Cemeteries of New Orleans
As someone who has a fascination with old historic cemeteries, New Orleans was a phenomenal place to visit. I could have spent days just wandering the dozens of old cemeteries in the area. As it was I enjoyed two of them and learned a bit about the history of above ground tombs. The first cemetery in New Orleans Saint Peters was established in 1721 in the French Quarter, it began with above ground graves. However it did not take long to discover that the high water table, heavy rains, and flooding lead to caskets making their way to the surface. Numerous tricks were tried to keep the caskets underground, to include drilling holes and placing heavy rocks but none kept all of the dead buried. In the 1780’s the Spanish government decided it was time to start another burial ground and the cities first above ground cemetery St. Louis Cemetery 1 was created, bearing a strong resemblance to Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris France . By this time...