de Obaldia of Panama after a call from Obaldia’s competitor, Ricardo Arias. Taft is disgusted by Representative Henry Thomas Rainey’s “diatribes” in the House of Representatives.