Baker, Lorenzo Dow (1840–1908)
Baker, Lorenzo Dow (1840–1908)
Lorenzo Dow Baker (b. 15 March 1840; d. 21 June 1908), native of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, leading Cape Cod shipowner, and a principal founder of the modern banana-exporting industry in the Caribbean. Captain Baker first brought a small cargo of bananas from Jamaica to New Jersey in 1870. In subsequent years he greatly expanded this trade, developing it between Jamaica and Boston. In 1884 he led the formation of the Boston Fruit Company, which in 1899 merged with Minor C. Keith's Tropical Trading & Transport Company and other banana interests to become the United Fruit Company. Baker continued to serve the company as its representative in Jamaica until just before his death in Boston. His development of the banana industry contributed to considerable economic growth in Jamaica.
See alsoBanana Industry .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Frederick U. Adams, Conquest of the Tropics: The Story of the Creative Enterprises Conducted by the United Fruit Company (1914); National Cyclopædia of American Biography, vol. 14 (1917), pp. 350-351.
Philip K. Reynolds, The Banana: Its History, Cultivation and Place Among Staple Foods (1927).
Charles M. Wilson, Empire in Green and Gold (1947).
Additional Bibliography
Bartlett, Wilson Randolph. "Lorenzo Dow Baker and the Development of the Banana Trade Between Jamaica and the United States, 1881–1890." Ph.D. diss., American University, 1977.
Sue Dawn McGrady