The Final 1853 Letter from Price, Walsh & Co.
New Orleans, November 4, 1853
The final surviving letter in this group of correspondence from Price, Walsh & Co. of New Orleans is dated November 4, 1853. Written to Charles Stillman & Brother in Brownsville, it reflects a tobacco market that had grown increasingly tight during the year.
The letter opens by acknowledging Stillman’s recent communication and expressing satisfaction that he had been successfully reducing his tobacco inventory.
This is a revealing detail. Earlier letters from the same firm had warned that tobacco supplies were tightening, and that prices might soon rise. By the autumn of 1853, that prediction had largely come true.
The Price of Tobacco
Price, Walsh report that the market in New Orleans was currently paying about:
$8½ per bale for roughly 150 bales of tobacco
which they describe as the best tobacco then available.
The firm explains that they had 50 bales ready for shipment, but caution that tobacco suitable for the Rio Grande trade remained difficult to obtain.
Their concern is evident in the letter:
the merchants were carefully watching shipments in order to ensure that their customers would not suffer from shortages.
The tone suggests that tobacco was becoming a scarcer and more valuable commodity, confirming the rising market described in earlier correspondence from the same year.
Guarding Stillman’s Reputation
The merchants also stress that they had been extremely selective about the tobacco they purchased.
They explain that they refused to ship inferior tobacco simply to fill orders, writing that they did not wish to send goods that might damage Stillman’s reputation in the Rio Grande market.
This remark reinforces what earlier letters suggested:
Stillman had built a reputation for selling high-quality tobacco, and his New Orleans suppliers were conscious of maintaining that standard.
A Difficult Market
The letter concludes with a cautious note about the coming months. The merchants warn that the tobacco crop had not yet recovered, and they see little prospect for lower prices in the near future.
For merchants operating along the Rio Grande frontier, such fluctuations could have significant consequences. Tobacco was a reliable retail commodity, and shortages could disrupt trade throughout the region.
The End of a Correspondence for 1853
With this letter, the Price, Walsh correspondence in the surviving Stillman papers comes to a close.
Taken together, the letters from 1852–1853 provide an unusually clear picture of how the Rio Grande trade functioned:
New Orleans merchants sourced tobacco from the American interior
shipments moved south by sea to the Texas coast
frontier merchants like Charles Stillman distributed the goods through Brownsville and Matamoros into northern Mexico
Through these letters we can see not just the movement of goods, but the constant negotiation of supply, quality, and price that shaped the commerce of the borderlands.
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