(YELLOW FEVER). (BROADSIDE) Lines on the Death of Hilary Baker,
Description
Broadside verse, within an elaborate ornamental border, on wove paper with a Brandywine Mills watermark. 9-1/2x8 inches. [Philadelphia: R. Aitken?, 1798].
Thirty line elegiac poem below the above title, beginning: "The dire disease which through our city sheads / Its mortal poison e'er our quilty heads, / At length has levell'a in the silent dust, /
The man whom foes and friends alike could trust ...
During the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1798, Philadelphia Mayor Hilary Baker stayed within the city, rather than fleeing to the country with most of the city's wealthy and elite. He contracted yellow fever and died on September 25, 1798.
The ornamental border is very elaborate and similar to one on a broadside elegy on the death of George Washington issued in 1800 by Robert Aitken (Evans 37079). This broadside is unrecorded.
1796-7.-HILARY BAKER.
He was a hardware merchant, and is one of the signers of the memorial addressed to the Assembly in 1785, by " manufacturers of bar-iron." In 1779 he was Clerk of the Court of Quarter Sessions, in 1787 a member of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention. He was an Alderman, 1789-96, and chosen Mayor in 1796 and the following year. He died, at his post, during the yellow-fever visitation of 1798, and was buried at Zion Church, on Eighth street above Race.
Jenkins, Howard Malcolm (1895). Memorial History of the City of Philadelphia. New York: New-York History Company. p. 408. Retrieved 12 November 2025.
