In honor of All Souls Day, my dog and I took a walk over to Carrollton Cemetery No. 1. We were the only living souls there and wondered up and down the walkways for hours. Traditionally, All Souls is a day when families come out to the cemeteries to visit their loved ones and pay their respects by cleaning the tombs and decorating them with flowers. In a cemetery as old as Carrolton, it seems that there may be very few people alive today who remember the deceased who lay to rest there. There was not a single fresh flower anywhere to found except the weeds growing out of the timeworn monuments.
Letter written from New Orleans 1855 “Next Thursday is all souls day. On that day the people all go to the graveyards and decorate the tombs of their friends with flowers and ribbons and artifacts. Caroline is going to take me to all the cemeteries it must be a beautiful sight to see all people paying those marks of affectionate remembrance to their departed friends and relatives.”
The cemetery was built on the outskirts of town in 1849 and over time, the thriving suburb grew into the little city of New Orleans that now surrounds it. The ground in this part of town is quite high by New Orleans standards and so it was possible to bury people below ground although wealthier families chose to build the traditional burial vaults that earned New Orleans cemeteries the nickname, “Cities of the Dead.”
The people who lay to rest here are the families and individuals who built my little section of Uptown whether they were interred in fancy vaults or humble graves with handmade markers that long ago disintegrated. Each one played a part in fashioning my neighborhood into the place that I was raised and will continue to love and live in as long as I breathe. Please, take a walk through Carrolltons’ past with me.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner
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The Paul Toussaint Montz Family Vault.
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The Campbell Family Burial plot is enclosed by a wrought iron fence and gate that would normally surround an old New Orleans home.
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An angel kneels in prayer over The Nix Family Monument.
This is the very family that the Nix Public Library on Carrollton was named after.
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The German League of Friendship wall vault is the only society tomb in the cemetery.
This type of tomb is called an “oven” because of the way bodies were interred in the walls and the remains left to bake in the New Orleans heat.
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A little girl drops flower petals over deceased family members.
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The Phillippi Family has used New Orleans signature street tiles to mark the family plot.
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A Church steeple sits on top of the Dubos family vault.
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A broken angel prays before an unmarked grave.
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An angel bearing roses stands over the Bohl Family Vault.
Patriarch of the family Charles Bohl was a baker who owned a double shotgun at Oak and Monroe streets. His family lived on one side and he had a bakery on the other side (just like me and my shotgun soap works). The Bohl family home is still standing.
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Time, vandalism and neglect have taken their toll on Carrollton Cemetery No. 1.
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The Kirchhoff – Lochte Family Vault. Say that 3xs quick.
“The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds – the cemeteries – and they’re a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay – ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who’ve died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn’t pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time.” -Bob Dylan
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