Archive for February, 2008

How it All Began

February 12th, 2008

A question on a Flickr group, Graves, Tombs and Cemeteries, I recently joined asked how everyone's fascination with cemeteries began.

I didn't even have to think about my answer - I knew it immediately. I thought, for anyone that comes here and was wondering the same, I'd share the response I posted there:

It was the old Catholic tradition, known as All Saints' Day, of honoring deceased loved ones by cleaning their graves and bringing fresh flowers to them on or before November 1st that began my love of cemeteries.

My Cajun great-grandmother, Melina, and grandmother, Dorothy, had many family members buried out in Avoyelles Parish at Immaculate Conception Church Cemetery in Dupont and Mater Dolorosa Catholic Cemetery in Plaucheville. We - Melina, Dorothy, my mother, Pamela, myself, and my little sister, Amber - returned there every year on or before Nov. 1 to clean the graves and bring colorful chrysanthemums.

On Halloween itself, we would clean the graves and bring chrysanthemums to our family in the local cemetery in Maringouin, Louisiana which were mostly my grandfather, Riley's, people.

As the grown-ups worked with weeding, washing, and tidying up the headstones and around the family plots, we children would play for hours among the graves.

To me, a precocious, imaginative child, every headstone was a story and I spent much time imagining what the person had been like in life and what they had done with their time on Earth.

These were, also, quiet, peaceful, and contemplative times spent with three older generations of the women in my family as we honored our family gone on before us and are - to this today - some of my most cherished memories.

My love of cemeteries was borne of these times and has never diminished.

Marble Immortality

February 6th, 2008

Displayed prominently in Baton Rouge's historic Magnolia Cemetery is the grave marker and memorial to the young children of William H. and Mary E. Crenshaw.

It is a marker that nearly every local knows of - the approximately eight-foot tall statue bearing the likeness of the three deceased children stays in your mind forever after viewing it.

The grave marks the final resting place, and is a memorial to, nine year-old Fanny, seven year-old Willie, and eighteen month-old Mattie Crenshaw who perished in 1858. Also interred and memorialized here is an infant listed only as The Nameless One, who died in 1855.

It is obvious - by their closely followed deaths - that illness played a part in the children's demise. The most likely assumption would be yellow fever; records indicate that New Orleans, in particular, was hit hard by the disease in 1858. It is probable that other areas of Louisiana, especially the City of Baton Rouge, would also have suffered from the epidemic.

The first to die was the eldest daughter, Fanny, on June 5. She was followed only three days later by her younger brother, Willie, on June 8. Little Mattie survived three more months, succumbing on October 13.

My research shows the children's father was a man of some prominence in the local community as pastor of the Baton Rouge Methodist Church, or First Methodist Church. I was also able to find that the unlucky parents, Reverend William H. Crenshaw and Mary E. Gayle, were married in Baton Rouge, East Baton Rouge Parish, on September 5, 1846. Mary was the daughter of John Gayle, who - in 1850 - was listed as being the parish treasurer.

While death due to such illness, and even the loss of a number of young children from one family was, unfortunately, not so uncommon in the mid- to late-1800s, the marker erected for the Crenshaw children is, undoubtedly, unique. Its size alone causes it to stand out from nearly every other headstone in this old cemetery, while the life-sized, marble statues carved in the likenesses of the late children is, all at once, stirring, chilling, beautiful, and morose. It is one of those markers that - once beheld - is never forgotten. What more fitting way to make sure your children live on forever?

A Tragic Tale

February 5th, 2008

In 1995, my grandmother and I made a trip out to Immaculate Conception Church Cemetery in Dupont, Louisiana to gather information from the headstones of family members. As my grandmother's illness - scleroderma - progressed, we had taken to going through boxes of old family photos and labeling them. We would sit at the kitchen table and, with her dictation, I would write the names (and dates, if known) on the backs of the photographs.

As part of trying to get down information while she was still with us, we made the trip out to the cemetery, as well as Mater Dolorosa Catholic Cemetery in Plaucheville, to record the exact dates of our many family members - her ancestors - that were buried there in Avoyelles Parish.

As we made our way through the Dupont cemetery, I noticed three graves with ceramic pictures on them that were lined up together in front of the mausoleum. Closer inspection showed it was the final resting place of the young Dupont family - Horace, his wife Rachael, and their nineteen-month old daughter, Milissa - who had all perished on the same date, November 16, 1972.

Naturally, I was intrigued. What could have caused the death of this young family? Car accident? A house fire, perhaps? This being pre-Internet, I wasn't able to Google their names when I returned home. Instead, a few days later, I went to the Louisiana State University's library and spent some time going through the newspaper reels for November, 1972.

It was with great sadness that I came upon a newspaper article detailing the tragic demise of Horace, Rachael, and Milissa Dupont. They had all succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning in their home that November evening. Most likely, they never even knew what was happening. Horace, the article went on to say, was found peacefully on the living room couch - as if he were taking a nap. Little Milissa was lying on her parents' bed and a few feet away, Rachael was found on the floor of an adjoining bathroom.

I can't even begin to imagine the grief their loved ones must have went through. Every time I go the cemetery, I make a point to go by their graves and say a special prayer for them and their families.

After finding Find A Grave, I made sure to add them to the website with photographs of their final resting places and clear shots of their ceramic pictures. The little Dupont family - which was, in all actuality - my first experience with "graving" - will always hold a special place in my heart.

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