Baker, Henry A. 1832 – 1897

BAKER

Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 10/22/2020 at 08:43:16

Source: Decorah Republican Jan. 13, 1898 P 3 C 4

A FORTY-YEAR-OLD ITEM.
The following letter and paragraph relates to one who cut quite a wide swath in the early days, when everything boomed:
RUTHERFORD, N. J., Jan. 5, '98. EDITORS REPUBLICAN:
Dear Sirs:—As a matter of interest to some of your older residents, I send you a paper containing a short notice of the death of Henry A. Baker, a former resident of Decorah, and a civil engineer on the survey from Decorah to Otranto in 1857, on which survey I acted as his rodman. Col. Eb. Baldwin was chief engineer at that time, (firm of Baldwin & Fake.) I formerly lived in your place, boarding at the Winnesheik House when mother Day kept it. Afterwards at Otranto and later in Waukon, whence I came east in '61.
Very truly yours,
E. c. ABBOT.
The recent accidental death in Oregon of Henry A. Baker recalls the time in the early seventies when Mr. Baker, who was a civil engineer and surveyor, lived on Carmita Avenue, and made a map of this part of the county. In those days the West End was merely a geographical expression, although the Abbots, Bookstavers and one or two other old families had begun to break into the wilderness. Mr. Baker left Rutherford fully twenty years ago, and has been heard from occasionally by friends here as being in some of the Western States. Three years ago he left Denver, Col., for The Dalles, Oregon, where, on Dec. 3, he was killed by falling from the crib of a pile driver. Mr. Baker was sixty-five years old, and was a well-known Mason. Memorial services were held at The Dalles on December 4. Mr. Baker’s body was brought to New Jersey for burial. He is survived by a son, Fred A. Baker, of Newark, and by three married daughters. His wife died before the family left Rutherford.—Rutherford News.

Transcriber’s Note: Find a Grave shows he was born in 1832 and is buried in Cedar Lawn Cemetery in Paterson, NJ.