Unexpected Finds

February 2nd, 2008

The most rewarding graving trips are those where I set out to find something in particular and end up finding more than I'd ever even hoped for.

A case in point is a visit I made to St. Charles Catholic Church Cemetery in Godeau, Louisiana. Far from being a random graving trip, I had made the seventy-plus mile trek to search for family graves in order to verify some genealogical records.

According to my data, and family recollection, my great-great grandparents, Ernest and Alice Beauvais, were buried here. Also interred in this small, local cemetery - where that part of my family had hailed from - were Telemark and Virginia Deaville; who I remember as Uncle Tilly and Aunt Virginia. Uncle Tilly was my great-grandfather's half brother and I have fond memories of searching for eggs in their chicken coop when we'd go to visit.

My great-grandmother, Alice Ortego, was born in Avoyelles Parish and as a young woman married a man by the name of Oge' Deaville. The union produced three children - Telemark, Victoria, and Aimee. It was after the untimely death of Oge' that Alice married my great-grandfather, Ernest Beauvais; an older gentleman who was able - and willing - to help an early-widowed woman with three young children. Ernest raised his three stepchildren with the same love and attention that was paid to his own six children with Alice - Horace, my great-grandfather, Salonie, Mildred, Ernest, Hazel, and Lillian.

I found - as I had hoped to - the graves of my great-grandparents, Ernest and Alice, as well as those of Telemark and his wife, Virginia. It was as I was walking through the graves, trying to snap as many as I could to record the cemetery for Find A Grave and others, that I stopped short at a familiar name...

Valentine is a name that stands out, regardless of the time or place. It especially stood out to me as I looked down upon it etched into cold, gray stone for Ernest had a sister with that very unusual name. In fact, some of the original paperwork in my genealogy records - typed up in 1940 - was noted as being "in some papers that Aunt Valentine had." The name that stared back at me on this day was "Valentine B. Lossoir". Could this be the same Valentine - my Valentine, my family? All signs pointed to a very possible yes - the middle initial of "B" most likely stood for her maiden name of Beauvais and here she was, if it was her, buried in the same cemetery as her brother (my great-great grandfather).

I snapped some clear photographs of her headstone and the one next to it belonging to Louis Lossoir, who it appeared was her husband, and went on to photograph as much of the remaining cemetery as possible before my dying camera decided to shutter its last.

One lucky find would have been enough to please me, so I certainly wasn't expecting another when I came upon the marker for Regina Beauvais Goudeau. There was no mistaking this lady's maiden name and, yes, Ernest had another sister that was, in fact, named Regina. Yet still - as most any genealogist worth his or her salt will tell you - nothing is certain until officially verified. I snapped my photographs just as my camera died out completely.

It wasn't until arriving home and cross-checking the dates on the photographed headstones with all of my paperwork that I could, as I'd hoped and guessed, say for sure that I had found the graves of my great-great grandfather's sisters, Valentine and Regina, and their husbands. I was absolutely delighted to have come back not only with what I'd gone to find, but with even more than I could've hoped for.

Vandalism at Greenoaks Memorial Park

January 30th, 2008

The statue you see here is gone, along with the remains of two people in an act on vandalism that has shocked and troubled residents of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

On the morning of Wednesday, January 23, cemetery workers at Greenoaks Memorial Park found a number of graves vandalized - spray painted with vulgarities and some with raw meat smeared across them.

In addition, the large Jesus statue in the Lakeside Chapel mausoleum had been defaced - the hands and nose brutally chopped off.

A couple of days later, to everyone's horror, cemetery personnel realized that the glass had been broken in one of Lakeside Chapel's columbariums (a final resting place for urns carrying cremated remains) and the remains of two people - one an elderly woman, Gertrude Gram Ineson, who died in 1985 - had been stolen. One can only imagine the pain the families of the missing deceased are feeling right now.

Another family going through additional pain is that of Amber Pike Foreman - a thirty year-old woman who was killed by a drunk driver in January 2007. Her final resting place, which was defaced with spray paint and raw meat on the 23rd, has been vandalized for the third time.

Law enforcement officials claim other Baton Rouge cemeteries, including Roselawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum on North Street, and Liberal Synagogue Cemetery, also on Florida Boulevard, have been vandalized in a similar fashion in the last few months. Graves are defaced and items are destroyed or stolen. This is the first case, it appears, that actual remains have been taken, though.

One has to wonder what kind of a person would do such a thing...to deface and defile an innocent person's final resting place, to put a grieving family through even more pain and horror, to have such careless and cold-hearted indifference to your fellow man.

I, and everyone else here, can only hope the culprits are caught and brought to justice before they can do anymore harm.

Finding a Connection

January 30th, 2008

When snapping the graves at Greenwell Springs Baptist Church Cemetery, I initially thought nothing of the graves of Dawn Marie Bayhi and Brittany Michelle Darone, other than nothing they were both young, pretty women who died entirely too young. Dawn was thirty-one years of age, and young Brittany only thirteen.

Still, I never would have realized there was a connection between the two women (their graves are not together or even that close by one another) had I not done some research on Dawn's death when entering her onto Find A Grave.

Often, if a person - especially a young one - is recently deceased (in the last five or so years), I will attempt to do some research to see how their lives ended. Sometimes I can add some information about the person onto their FAG bio page, others it is simply to satisfy my own curiosity. Any death is tragic, but it is especially so when the deceased had so much life ahead of them left to live.

It was with sadness that I read that Dawn Bayhi, a young wife and mother, was killed in an automobile accident; the shock came when I read that her young niece, Brittany Darone, had also been injured in the same accident and died later at the hospital. Had I not done some research, I never would have realized the two poor souls - who did not share a common surname - were related or had died together from the same tragic accident.

I had snapped photos of both graves - making sure to get a clear shot, as I always try to do, of the photo on the grave - never realizing the two were connected by family and tragedy.

There are so many stories connected to the headstones in every cemetery you step into...most you will never even know.

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