Started in 1879, Holt Cemetery is a potter’s field cemetery in New Orleans that is primarily a Black cemetery. The plots are free. The only charge is for the burial.
It is filled with vernacular headstones. At 7 acres, it is a small, densely packed cemetery. It is still active. When I visited, they were preparing for another funeral.
I know people are often dismayed at the state of the cemetery. I find such beauty in the handmade markers. There are generations of families buried together here. It simultaneously speaks to the connection of families and the horrible history of racism in Louisiana and the United States.
The city of New Orleans did spend money in 2013 to repair and stabilize the cemetery, but individual plots were not part of the stabilization project.
Items left on a grave.At the base of this oak are different offerings such as seashells, fruit, Mardi Gras beads, alcohol, and many other items.
There are so many amazing monuments at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. This is one of the art deco ones to memorialize Charles F Beck (1892-1928). Whenever a hurricane makes landfall, I always wonder how much more the city can endure. It is a city of resilience, so I would never count it out.
Starting in 1936, the Federal Writers’ Project spent the next three years collecting as many stories from freed men and women about their lives before emancipation. The Children of Whitney, a series of sculptures by Ohio-based artist Woodrow Nash, represent these former slaves as they were at the time of emancipation: children. Whitney presents the stories of these children as told in their own words. The visitors are introduced to the lives of the enslaved workers based on the recollections of those who endured, and who shared the stories of their lives as children in slavery.
For the enslaved who worked in the “Big House,” they were at the beck and call of the slaveholders for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Many would often sleep on the hard floor, in places like the pantry or the kitchen, in case the family needed them.
This is a jail that was utilized after the Civil War in Gonzalez, Louisiana, but it resembles the slave pens used at auction houses. This is why it now sits on the Whitney Plantation.
Slave cabin with sugar kettle in front. From October to December, the sugar factory was a 24-hour process. Sugar must be processed as soon as it is cut. After it was cut, it was then ground. After grinding, the juice from the sugar cane had to be boiled four separate times for it to be at the point it would crystallize.
German Coast Uprising Memorial-In 1811, Charles Deslondes organized a band of rebels that moved from plantation to plantation down River Road (which is where the Whitney is located) with the intent of killing the owners and freeing the people who were enslaved. They were armed with machetes, axes, and other weapons. Local militia and federal troops quelled the uprising and murdered at least 40 people and 65 were executed after trials in New Orleans. Those 65 were brought back to the plantations and killed in front of others. Their heads were placed on sticks along River Road
Field of Angels
When I was in Louisiana, I visited the Whitney Plantation, the only plantation that focuses on the experience of the enslaved. It does not romanticize plantation culture, which many plantations do. There are some plantations that are doing a better job at sharing these stories, but the Whitney has set the gold standard for this. I recommend everyone to make the effort to visit. For all photo descriptions, I am referencing the Whitney website or their audio tour.
The Besthoff family is prominent in New Orleans. Sydney J. Besthoff (1871-1926) started K & B Drug Stores with Gustav Katz in 1905. The stores were all over the southeast until 1997, when they sold to Rite Aid.
Sydney Besthoff III (1928-2022) and his wife, Walda, were known for their interests in the arts and sponsored the sculptural garden in City Park behind the New Orleans Museum of Art. I assume that Sydney was also laid to rest in the family tomb. I am unable to confirm this, but considering the love of sculptural art that Sydney and Walda have, it is logical that this would be a part of the family plan.
This striking marker is located in Magnolia Cemetery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. William and Mary Crenshaw lost four children. Three of their children died within a couple of months of each other. Their fourth child, listed on the marker as “The Nameless One,” did not make it past its first day.
An early death was quite common during the Victorian period. Diseases like diphtheria could ravage a household. It’s common to see family plots where a family has lost more than one child.
Chapman Henry Hyams was a millionaire stockbroker and art collector in New Orleans. Hyams built a mausoleum for his family that was designed by noted New Orleans architects, Favrot and Livaudais. The marble monument was dedicated to his sisters and is a copy of William Wetmore Story’s Angel of Grief. Blue stained glass windows bathe the angel in blue light.
I became curious about the sisters since they were not in the mausoleum. Jacabeth Caroline Hyams (1848-1859) is buried in the Dispersed of Judah Cemetery in New Orleans. Her father and other siblings are buried. I was unable to locate where the mother is buried.
Gertie Sarah Hyams moved to New York. She married Wayland Trask, a New York stockbroker, In the Louisiana census in 1872, she is listed as Sarah or S. G. By the time she moves to New York, she is identified as Gertie. She passed away in 1877 and, her final resting place is in Woodlawn Cemetery.
