Hauntingly beautiful and often misunderstood New Orleans. Oldest cemeteries have mesmerized people for a long time. Rachel Hanley takes us around a few of them and shows us how they can help us understand our city in surprising ways. This is what happens when a genius IQ frat boy found the city. As a former tour guide, Mary Dugal is full of stories named after the people that were executed, custody of the richest man in America. And they did do an autopsy looking for poisons, but it was 1930. So there's only so much you could find. But as she spills the city's secrets, it's keeping one from her. Her great, great, great grandfather was buried here in ST Louis. Number one so far, she hasn't found his tomb. I could get lucky. You know, we find new information all the time. The city's oldest cemeteries do hold a lot of mysteries, but they also have more stories to tell than Dugas herself. Jie Honor is a family historian at the historic New Orleans Collection. He says when Europeans first colonized this area, there was a pattern to where they buried their dead. The thought then was that cemeteries should be placed on the outskirts of cities for sanitary reasons. And as the city got bigger, going from gas to electric and brick to steel, its residents kept building new cemeteries on the edge. That means today you can actually see the growth of the city from the locations of its cemeteries. This is Saint Louis one established in 1789 ST Louis 234 years later, and ST Louis 331 years after that all in order, moving away from the river where New Orleans first began, there is one missing from this picture. Though in 2011, property owner wanted to build a pool, they started digging on the edge of the quarter between Saint Peter and Toulouse and hit caskets. They were from the Saint Peter Street Cemetery. The first one established in what would become New Orleans when the city expanded beyond that area, the cemetery was shut down and built over. That seems a little strange to us now, from tours to gift shops to movies. Cemeteries are a big part of the story New Orleans tells the world about itself. I think that we understand uh the value of uh having cemeteries in place as uh artifacts of their time as as out essentially outdoor um history classroom. In fact, the developers of a death themed tourist attraction next to ST Louis. I paused work earlier this year after the state raised concerns about actual human remains buried on the property. But back when the city was first settled, it was a lot more common to move cemeteries whenever a city wanted that land for something else in terms of individual record keeping, individual grave. Mo um I don't think that there was as much of a, of a priority and ST Peter isn't the city's only lost cemetery. Another shows how the stories New Orleans tells itself aren't always true. Now, you might have heard of the Gerard Street Cemetery. The legend is that the Superdome was built on top of it. And that curse is why the saints didn't win a Super Bowl until 2010. But the saints only have their offense, defense recruiting coaching and playing to blame for that because the cemetery was actually here under this parking garage. Gerard Street was shut down in 1957. After decades of neglect, not everybody there had family members to claim their remains. New Orleans prides itself on a history of diversity and multiculturalism, but that wasn't always celebrated even in death. Reflecting the times the unclaimed black burials were reinterred in a mass grave in Providence Park out on Elon Highway. And the unclaimed white burials were interred together in Hope Mausoleum on Canal Street. Today, there's still a plaque on the wall at Hope Mausoleum listing the names of at least some of the white people taken there. Some of their headstones were saved too at Providence Park. There's much less to mark where the Black New Orleanians were buried. Today. There's just one plaque and one name Minnie Carter. She has no birth year listed and the cemetery says no known family with less importance placed on the lives of people of color. Throughout New Orleans history. Some families are left with bigger mysteries than others. And as Duga works on solving her own, she made sure some of her family's resting places are easier to find than her. Great, great, great grandpa's years ago, she had a tomb built in Saint Louis. Number one, her parents and her older brother are there. It has some drawbacks. I can't tell you how many times I've caught tour, die in front of my tomb just making stuff up because there's nothing written on it, you know, like, oh, yeah, they do voodoo ceremonies here. I'm like, no, but because of the cemetery's modern value to the city, she thinks it's less likely her family's resting places will end up moved like so many others have been. She hopes they and herself will be able to rest a permanent part of New Orleans story. Rachel Handley Wwl, Louisiana ST Louis Cemetery number two is closed to the public. You can visit. Number one, if you're on an official tour.
