Lorenzo Dow Baker (March 15, 1840 in

Wellfleet, Massachusetts Wellfleet is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, and is located halfway between the "tip" and "elbow" of Cape Cod. The town had a population of 3,566 at the 2020 census, which swells nearly sixfold during the summer. A t ...

– June 21, 1908) was an American sailor, ship's captain and businessman whose 1870 voyage from the

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Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispa ...

and then to

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

launched the modern

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa''. In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains", disting ...

production industry. In 1881 he partnered with his brother-in-law

Elisha Hopkins Elisha ( ; or "God is my salvation", Greek: , ''Elis îos'' or , ''Elisaié,'' Latin: ''Eliseus'') was, according to the Hebrew Bible, a prophet and a wonder-worker. His name is commonly transliterated into English as Elisha via Hebrew, Eli ...

to form L.D. Baker & Co. In 1885 he joined forces with Andrew W. Preston and eight others to form the

Boston Fruit Company The Boston Fruit Company (1885-1899) was a fruit production and import business based in the port of Boston, Massachusetts. Andrew W. Preston and nine others established the firm to ship bananas and other fruit from the West Indies to north-easte ...

, which led to several successive partnerships, ending in the 1899 formation of the

United Fruit Company The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) was an American multinational corporation that traded in tropical fruit (primarily bananas) grown on Latin American plantations and sold in the United States and Europe. The company was formed in 1899 fro ...

, now

Chiquita Brands International Chiquita Brands International Sàrl (), formerly known as Chiquita Brands International Inc. and United Fruit Co., is a Swiss-domiciled American producer and distributor of bananas and other produce. The company operates under a number of s ...

. Baker's success caused Wellfleet to become a summer resort.www.wellfleetcapecod.com
/ref> Baker left a fortune of $4 million () upon his death in 1908.

References

American sailors American food industry businesspeople American businesspeople in shipping 19th-century American businesspeople 1840 births 1908 deaths {{US-business-bio-1840s-stub