Posts Tagged ‘oven tomb’

Part 1 discussed some of the specifics that hold true across the various types of burials in New Orleans, and in Part 2 we’ll address some of the different types of grave structures, which will hopefully illustrate their (rather frustrating) impact on genealogists.

• Family Tombs (including all standard above ground types)- Typically with 2-4 vaults inside, these can be found in everything from simple brick to elaborate Italian marble in a variety of shapes. Most families opt to have each name etched into the stone, although some only have the original familial name carved.
  

  An intact 2 vault family tomb with the parts labeled

  An aged 2 vault family tomb with the specifics missing

• Copings- these plots are partially in the ground and partially above it. Lined in concrete and filled with earth, they can be sealed with another layer of concrete, loose stone or grass. Typically these have a step between the ground and the top, upon which the family name is etched. While a headstone is often added with family specifics, many copings bear only the family name, leaving no way to know at a glance who was buried within. Simpler and much less expensive to build and maintain, these became (and remain) an attractive option for the middle class.
  
  

  A group of coping-style tombs- most without headstones showing specifics about the family and interred. (Click to see detail)

• Society-These are clubs and fraternal organizations where your membership entitles you to place to be buried. There are many of these covering all aspects of society- churches, orphanages, immigrant groups, benevolent associations, professional groups and more. Primarily they were groups that did larger works in the community, but a few were simply ‘death clubs,’ where burial in their tomb was their only real purpose. Society tombs rarely list their individual members at all. Society tombs can be found in every cemetery but there are two cemeteries specifically dedicated to such organizations (Odd Fellows Rest and Masonic). Both of course have many society tombs, but they allowed their members to buy plots and erect individual tombs as well.
  

  Orleans Battalion of Artillery Tomb- one of the most famous, and completely intact, but without a single name upon it.

  A coping-style Society burial

• Oven/Wall- These are the ‘rentals’ of the graveyard, and where most people didn’t want to end up, especially if they didn’t have any family in the city to keep the rent paid up. There are several ways people would end up in these:
  • The law stated that a person must be buried for a year + 1 day before they could be disinterred and another person placed in any vault. If a family or group was unlucky enough to have too many deaths in too short a time, a wall vault could be rented for the interim, until they could be placed with their family.
  • Those with little money could rent a space for their family member. The rent covered the required year and a day, but after that you could be evicted if your family didn’t continue to keep up the payments. Depending on who you left behind, you might or might not get a stone at all- after all, if it was only a temporary crash pad, why would you go to the expense? However, if your family decided they wanted to keep the vault indefinitely and even make it their family burial plot, a stone could be placed. If, however, at some point the rent went unpaid, you could still find yourself turned out.
  
  

  About half have stones, and not all of those have inscriptions. There's no way to tell how many times they were used.

  Two rows of oven tombs intersect. They've sunken into the ground and few have gravestones.

  The walls of most of the cemeteries around town are lined with these simple stacked tombs- hundreds of them per cemetery. (although both are typically part of the cemetery walls, a “Wall” tomb is squared off, while an “oven” is curved at the top, like a brick oven- which is essentially what they were.)

  These could be seen as the predecessors of today’s mausoleums, though in New Orleans we now have both- single burial mausoleums and family wall tombs. The old ‘rental’ style is no more, however, and most of the old wall vaults are sealed shut.

• Earthen burial- There are two very different kinds of these:
  • Jewish burials- Although you’ll occasionally see a tomb with a Star of David in other cemeteries, most Jews have opted to be buried in the Jewish cemeteries around town. These look more like the typical American graveyard- tombstones on the ground (or in low copings), often with a single burial. Each of these cemeteries are clean, clipped and orderly.
    
    

    Neat rows of headstones in Chevra Thilim

  • Indigent burials- These have simple underground interments- something that wouldn’t be a problem in most of the country. Burials here are very cheap and usually have only family-made markers- but you’re paying for the service and not the land. You own nothing, and unless their loved ones keep the plot maintained and clearly demarcated they are also impermanent, lasting sometimes less than a year. Every time I visit these there are major changes and you never know what you’ll find, though the sextons do not disturb a grave if it is being cared for, and some plots have been reused many times in the same way that a family tomb gets reused.
    
    

    The less orderly Holt Cemetery

  There are exceptions to these, of course- these are just the most common types and situations to be found. In the last in the series we’ll look at some of the specific requests for help that have come in and what the issues involved can be.

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I hadn’t visited VdP before, for a variety of reasons. For one, it sits just off N. Robertson, the main thoroughfare into the Lower 9th Ward, and although there are many lovely areas of their Bywater neighborhood, this cemetery isn’t situated in one of them.  It may or may not actually be dangerous- I haven’t looked into those blocks specifically, but it looks…well,  let’s say uninviting. It’s also pretty far off the beaten track, so I decided I wasn’t missing too much after I’d looked it up in New Orleans Architecture (Vol. III: The Cemeteries) and found this description:

In the past three quarters of a century they have built hundreds of vaults and tombs in the three cemeteries, including a two-storied community mausoleum in the third section. … There are hundreds of smaller tombs of pedestrian design; the cemeteries are literally jammed with them.

But earlier this week I found myself heading out to Chalmette and as I passed St. Vincent de Paul I made a snap decision to go take a quick peek. I felt fairly confident that if any day would be a “safe” day, this was it- early on a 90+ degree Monday morning would find most people at home, not wandering around looking for trouble. So off I went, and I’m glad I did. There might be many “pedestrian” tombs in the graveyard, and many of them not very old, but they did have the most amazing collection of wall tomb marble carvings and ironwork I’ve ever seen:

Much of it was simple, true, but there were many more ornate examples that live on. Most of the other cemeteries’ wall tomb iron has either rusted away or been stolen, so it was fantastic to see so much still there. Lots more photos in the flickr gallery here.