White male, born about 1851. Died in Pensacola Hospital (Pensacola, FL) on 4 March 1933. Cause of death was chronic myocarditis and pulmonary edema. The informant on the death certificate was Pensacola Hospital. His birthplace, parents, marital status, and previous employment were all unknown. There is no residential address given for him other than Pensacola Hospital.
The death certificate indicates he had lived in Pensacola for 32 years prior to his death, but he is not in any of the City Directories nor the census for those years. (Perhaps they meant 32 years in Florida?) An article which appeared in the Pensacola Journal the day after his death reported that local authorities were searching for relatives to claim his body. They described him as a Civil War veteran, and said that papers found in his possession indicated he had lived in Winter Haven before coming to Pensacola six weeks earlier. He stayed at a local hotel for two weeks before being taken to the hospital. No relatives were apparently ever found, as he was buried in the Escambia County Poor Farm cemetery.
The only Civil War soldier I can find with the name Harry A. Baker was a 20-year-old man born in Ireland. He enlisted in the U.S. Army on 11 January 1865 in Wilmington, Delaware, as a paid substitute for Myers Reynolds of Cedar Creek Hundred, Sussex County, Delaware. He said he was a cigar maker by trade. He reported to U.S. Draft Rendezvous Camp Bradford, Baltimore, Maryland, with the 1st Delaware Infantry. He was described as having gray eyes, light hair, and a light complexion, standing 5’1″ tall. He signed his enlistment documents with an X, and he was apparently paid $300 in cash to be Reynolds’ substitute. (The money was paid by a broker, so Baker may not have even known Reynolds.) He enlisted for 3 years, though the war ended within the year.
As far as his life before and after his enlistment, there are Harry A. Bakers in several locations that could be the right age, but I cannot match them as being a Civil War veteran. Research continues.
SOURCES:
Florida Certificate of Death, Florida Deaths, 1877-1939. Database. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 14 June 2016. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Ancestry.com. U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
The Pensacola Journal, 5 March 1933, p. 2
“Compiled Military Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State Of Delaware” database with images Fold3 (https://www.fold3.com//title/693/civil-war-service-records-cmsr-union-delaware: accessed November 29, 2021)