Louise Vescelius Sheldon

Born: circa 1846 - 1848, Newark, New Jersey, United States of America (Source: FamilySearch.org)

Died:

Louise was the daughter of Aaron Vescelius and Mary Ann Miller. (Source: Theodore Frelinghuysen Chambers, 1969, The early Germans of New Jersey: their history, churches, and genealogies, and FamilySearch.org)

Louise was an author and Soprano singer.

Louise's husband died when she was young.

Louise traveled to South Africa seeking a "summer clime for health and rest", after having appeared in concerts and operas across Europe with her sisters, according to Chambers' The Early Germans of New Jersey. Tracey Jean Boisseau, in her introduction to May French-Sheldon's Sultan to sultan: adventures among the Masai and other tribes of East Africa, states that "Vescelius-Sheldon traveled with her two sisters, according to her account, purely for the purpose of a vacation in "a land of heat and sun"".

Louise lived for three years in South Africa. (Source: "Mothers of Boerland", 10 March 1900, Taranaki Herald, citing the New York Tribune as a source, National Library of New Zealand) She recounted her South African life in her 1887 book Yankee Girls in Zulu Land. It is described as "a graphic and entertaining account of the South African Country as three American girls found" and "the narrative of a visit to the Cape Colony, Oranje Vrystaat and Transvaal made by the author and her two sisters." Zulu Land was republished as Yankee Girls in 'Oom Paul's Land in 1899.

"Aside from information in the way of natives, vegeation and animals of this region, the book is aptly illustrated by photogravure process, and is the first book to have been illustrated in this way in this country," according to Chambers' The Early Germans of New Jersey.

Louise also wrote An I.D.B in South Africa. It is described as "a tangled tale of diamond smuggling, bigamy, and local color around the mines of South Africa, with an almost obsessive fascination with miscegenation running as an undercurrent throughout. The "I. D. B." is an illicit diamond buyer, a class of traders upon whom the novel hinges."