The Daily Iberian can trace its roots back to February 1893. Barney Dugas with Acadiana Coins, Currency and Collectibles on Louisiana 14 in New Iberia was nice enough to give me a copy of an even earlier newspaper that served this area, The Louisiana Sugar Bowl, this particular issue from March 17, 1881.

The newspaper had a beautiful flag, with an illustration of sugar cane fields and sugar mills in the center, and the letters that made up the paper’s name made out of stalks of sugar cane. The flag had tags that indicated the special interests of the paper: Immigration; Agriculture; Manufactures; News; Education and Literature.

It appeared to be targeted to those involved with the sugar industry.

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The paper was almost as wide as our current editions are tall. You’d have to have long arms to open one up and read across two pages at a time.

There was a two-column wide listing of ads down the left side of the front page, with seven columns on news to the right. No story or illustration in those seven news columns was more than one column wide, a reminder of the limited technology used in printing in those days, when someone likely had to set all of the lines of type by hand and making things bigger or wider was a lot more difficult.

The paper was published every Thursday by J.Y. Gilmore, editor & proprietor, and cost $4 per annum, or $3 in advance. At the $4 rate, that’s just 7.7 cents per issue, though consider your Daily Iberian is less than 39 cents for a subscription home-delivered, so our price hasn’t risen all that much.

There were a number of ads from New Orleans’ area merchants like Danziger’s Dry Goods on Canal Street and G.T. Schilling’s Emporium of Fashion on Canal Street. Joseph Swartz & Co. at Gravier and Common in New Orleans offered carriages, buggies, spring wagons and cane carts along with fire apparatus.

The paper was sealed in plastic to help it combat the effects of aging, so I couldn’t look inside.

I saw names not so common to our area these days: Queyrouze & Bois; C. de Lubretonne; L.C. Arny; L. Leconte; A.M. & J. Solari; Geo. Swarbrick; P. Bossonney and others in headlines.

And I saw others that are more familiar, like: Robert H. Chaffe; Adler & Levy; A.F. Himel; Lange & Legendre; J.A. Bourg; Leon Godchaux; P.A. Villermin and others.

It was really fun looking at this glimpse of life for our area’s people from 128 years ago.

Wow!

Some people are just plain lucky, like the owner of the painting in the news this week that paid $19,000 for what was thought to be the work of a 19th-century German artist and which has now been determined to be by Leonardo da Vinci, and, oh, by the way, is valued at more than $150 million.

I’d say finding out something you bought for $19,000 is worth $150 million is pretty lucky.

Of course just think of the guy that sold the painting and now sees what he once had.

Will Chapman is publisher of The Daily Iberian.