“Mr. Stevenson was my patient, but as he was not really ill while here, I had comparatively few professional calls to make on him. He was so attractive, however, in conversation, that I found myself, as it was growing dark, very often seated by the big fireplace in the Baker cottage having a ...

Andrew and Mary Baker were used to having people around their house because their livelihood depended on it. They ran a sort of bed and breakfast operation, tent style, with a frontier theme that featured hunting and fishing, the main attraction for the “sports” who escaped here from the ...

“The Bakers did not see much of their famous tenant, Robert Louis Stevenson. Mrs. Baker recalls mainly a gentleman who smoked many cigarettes, burning some famous scars in her mantelpiece, and a few infamous holes in her sheets. Mr. Baker saw more of him, as he built the fires and brought ...

Alfred Lee Donaldson became the son of a wealthy New York City banker when he was born there in 1866. Reminding some people what a spoiled rich kid is like, he got to do what he wanted. When Alfred was 15, that was to be a violinist. Such a pursuit would logically lead to spending time in ...

“Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Baker had five children, of whom only two are now living, Blanche and Bertha, comely young ladies of nineteen, who strikingly resemble each other and are pupils in the Plattsburgh Normal School” (now SUNY Plattsburgh). — Biographical Review, Essex and Clinton ...

“To Blanche and Bertha Baker, from a profound admirer of them and their cats.” — Robert Louis Stevenson Such is the inscription inside a special copy of “A Child’s Garden of Verses” that came to our shores in a tea chest from England, bearing gifts for RLS to hand out at ...