Today the blocks bound by Magnolia, Seventh, Freret, and Sixth streets appear to be a vacant greenspace. However, for nearly a century, these two blocks housed the Thomy Lafon School complex. Originally built in 1906, the property operated as a school throughout the twentieth century until 2005, when it was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The main school building was demolished in August 2011. Archaeologists monitored this process and discovered that the two blocks once occupied by this school had an even longer history as the site of two nineteenth century cemeteries called Locust Grove Cemeteries Nos. 1 and 2. The Locust Grove Cemeteries No. 1 and No. 2. were established between  1865-1879 for the city’s indigent residents. By this period, there were several cemeteries in this vicinity including Lafayette Cemeteries Nos. 1 and 2 and St Joseph Cemeteries Nos. 1 and 2. The Lafayette cemeteries  were municipal, ostensibly reserved for residents of what was then the city’s  Fourth District, while the St. Joseph Cemeteries only interred bodies for a fee. Lafayette Cemetery No 2. had recently  been overwhelmed with burials after the devastating Yellow Fever outbreak in 1853, and was ordered to be closed for burials outside of the Fourth District. Atypically, and possibly part of Reconstruction Era policies, a plot of land was reserved in Lafayette Cemetery No. 2 in which to bury Black residents from the Fourth District who could pay. Black residents whose families could not pay would be buried in the new cemetery, called Locust Grove.  The first Locust Grove Cemetery was opened in 1865. In March 1877, the city opened Locust Grove Cemetery No. 2. In 1878, yet another Yellow Fever epidemic overwhelmed the city;  the conditions of the cemeteries began deteriorating, and the citizens and officials of New Orleans began to take notice. Many individuals reported grim encounters and gave details of piled up bodies, exposed corpses, and multiple bodies shoved into one grave. In January 1880, only 27 years after the first and 3 years after the second, The Daily Picayune reported that the  Locust Grove Cemeteries were closed, covered with soil, and sown with grass seed. In the years after its closing the land was used as a dumping ground. Within only a couple of decades, a school for Black students was constructed near the former Locust Grove Cemeteries. This school was named in remembrance of the late Thomy Lafon, a Black philanthropist in New Orleans. The first building accommodated 500 students. Soon after, the school was burned down in conjunction with the Race Riot of 1900 sparked by the murder of Robert Charles.  The African American residents of New Orleans began petitioning for the school to be rebuilt. Plans were underway by March 1905 and the second Thomy Lafon School was ready by the 1906-1907 school year. This time, the City Council selected the site of the former Locust Grove Cemeteries to build the second school. A playground was built in the summer of 1915 and it became the  first playground in the U.S. established for African American children. In 1922, Thomy Lafon School had 30 classrooms and 2,515 students enrolled, making it the largest African American elementary school in the United States.  This layered site contains some of the best and worst aspects of New Orleans’ history. When looking at New Orleans’ rich history of cemetery use and funerary activities, there are some unique themes that can be uncovered. Setting certain spaces aside for the dead, classifying people after death based on wealth or race, and deciding who should be buried where are all cultural patterns that reflect and can often be predicted by one’s status while alive. As we see in Locust Cemeteries, the ways someone’s body was handled after death was contingent on emerging politics, like those shifting across New Orleans’ Reconstruction-era  landscape. The mistreatment and mishandling of the human remains of New Orleans’ poor and Black residents is unfortunately  seen repeatedly in archaeological sites like Locust Grove Cemetery.  When analyzing this space through the context of the Thomy Lafon School, similar themes echo. A large part of Louisiana’s past consists of inequality and prejudice towards African American residents from slavery to segregation. The transfer of a polluted, indigent burial ground into a school for Black children reflects broader patterns  of systematic racism. Even so, Thomy Lafon School, established as a successful Black school during the era of separate but equal, represented the city’s Black excellence and resistance to racism. The school’s perseverance and success over the years highlights the theme of progress and advancement for the African American community in New Orleans throughout the twentieth century. 

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Charity Hospital was an iconic institution in the history of New Orleans, and at the time of its closure in 2015, one of the longest lasting public institutions in the United States. Both Charity Hospital and its cemeteries are indelibly linked to the changed landscape of the city after Hurricane Katrina. Originally traced to the colonial period and operated by various charitable initiatives, the first Charity hospital was placed in the Vieux Carré in 1736. In the period from 1747-1815, the hospital moved to Toulouse Street and Rampart, then to Conti and Basin streets near today’s Lady Guadalupe Church, and finally to Baronne Street and University Place.

In 1834, it moved one last time to its present-day location, soon to be operated by the Sisters of Charity, and was run as a medical school operated by the State of Louisiana until its closure in 2015. Charity Hospital continued to see patients during its function as a medical school, and included 1000 beds by 1850. To accommodate the need for burial space, especially for the indigent population of New Orleans that the hospital treated, Charity Hospital secured two tracts of land — Charity Hospital Cemetery No.1 in 1847 on the riverside of Bayou Metairie, and Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 2 in 1849 on the lakeside of Bayou Metairie, just adjacent to Cypress Grove Cemetery. 

The effects of stormwaters from the levee breaches caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 damaged the interior of the hospital. After almost a decade of debate about what to do with the building, the state finally began construction on a new facility called the University Medical Center (UMC). The closure of Charity Hospital after Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath caused much public outcry. Among many reasons was that its closure caused a rupture to its legacy of treating the area’s marginalized populations. 

While Charity Hospital remained shuttered during the first years of the recovery effort, Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 1 became the site for the Hurricane Katrina Memorial. This memorial serves as the final resting place to the 86 people who died during the storm whose bodies remained unclaimed or unidentified, as well as a memorial dedicated to the 1,100 people who died in and around New Orleans due to the effects and after effects of the storm. The money to construct the memorial was provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with donations of up to $100,000 from the Funeral Service Foundation, part of the National Funeral Directors Association. This Association created the momentum for the creation of the monument and the final burial of the unclaimed bodies by the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, August 29, 2008. The monument consists of mausoleums arranged in a spiral, using the shape of the hurricane to create a “meditative labyrinth…[and a] healing space for reflection,” to quote a portion of the words inscribed on the monument. 

Archaeological monitoring was required at Charity Hospital No. 1 during the construction of the memorial. Although the majority of the memorial was designed to be above ground, surface grading and excavation of select postholes for stabilization required oversight. Earth Search, Inc. monitored construction for the memorial in 2008, and in the process fragments from three individuals were exhumed, and examined. The remains, combined with remains from Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 2 were finally reinterred in one of the mausoleums in 2021.

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McDonoghville Cemetery is a burial site of enslaved and formerly enslaved people. This cemetery was once a part of enslaver John McDonogh’s plantation. According to a 1915 interview with Jacob Dinckel, then sexton of the McDonoghville Cemetery, this “‘colored’ graveyard consisted of an army of white wooden headboards quaintly lettered and surmounted by crosses [...] with their feet to the rising sun.” [1] These wooden markers are long-gone and today McDonoghville Cemetery is dominated by marble, granite, copings, and some unmarked mounds. Upon his death in 1850, John McDonogh was buried in the McDonoghville Cemetery and later reinterred in his native Baltimore in 1860. [2] According to Dinckel, after McDonogh’s death, a person formerly enslaved by McDonogh buried Black and white people side by side in the McDonoghville Cemetery. [1]

The history surrounding the ownership and municipal jurisdiction of McDonoghville Cemetery is complicated. In 1890, forty years after McDonogh’s death, the McDonoghville Cemetery came to the attention of Joseph A. Shakspeare, Mayor of New Orleans, when The Daily Picayune reported that a citizens’ group complained that “a colored man claim[ed] to be the owner of the ground.” [3] According to the article, the man caring for the cemetery said that “his father, [...] belonged to McDonogh and the cemetery was left to him,” and that he “... sells lots in the cemetery but can show no title when called upon to produce it.” [3] Mayor Shakspeare subsequently ordered the relocation and racial segregation of the people buried in the cemetery. [1] In 1891, Mayor Shakspeare granted the Jefferson Parish Police Jury use of the cemetery on behalf of the City of New Orleans. [2, 4] Since then, the City of New Orleans has maintained a hands-off approach to the McDonoghville Cemetery, with the rare exception of allotting funds to maintain McDonogh’s tomb. [2]

When McDonogh purchased plantation land on the Westbank of the Mississippi River in the early nineteenth century, the property was considered part of Orleans Parish. In 1825, the Louisiana State Legislature created Jefferson Parish by carving land out of Orleans Parish, this new parish line bisected McDonogh’s plantation. [5] Today, the parish line runs diagonally through McDonoghville Cemetery. [6] When the City of Gretna, located in Jefferson Parish, incorporated in 1913, the portion of McDonoghville Cemetery on the Jefferson side of the parish line was then also within the boundaries of the City of Gretna. John Ehret, then Mayor of Gretna, formed a commission to enable the City of Gretna to take control of McDonoghville Cemetery. [7] A title search referenced by historian G. Leighton Ciravolo “suggests that McDonoghville Cemetery has never been formally conveyed either to the Parish of Jefferson or the City of Gretna.” [2]

In 2016, the Jefferson Parish Historic District sponsored the erection of a state marker recognizing the historical significance of McDonoghville Cemetery. This marker states that John McDonogh created the cemetery and it is the final resting place for “many prominent local families.” Even though historical evidence documents that McDonoghville Cemetery served as a burial site for enslaved and freed people, the marker makes no mention of them. Community members are appealing to the various municipalities and organizations connected to McDonoghville Cemetery to have McDonoghville Cemetery’s historical significance as a burial site of enslaved and freed people formally acknowledged.

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St. Louis Cemetery #1 on Basin Street, once outside the city limits, is the oldest existing cemetery in New Orleans. Towering above-ground tombs remind visitors of New Orleans’ high water table and French heritage. It is in this cemetery that our Vodou Queen Marie Laveau rests in her eternal slumber.

On June 15, 1881, while in her bed at her St. Ann Street cottage, surrounded by family and community members, including her only surviving child Marie Philomene, Marie Laveau passed away. Her family members would have seen to the adherence of Creole mourning traditions, such as covering mirrors and placing a black wreath on the front door. Augustin Lamonthe, a border at Laveau’s St. Ann home, reported Laveau’s death to the Board of Health. According to the Daily Picayune, many people squeezed into the small home to get a last look at the much loved and revered woman. Father Hyacinth Mignot conducted Laveau’s funeral and according to the Picayune, “her remains were followed to the grave by a large concourse of people, the most prominent and the most humble joining in paying their last respects to the dead.” [1]

Despite some WPA interviewees and later researchers insisting Marie Laveau was buried in a wall vault in St. Louis Cemetery #2, archival records show that Marie is buried in her family vault in St. Louis Cemetery #1. Joining her husband Christophe Glapion, her children, grandchildren, and other family members, Marie is entombed in the middle vault of the Laveau-Glapion family tomb. [2] Later, in 1897, Marie Philomene would join her family in the tomb. [3]

Almost immediately after Marie Laveau’s death, devotees began to perform pilgrimages to her tomb to leave offerings and ask for petitions. Raymond Rivaros and Ayola Cruz, sextons of St. Louis Cemetery #1 in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mentioned how visitors came “almost daily to make offerings to Marie’s spirit. They make crosses with red brick, charcoal, and sharp rocks.” Visitors would leave cooked foods, cakes, flowers, pineapples, and would, “knock three times on the marble slab…” [4] These traditions continue today, although the tradition of making crosses and Xs on her tomb with brick have caused great damage to the tomb over the years and has come under criticism by preservationist and true Vodou adherents alike. On December 24, 2013, upon opening the cemetery gates, workers and visitors discovered Laveau’s tomb was painted pink, covering the traditional whitewash color. The paint was latex, preventing the centuries-old bricks from breathing. Preservationists conducted intense restoration to preserve the tomb, with efforts completed in 2014. After that time, the Archdiocese of New Orleans restricted visits into the cemetery to approved tour groups to deter vandalism. [5] In response to the cemetery’s increased restrictions, artist Ricardo Pustanio and Vodou priestess Sallie Ann Glassman created the International Shrine of Marie Laveau. The shrine is located in the lobby of The Healing Center at 2372 St. Claude Avenue and allows visitors to learn about and pay respects to the Vodou queen with less restricted access. [6]

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Jean Baptiste Roudanez, publisher of L’Union, the South’s first black newspaper, and the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper, is entombed alongside his mother Aimée Potens, a free woman of color, in Square 3 of St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. This section of St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 honors many civil rights pioneers of African descent, including Henriette Delille, Rodolphe Desdunes, Arthur Esteves, André Callioux, Jordan Noble, Marie Couvent, P.B.S. Pinchback, Oscar Dunne and many others. Square 3 has been described as “the greatest collection of memorials to African-American achievement in the world.”  

Roudanez and fellow activist Arnold Bertonneau delivered a historic petition to President Lincoln on March 12, 1864, demanding the right to vote. Signed by almost 1,000 free men of color from New Orleans, the document righteously proclaimed “WE ARE MEN, TREAT US AS SUCH!” For the first time, Louisianans of African descent boldly entered the whitest house in America, the inner sanctum of the country’s authority. They were frustrated with Lincoln’s gradualism and general failure to support the growing national movement for racial equality. [1]

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Faubourg Tremé is home to the oldest existing cemetery in the City of New Orleans, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, founder of the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper, is entombed in the Roudanez family tomb located in Alley 9. The doctor’s wife, Célie Saulay, and several of their children are also in this tomb. Access is permitted only with approved tour guides. When in the cemetery, be sure to ask your guide to see the Roudanez tomb.

The Morales-Arlington’s tomb once held one of New Orleans most notorious madams, Josie Arlington, from the city’s equally notorious red light district, Storyville. Arlington's reputation and the tomb she created for herself have attracted visitors and locals alike, from the time of her burial until today, when some observers say they have caught a glimpse of lights dancing around her mausoleum -- Josie Arlington, trying to get back into her grave.

Sometime around 1910, Josie Arlington purchased a cemetery plot at Metairie Cemetery for $2,000. The idea that a retired proprietor of a house of ill repute would eventually be laid to rest amongst some of the city’s elite outraged many. However, Arlington wasted no time after her purchase of the plot to begin work on her memorial. On May 11, 1911, she signed a contract with sculptor Albert Weiblen to create her final resting place. Arlington wanted it to make a statement about herself, spending a whopping $5,500, and personally selecting every last detail. Once finished, the public immediately began to read meaning into the tomb’s design, seeing it as a symbol of her life in prostitution. The reddish-brown granite was said to represent the red light district of Storyville and the fire torches to represent her chosen profession. Some have seen the bronze female statue as symbolizing a virgin’s doomed attempt to enter Arlington’s brothel. Others have suggested the statue represents Josie as a young girl, sneaking back into her father's house. What Josie saw in the statue of the girl we will never know – we just know that she purchased it from Munich, Germany.

On February 14, 1914, Arlington took her last breath and was laid to rest in her tomb. She did not enjoy its amenities for long, however. Only a month after Josie's death, her family began fighting over her money and property, which amounted to over $50,000. Arlington's family was forced to sell not only her mansion on Esplanade Avenue, but her tomb as well. The tomb was sold to Jose A. Morales, a New Orleans attorney. Under cover of night, Metairie Cemetery officials removed Josie Arlington's remains to a remote, undisclosed location in the cemetery. The name at the top of the tomb was changed to J. A. Morales and was soon occupied by Morales’s wife and four children.

The fight over Arlington’s estate and the removal of her remains created heated local discussion and headlines in local newspapers. Crowds were drawn to the tomb, and once a flashing red traffic light was installed on the New Basin Shell Road that ran alongside the cemetery, the crowds grew even bigger, as the red light reflected off the reddish granite of Arlington's tomb, creating the illusion that the tomb was on fire. As Metairie Cemetery historian Henri Gandolfo wrote, “The red glare flashing on and off added a mysterious sense of drama never intended.” The red light was later removed and a cross was carved on the back of the tomb, calming the crowds. Today, Metairie Cemetery authorities still refuse to divulge the site of Josie Arlington's remains, but her abandoned tomb continues to attract her admirers.

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Established in 1875, St. Roch Cemetery lies just north of the Faubourg Marigny in the St. Roch neighborhood.

The founder of St. Roch Cemetery was Father Peter Leonhard Thevis, pastor at Holy Trinity Church located closer to the Mississippi River at St. Ferdinand and Dauphine Streets. According to a famous New Orleans legend, Father Thevis prayed to St. Roch during the deadly yellow fever outbreak of 1868 and vowed to build a chapel to him if the Holy Trinity congregation was spared. No one died, and Father Thevis indeed built the chapel a few years later in the cemetery he had established for the church.

Upon his death 25 years later, Father Thevis was buried in the center of the Chapel, beneath the marble floor in front of the altar and the statue of St. Roch. The inscription on his tombstone is engraved in Gothic rather than Roman script; Gothic script, prevalent in Western Europe from the 1100s to the 1600s, was used much longer in Germany, throughout the 19th and until the 20th century.

SAINT ROCH

Who is the saint to whom Father Thevis prayed for protection from yellow fever and to whom he dedicated the chapel in which he himself was later buried? According to Catholic legend, Saint Roch was born in Montpellier, France, around 1295. Roch was very devout and lived an ascetic life from an early age. After his parents died, he gave all of his worldly possessions to the poor and, in 1317, set out on a pilgrimage to Rome. He came to Italy during a plague epidemic. It was said that his touch, prayers, and signing of the cross healed the ill. He ministered to the sick in the hospitals of several cities. On his way back from Rome, he himself succumbed to the plague at Piacenza. He was cast out of town and retreated to the forest, where he would have died, had it not been for the dog of a nobleman which brought him bread and licked his wounds, healing him. After Roch recovered, he continued healing those afflicted by the plague.

Based on this legend and due to recurrent outbreaks of plague from the 14th to the early 18th century, St. Roch became a very popular plague saint all over Europe, including countries north of the Alps such as Germany.

GERMANS IN ST. ROCH CEMETERY

A number of clues scattered throughout St. Roch Cemetery reveal the presence of German immigrants in the neighborhood. German names adorn many of the graves, including Schmidt, Klein, Schneider, Koch, Ueberschlag, Ahsenmacher, and Elzensohn. The high proportion of German names on the tombs demonstrates that the nineteenth-century community that first established and used this cemetery was heavily comprised of, though by no means exclusively, people of German descent.

Many of the tombstones are engraved with additional words and expressions in German such as Familie, Geb[oren], Gest[orben], Hier ruht, Hier ruht in Frieden*, and *im Alter von.

Further evidence of a German influence in the St. Roch Cemetery is found in the name of one of the cemetery’s two main walkways. The walkway leading from the front gate of the cemetery to St. Roch Chapel is St. Roch Avenue Walk is named after St. Boniface, the patron saint of Germany. St. In St. Roch Cemetery, his name also appears on a vault established by the St. Bonifacius Verein, the benevolent association of St. Boniface Church. The latter, along with St. Boniface School, was founded at Galvez and Laharpe Streets in 1869 for those Germans who had moved to the St. Roch neighborhood.

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Bernard Walter Lomax was a Mardi Gras Indian who lived from 1927-1955. In 1950 he composed "Shallow Water," a song that is still popular with Mardi Gras Indians today. The words "Shallow Water" are repeated to form the chorus of the song by the same name. It is one of the most recognizable songs that the Mardi Gras Indians sing today.

Mr. Donald Harrison, Sr., Big Chief of the Guardians of the Flame, stated in a 1991 interview that:

"My earliest influence was Bernard Lomax, a gentlemen that introduced the song 'Shallow Water.' His mother is still alive. She lives Uptown. She's elderly—she's just like a second mother to me. When I started masking in 1949, I was influenced mainly by Bernard Lomax."

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Born in South Carolina in 1852, Colonel James Thomas Nix (Col. Nix) was the son of Rev. John Darling Nix, lieutenant to General Robert E. Lee during the Civil War. Col. Nix was also the great-grandson of Colonel John Darling Nix, who fought with General Francis Marion during the American Revolution.

After the Civil War, a federal officer gave the then 12-year-old James Nix a chance at a quality education. By the age of 19, he developed a reputation as a fierce lawyer.

Evelyn Beatrice (née Flemming) Nix married Col. Nix in 1885. Evelyn Nix gave birth to three sons and a daughter in the span of seven years, all while moving from South Carolina to Colorado and, eventually, New Orleans. As children of a Lutheran and a Baptist, the Nix children were brought up in a religious home. The youngest child, Ann, died of malaria in 1895 before her third birthday.

By 1893, Col. Nix settled his young family in New Orleans, where his brother John Darling Nix was already working as an attorney. As a successful and prominent lawyer, Col. Nix became an established fixture in the New Orleans social scene. An active member of numerous fraternal organizations, Col. Nix was a 32nd degree Mason and served as Grand Chancellor of the Louisiana Knights of Pythias.

Col. Nix died in November 1912 after falling from a horse. Shortly before her death in 1928, Evelyn Nix suggested the construction of the Nix Memorial Public Library which remains in operation today.

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The suburb of Carrollton became incorporated as a city in 1845. Twenty-nine years later, in 1874, the city of New Orleans absorbed the town, including its cemetery. Sometimes referred to as Green Street Cemetery, Carrollton Cemetery is a four-block area bordered by Adams, Hickory, Birch, and Loweline. Historian Leonard V. Huber claims that the cemetery journal cites Neil Cockran as the buyer of the first lot (#405) on November 8, 1849 for $15, a price that remained the same for many years.

Huber also quotes 19th century historian William H. Williams, who claimed that the "sedimentary deposit from the waters of the McCarty crevasse" had created high enough ground to make earthen burials possible there. Williams wrote that the cemetery was already "becoming handsomely improved with tombs, shrubbery, and flowers" and that some dead had been there forty years. This date must have prompted Lyle Saxon, local director of the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration in 1938, to claim that Carrollton Cemetery had begun in the 1830s. Among pioneer Carrollton families buried there are Fischer, Kirchoff, Lochte, Henton, Herrle, Thieler, Gogreves Deibele, and O'Dwyer.

Carrollton Cemetery was originally segregated by race. The cemetery reserved one section for white families, and another, smaller section for black families. Today, the traditionally white section features more elaborate above-ground tombs, while the "colored" section features more modest inground copings and open-framed chambers, reflecting racialized economic inequalities rooted in slavery and racism.

A few blocks away is modest St. Mary Cemetery, formerly the property of the Catholic Church (St. Mary's Nativity). According to Huber, "city authorities took it over in a swap of land with the church in 1921." St. Mary is bounded by Adams, Spruce, and Cohn Streets. As with Carrollton Cemetery, it backs up to Lowerline, the former boundary of Carrollton. St. Mary covers two city blocks, half the size of Carrollton Cemetery's four-block site.

While early New Orleans cemeteries are noted for their maze-like and crowded nature, these later suburban ones imposed an urban grid with main streets, side alleys, and space between tombs. Carrollton and St. Mary reflect the German proclivities of many early Carrollton residents and are visually connected to the neighborhood.

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The Carville cemetery is the only stop on the tour where you may exit your vehicle and take photographs. Just beyond the cemetery is a hospital incinerator with a driving ramp and tower built in the 1920s to dispose of all waste. Remember that nothing was allowed to leave the grounds.

This is the second patient cemetery and was established in 1922 by the federal government. About 750 patients are buried here. These stones were provided by the federal government and resemble markers you might see in a military cemetery. Each stone is engraved with a patient's hospital ID number and either their real or false name. Some patients purchased their own ornamental markers.

In many cases, a patient chose to be buried using his “Carville name” to hide identity even in death. Several times a month, families come to Carville in search of a “long lost” relative. In cases like this, the Medical Records Department can make a positive identification by using old medical charts. The museum offers a schematic of the cemetery to help searching families locate a stone.

Carville’s first patient cemetery is located in the front quad of the patients' dorms. Because the first cemetery isn’t accessible to the public, the 40 & 8, a veterans’ organization and patients' benefactors since the 1940s, produced a memorial stone with the names of the first 137 patients to die and be buried here. It is the large grey marble marker to your right, at about 4 o’clock. When you examine the names, you will notice that some of these earlier patients were buried using a first name or initials only. One obvious pseudonym is “George Washington.”

32 veterans are buried here--from the Spanish American War to the Vietnam war— and each of these graves is marked with an American Legion star.

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Founded in 1841 by free people of color, St. Augustine is the oldest African-American parish in the United States. Civil Rights activists Homer Plessy and A.P. Tureaud were parishioners of St. Augustine, as were jazz musician Sidney Bechet and Mardi Gras Indian Chief Tootie Montana.

The following text is from a plaque installed by St. Augustine parishioners to commemorate the "Tomb of the Unknown Slave."

"On this October 30, 2004, we, the Faith Community of St. Augustine Catholic Church, dedicate this shrine consisting of grave crosses, chains and shackles to the memory of the nameless, faceless, turfless Africans who met an untimely death in Faubourg Treme. The Tomb of the Unknown Slave is commemorated here in this garden plot of St. Augustine Church, the only parish in the United States whose free people of color bought two outer rows of pews exclusively for slaves to use for worship. This St. Augustine/Treme shrine honors all slaves buried throughout the United States and those slaves in particular who lie beneath the ground of Treme in unmarked, unknown graves. There is no doubt that the campus of St. Augustine Church sits astride the blood, sweat, tears and some of the mortal remains of unknown slaves from Africa and local American Indian slaves who either met with fatal treachery, and were therefore buried quickly and secretly, or were buried hastily and at random because of yellow fever and other plagues.

"Even now, some Treme locals have childhood memories of salvage/restoration workers unearthing various human bones, sometimes in concentrated areas such as wells. In other words, The Tomb of the Unknown Slave is a constant reminder that we are walking on holy ground. Thus, we cannot consecrate this tomb, because it is already consecrated by many slaves' inglorious deaths bereft of any acknowledgement, dignity or respect, but ultimately glorious by their blood, sweat, tears, faith, prayers and deep worship of our Creator."

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The Girod Cemetery was the city's oldest Protestant cemetery, opened by the wardens of Christ Church in 1822. The cemetery had fallen into disrepair by the time most of these photographs were taken. It was deconsecrated and then demolished in 1957. The remains of whites and blacks were relocated to racially segregated cemeteries.

The cemetery stood roughly where the New Orleans Centre shopping mall -- shuttered since the 2005 flood -- exists, between the Superdome and the Hyatt Hotel.

One longstanding, but disproven, myth suggested that the New Orleans Saints football team had been cursed because the field was supposed to have been built on the cemetery grounds. The parking garages of the closed shopping mall and part of an adjacent Superdome garage most likely occupy the former site of the burial grounds.

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An 1848 city legislature act allowed the Catholic wardens to establish a new cemetery. Land along Bayou St. John, purchased from Evariste Blanc for $15,000, became St. Louis Cemetery #3. The cemetery opened in 1854.

The original plans for the cemetery called for three main aisles named for St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Louis along with four smaller aisles named for St. Mary, St. Joseph, St. Magdalene and St. Philomene. In 1865 J.A. d'Hemecourt developed a new plan to increase the depth of the burial ground and creating cross aisles which were named for bishops and archbishops of the diocese.

The cemetery is the last resting place for several notable New Orleanian including; the family tombs of several restaurateurs such as the Galtoire, Tujague, and Prudhomme, architects James Gallier and James Gallier Jr., and photographer E. J. Bellocq.

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1777 marked the birth of Louis Allard, son and heir of the affluent Creole family of Francoise Lorreins and Jean Allard. One narrative of Louis Allard's life said he was "destined to be an active citizen of the bayou for the next seventy years." Most sources, however, claimed Allard was "cultured but impractical," a "hermit" who was "a man of letters," a "dreamer," and a "poet-farmer."

Louis Allard was raised on a plantation that was home to cattle and sheep as well as crops of sugarcane, indigo, cotton, corn, and rice, but the role of plantation owner did not come naturally to him. Allard was a poet and a politician. He was educated in France, which was typical for Louisiana men of French descent with some social standing during this era. Early in January 1798, Louis Allard returned home to the plantation, having completed his European schooling.

The most enduring account of the grave is that Allard's declining days were spent writing poetry under his favorite tree, one of the Dueling Oaks. Before his death, Allard beseeched the land's new owner, John McDonogh, for permission to be buried under his beloved tree. Allard had spent much time under this oak from boyhood and into adulthood. McDonogh agreed, and on May 18, 1847, Allard was laid to rest in a crypt under what is now the only remaining Dueling Oak.

Some accounts claim that the City Park Improvement Association (CPIA) discovered the grave was empty around the turn of the twentieth century; nevertheless, City Park continued maintenance of the crypt. In 1984, the Times Picayune published an article claiming that "when the park was developed and the grave was opened, there was no coffin, although some time later a casket lock and handles were found. To this day it is still a mystery. What happened to Allard's body? That romance and mystery surrounding the oaks is just one of the reasons why the Friends of City Park devote so much time to this community green space."

In September 2011, the CPIA removed the grave after sonar imaging of the grave site determined the crypt to be empty.

You will walk over the Dreyfous Bridge on the way to your next stop.

The Dreyfous Bridge, an auto bridge which adjoins the casino area with the Dueling Oak and Sculpture Garden, has undergone many changes throughout the years. The accompanying photos illustrate its various alterations. The original wood and stone bridge was built in 1913; in 1923, Mr. and Mrs. Felix Dreyfous contributed a new bridge to replace the old wooden span.

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