Fragile Grounds: Louisiana's Endangered Cemeteries

By Jessica H. Schexnayder and Mary H. Manhein

Recipient of a 2018 Preserve Louisiana Award and a 2018 Coastal Stewardship Award

Fragile Grounds compiles stories and photographs of endangered cemeteries throughout Louisiana's coastal zone and beyond. These burial places link the fragile land to the frailty of the state's threatened community structures. The book highlights the state's vibrant diversity by showing its unique burial customs and traditions, while it also identifies the urgent need for ongoing documentation of cultural elements at risk.

Cemeteries associated with the culturally rich communities of Louisiana reflect the history and global settlement patterns of the state. Yet many are endangered due to recurring natural and man-made events. Nearly 80 percent of the nation's coastal land loss occurs in Louisiana. Coastal erosion, sinking land, flooding, storm surge, and sea-level rise have led to an inland migration that threatens to unravel the fabric of Louisiana and, by association, hastens the demise of its burial places.

As people are forced inland, migrants abandon, neglect, or often overlook cemeteries as part of the cultural landscape. In terms of erosion, when the land goes, the cemetery goes with it. Cemeteries fall prey to inland and coastal flooding. As cities grow outward, urban sprawl takes over the landscape. Cemeteries lose out to forces such as expansion, eminent domain, and urban neglect. Not only do cemeteries give comfort for the living, but they also serve as a vital link to the past. Once lost, that past cannot be recovered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Release date: Sep 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781496814333

Jessica H. Schexnayder

Jessica H. Schexnayder, Denham Springs, Louisiana, is a Louisiana native passionate about documenting the people, history, and culture of south Louisiana. Her writing and photography have been featured by the Louisiana State Archives, Louisiana Cultural Vistas, Country Roads, Heart of Louisiana, and Inside New Orleans.

Book preview

FRAGILE GROUNDS

FRAGILE GROUNDS

LOUISIANA’S ENDANGERED CEMETERIES

JESSICA H. SCHEXNAYDER and MARY H. MANHEIN

Carl A. Brasseaux and Donald W. Davis, series editors

University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

This contribution has been supported with funding provided by the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program (LSG) under NOAA Award # NA14OAR4170099. Additional support is from the Louisiana Sea Grant Foundation. The funding support of LSG and NOAA is gratefully acknowledged, along with the matching support by LSU. Logo created by Louisiana Sea Grant College Program.

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Copyright © 2017 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved

Manufactured in China

First printing 2017

∞

Photographs are by Jessica H. Schexnayder except where noted.

Maps throughout this book were created using ArcGIS® software by Esri. ArcGIS® and ArcMap™ are the intellectual property of Esri and are used herein under license. Copyright © Esri. All rights reserved. For more information about Esri® software, please visit www.esri.com. Sources: ESRI, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, i-cubed, USDA, FSA, USGS, AEX, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, swisstopo, and the GIS User Community.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schexnayder, Jessica H., author. | Manhein, Mary H. (Mary Huffman), author.

Title: Fragile grounds : Louisiana’s endangered cemeteries / Jessica H. Schexnayder and Mary H. Manhein.

Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2017] | Series: America’s third coast series | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2017012518 (print) | LCCN 2017013687 (ebook) | ISBN 9781496814333 (epub single) | ISBN 9781496814340 (epub institutional) | ISBN 9781496814357 (pdf single) | ISBN 9781496814364 (pdf institutional) | ISBN 9781496814326 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Cemeteries—Conservation and restoration—Louisiana. | Tombs—Conservation and restoration—Louisiana. | Historic preservation—Louisiana. | Burial—Louisiana.

Classification: LCC F370 (ebook) | LCC F370 .S34 2017 (print) | DDC 363.7/509763—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017012518

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

To the resilient people of Louisiana

Show me your cemeteries, and I will tell you what kind of people you have.

—Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac

CONTENTS

Preface

1

The Laws, the Land, and the People

2

South Louisiana Burial Customs and Traditions

3

Select Coastal Zone Cemeteries

4

Select Cemeteries beyond the Coastal Zone

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Appendix 1: List of Documented Cemeteries 2011–2016

Appendix 2: Immigration Date Table

Appendix 3: Louisiana Hurricane Impacts and Landfalls 1851–2015

Sources

Index

The authors documenting St. Louis I, New Orleans.

PREFACE

Living in a delta is a precarious dance with nature—a dance the communities of south Louisiana know well—a fais do-do of chance with every passing hurricane season and spring flood—each event a possibility that the state’s cultural identities will be lost.

Defining what is coastal in Louisiana is an ever-changing challenge as the state’s coastal shape is unlike any other in the nation. Instead of an easily defined border, irregular fingers of marshland extend into the Gulf of Mexico. These fragile grounds are burdened by nature and man-made activities making them susceptible to demise.

Rapid advancement of coastal erosion combined with storm surges, rising sea levels, and compaction and sinking of the land have led to an unstable landscape. That instability is pushing Louisiana’s residents inland, forcing them to leave evidence of their histories, such as their cemeteries, behind.

Cemeteries associated with Louisiana’s cultural groups provide valuable insight into the past and present identities of these communities. Family names on headstones reflect migration patterns across the coastal zone, representing ethnicities from throughout the world. No other state can avow such a gumbo of cultures.

What will happen to our cemeteries when we are gone? is the lament often heard from older generations as younger ones abandon threatened communities. It was this lament that challenged us to record the dying history of these communities as reflected through the cemeteries of south Louisiana.

In many of the cemeteries we documented, local people showed an interest in telling us their stories. That could not be ignored, as it is the underlying unity of these sites. Those stories are the cultural fabric that defines the state’s geographic identity. They are what compelled us to write this book; it’s our way of saving and sharing the past.

Thus, this book is a representative compilation of the stories and photographs we have gathered along the way, with no one cemetery being more important than another. Louisiana’s coastal parishes contain hundreds of cemeteries. Those selected for this manuscript represent a diverse population that continues to inhabit the region despite the unyielding challenges.

Our ultimate goal in writing this book was simple: although the cemetery itself may not be saved, a tangible link to the intangible past can be provided through mapping, photography, oral tradition, and cultural artifact documentation.

FRAGILE GROUNDS

Land changes in coastal Louisiana. (Courtesy of the US Geological Survey.)

1

Louisiana: The Laws, the Land, and the People

Louisiana’s land loss rate is startling. The state loses an area the size of a football field every half hour, and nearly 80 percent of the nation’s coastal land loss occurs in Louisiana. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) states, Coastal Louisiana has lost an average of 34 square miles of land, primarily marsh, per year for the last 50 years … If nothing is done to stop this land loss, Louisiana could potentially lose approximately 700 square miles of land, or about equal to the size of the greater Washington D.C.–Baltimore area, in the next 50 years.

Hurricane storm surge and seawater intrusion have disrupted and displaced many of Louisiana’s coastal cemeteries, a number of which are already permanently inundated, are very near to being submersed, or have been completely lost due to erosion.

The number of hurricanes to strike Louisiana has been substantial. Fifty-four hurricanes directly impacted the state from 1851 through 2015. Maps showing the paths of all tropical storms and hurricanes from the same time frame are so dense with pathlines, that one can hardly recognize the outline of the state. Of the 138 cemeteries mapped during this project, nearly all were inundated by Hurricane Ike’s storm surge in 2012. (See appendixes 1 and 3.)

Legally, the state’s coastal zone is a scientifically derived geopolitical boundary, meaning that both science and politics drive where the boundary line is set. According to the Louisiana Coastal Zone Management Act, this federally designated zone extends inland from the shoreline only to the extent necessary to control shore lands, the uses of which have a direct and significant impact on the coastal waters, and to control those geographical areas which are likely to be affected or vulnerable to sea level rise.

Louisiana is the only state in the nation whose civil divisions are called parishes instead of counties. Founded by French and Spanish colonists, the state was largely Roman Catholic, and local governing bodies were often closely tied to neighboring Catholic parishes. In 1807, the Louisiana legislature adopted the ecclesiastical term parish to