Lafayette Cemetery #1: Chapter Fifteen

If you want to have a better understanding of a town’s cultural background, first, go visit the cemetery, walk among the graves for awhile, read the names carved on stone and allow yourself a moment to think about your own fragility.

In the silence of a cemetery is where you will find all your answers.

Lafayette #1 is the oldest of seven cemeteries in New Orleans, having been founded in 1833. Located in the heart of the Garden District, between Washington, Sixth, Prytania and Coliseum streets, it continues to keep it’s reputation of a non-segregated, non-denominational cemetery – about 7000 bodies from over 25 countries and over 26 nationalities have been laid to rest here as the first space in the city where non-Catholics could find eternal peace.

Locals are always glad to share plot-twist anecdoctes from Jazz Funerals and Second Liners and if you’re a mystery seeker, they might even add one or two haunting creepy-pasta-like stories to really keep you up at night, but one thing I found most beautiful was learning that, back in the 1800s, during the Victorian Era, merchants would ship soil land from all over the world so that one could be buried in his own country’s earth in a coping tomb raised here, in Lafayette Cemetery #1.

 

 

 

Apparently, this is the most photogenic of all New Orleans graveyards, having been featured in a multitude of movies (“Double jeopardy”, “Dracula 2000”, “Deja vu”), TV shows, Reality shows (“NCIS New Orleans”) and, oddly enough, the New Kids on the Block video for “The right stuff”.

As you pass through the gates, you agree that the internment (burial) chambers on the right and left cemetery walls represent the easier, less intrusive and cheaper way of occupying a space inside. In 1990, one of the two wall vaults was struck by lightning, breaking fifty-six of the 500 facades and exposing the graves’ contents.

Society tombs belonging to local benevolent organizations, such as the Society for the Relief of  Destitute Orphan Boys, the New Orleans Home for Incurables, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and several volunteer firemen organizations can also be spotted throughout the graveyard. 

Small, camulflated lizards are everywhere, but not always easy to observe.

Back in the 1800s, one of the most common causes of death was yellow fever (also known as the Saffron Scourge) and some tombs are stone-cold proof of that: one of the most notorious cases is that of a family who have lost three members (all children) in three days to the Aedes aegypti mosquito-spread disease. Furthermore, between 1817 and 1905, during the epidemic, between 150-250 funerals a day would take place, some of them in Lafayette #1.  

  

The only iron cast tomb in the cemetery belongs to the Larstendiek Family and was used as a prop in the movie “Interview with a vampire”, whilst the Smith-Dumestre tomb is listed as the one with the most names in the cemetery (currently thirty seven and, unfortunately, counting).

  

Other notable figures may or may not have found peace within the confines of Lafayette Cemetery #1. Among them is Judge John Howard Ferguson, famous as the defendant in the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson case, one of the most controversial of it’s time, where the U.S. Supreme Court’s verdict defended the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “Equal Protection Clause” and “separate but equal” doctrine. Close your eyes and imagine a time of segregated railroad trains – some for “whites only” and others for “blacks only”. Now imagine you were an “octoroon” (meaning  seven-eights of European descent and one eighth African blood). Which of these carriages would be the safe choice for you? Well…apparently, not the one you’d expect.

   

Other remarkable tombs belong to the Brunies Family of Musicians (known for having collaborated with with artists such as Louis Prima, The Dixieland Revival, The New Orleans Rhythm Kings, Papa Laine, The Halfway House Club of New Orleans) and the Brigadier General Harry T. Hays, who led the first Louisiana Brigade in the Civil War and played an important part in the Battle of Gettysburg.

Green Eyed Kisses,