The Pickwick Club
of
New Orleans

The Pickwick Club was the public counterpart to the secret Mistic Krewe of Comus which formed just before the Civil War.  It was the first of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Krewes and essentially made Mardi Gras into the event that we know it as today.

• Comus - The first New Orleans Mardi Gras Krewe
• Pickwick Club Group Photo

The purpose of the club being:

"... the establishment and maintenance of proper rooms for literary and reading purposes, for the collection of valuable works of art, books, charts, maps, painting, statuary, coins, etc., for the use of its members and the cultivation and improvement of a scientific and literary taste, and for the promotion of scale intercourse, enjoyment, comfort, harmony, refinement of manners and intellectual improvement."

The book, "The Pickwick Club of New Orleans", makes four references to Octave F. Vallette:

1. He is listed as one of the signatories of the 2nd charter of the Pickwick Club. (Appendix M)
   The first charter was to expire in 1884 and this second document chartered the club for 99 years (4/4/1883 - 1982).
2. He is listed in Appendix A of the book that lists all members of the club and the date they were admitted.
   Unfortunately, he was admitted during a period for which no records have been found (possibly destroyed in the fire of 1894), so his admittance date is listed only as being between 1866 and 1874.
3. His name is not among those listed as having participated in the Comus parade of 1873, but IS among those listed as being in the "Photo Taken in 1874" (Appending H).
4. He is listed in "Appendix 'F' - Pickwickians wounded in the Civil War".

"Holding it to be a self evident truth that man at his creation was so constituted, that social and intellectual enjoyment should ever be the accompaniment of labor and that an agreeable relaxation from daily toils is always conducive to the proper excersize of his mental faculties and a pure solace to all the ills which flesh is heir to:..."