On the morning of May 2, 1837, Théodore Nicolet, Swiss consul, founder of New Orleans’s first Francophone Evangelical Church, and international financier, woke up in his mahogany bed. He was probably alone. He was a bachelor in his mid-forties who owned two slaves in their twenties, a cook named Nancy and a servant named Billy.

We can guess that while Nancy prepared his breakfast, Billy helped him perform his morning ablutions. Nicolet washed his face in the bowl of his mahogany washstand and dried it on his towel that hung on his mahogany towel stand. He picked out his clothes from his mahogany armoire and sat on his mahogany sofa or his mahogany armchair. Perhaps he stole a glance at himself in one of his bedroom’s two mahogany-framed looking glasses. He got dressed in a crisp linen shirt, a wool suit, and a flannel waistcoat. He picked out one of his more than forty pocket-handkerchiefs and tied a cravat or perhaps a silk foulard around his neck. He put on his shoes and, after his morning meal eaten at his mahogany table, he walked out of his home on Bourbon Street and to his counting house on Royal Street.