If you are seeking history of a city and you aren't sure where to go and you really don't want to spend your day sitting in a library. Go to the cemetery, especially if it's historic. The best stories you will find, as you gaze upon the eyes of yesterday.
My friends stare at me and shake their heads, a soft nervous chuckle floating between their lips, family sometimes allow their mouths to gap open and strangers only nod, a light movement of the head. I don't care. I am what I am, an unorthodox history buff. Books are my life but sometimes they just don't do it. I. Love. Historic cemeteries.
There is no better place to learn the history of a city than at the old historic cemetery, encasted upon thick walls of plaster, erected to hold the souls in or the people out?
St. Louis #1 cemetery in New Orleans was just the place. Dating back to 1789 and listed on the national registry of historic places and one of my top picks for cemetaries, St. Louis Cemetery #1 is the oldest existing cemetery in the city. It also, oddly enough, continues to be an active and functioning cemetery and for a fee you too can be buried there. But beware, space is tight so you may have to shoulder up to practicing cathelic and Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau
but you may have to presnt her with a cake or bottle of wine or civil rights activist Homer Plessy a black smith and free person of color who was stepping up to the job long before Martin Luther King or Megar Evers. Don't believe me, read Plessy v Ferguson.
Initially I decided to go to the cemetery and just walk around. Thank God I didn't. It might have been the dream I had the night before of someone running through a cemetery that caused me to change my mind and go on a tour or just my third eye pushing me in the right direction. The tour was the way to go. Nancy, the tour guide was energetic and quite informative. You would have thought she'd been doing it for years, although only months dirtied her curriculum vitae.
A tranquil eeriness will fall over you as you press between and meander through the tombs, while ever present eyes from the statues above gaze down upoon you, watching, waiting, listening.
St. Louis #1 is an above ground meeting place of the dead. With the extremely high water table in New Orleans, flooding allowed restless below ground bodies to float up. Yikes! Duriing a yellow fever epidemic of yesteryear, solid concrete walls were erected to keep contagion in. Humm, interesting concept, even if it didn't work.
But what about the oven vaults
where you had to wait 1 year and a day or Italia- Pietro Gualdo the architect who died in 1857 or the Barbarin muscians tomb where any jazz muscian can be buried or even the tomb engraved with Omnia Ab Uno (Everything from the one) that is owned by the actor Nick Cage because he wants to be entombed at St. Louis #1 in N'awlins when death closes his eyes.
Regardless of who you are, where you are going or where you came from, make sure you open your eyes and your mind to the splendar and magnificence of a historic cemetary. I promise, I won't steer you wrong.
And don't forget to bring a camera and note pad and pen to ensure you capture every thing, and I mean every thingggg!
If you are seeking history of a city and you aren't sure where to go and you really don't want to spend your day sitting in a library. Go to the cemetery, especially if it's historic. The best stories you will find, as you gaze upon the eyes of yesterday.
My friends stare at me and shake their heads, a soft nervous chuckle floating between their lips, family sometimes allow their mouths to gap open and strangers only nod, a light movement of the head. I don't care. I am what I am, an unorthodox history buff. Books are my life but sometimes they just don't do it. I. Love. Historic cemeteries.
There is no better place to learn the history of a city than at the old historic cemetery, encasted upon thick walls of plaster, erected to hold the souls in or the people out?
St. Louis #1 cemetery in New Orleans was just the place. Dating back to 1789 and listed on the national registry of historic places and one of my top picks for cemetaries, St. Louis Cemetery #1 is the oldest existing cemetery in the city. It also, oddly enough, continues to be an active and functioning cemetery and for a fee you too can be buried there. But beware, space is tight so you may have to shoulder up to practicing cathelic and Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau 
but you may have to presnt her with a cake or bottle of wine or civil rights activist Homer Plessy a black smith and free person of color who was stepping up to the job long before Martin Luther King or Megar Evers. Don't believe me, read Plessy v Ferguson.
Initially I decided to go to the cemetery and just walk around. Thank God I didn't. It might have been the dream I had the night before of someone running through a cemetery that caused me to change my mind and go on a tour or just my third eye pushing me in the right direction. The tour was the way to go. Nancy, the tour guide was energetic and quite informative. You would have thought she'd been doing it for years, although only months dirtied her curriculum vitae.
A tranquil eeriness will fall over you as you press between and meander through the tombs, while ever present eyes from the statues above gaze down upoon you, watching, waiting, listening.
St. Louis #1 is an above ground meeting place of the dead. With the extremely high water table in New Orleans, flooding allowed restless below ground bodies to float up. Yikes! Duriing a yellow fever epidemic of yesteryear, solid concrete walls were erected to keep contagion in. Humm, interesting concept, even if it didn't work.
But what about the oven vaults 
where you had to wait 1 year and a day or Italia- Pietro Gualdo the architect who died in 1857 or the Barbarin muscians tomb where any jazz muscian can be buried or even the tomb engraved with Omnia Ab Uno (Everything from the one) that is owned by the actor Nick Cage because he wants to be entombed at St. Louis #1 in N'awlins when death closes his eyes.
Regardless of who you are, where you are going or where you came from, make sure you open your eyes and your mind to the splendar and magnificence of a historic cemetary. I promise, I won't steer you wrong.
And don't forget to bring a camera and note pad and pen to ensure you capture every thing, and I mean every thingggg!
Hi Denise,
ReplyDeleteI went on the cemetery tour with you. It was great to meet you! I love your photos. Sarah wanted to read one of your books, which one do you suggest starting with? Where is the best place to order from where you get the most money back from the sale?
Keep traveling and being awesome!
-Chris Peek