Thursday, January 27, 2011

Cemetery

You have to have perpetual care too, or your monument ends up looking like the two on the right.
The statues on top of the monuments were beautiful
This is where thousands of yellow fever victums were buried in the early 1800's
Very Narrow between rows
The agony and despair are palpable in this statue!!!

Many iron works were around the sites. All denominations were buried here. And there were many that had 10-20 people in them. Even some with more, like the Sisters of a local convent. So how do they do that you say? WELL....They bury a person in a casket for one year and one day, then remove the body from the casket, which by this time is all decomposed, wrap in a shroud and stuff it back in the monument and shove the bones with a stick to the back of the space where there is a hole, like 20+ feet deep, the bones fall down there and the space is ready for another. the casket is burned, it can't be re-used, against the law. the casket people would go out of business. If someone in the family passes b4 your one year and a day is up, you have to find another monument, that will let you set there until there is space in yours, I kid you not. I don't want the removal job, just sayin'. And these spaces cost alot also, i mean the guide said like $20,000. There is space or a road in between rows, but they are starting to sell that off too. AND the cemeteries are haunted too. They have night time tours of them, hmmmmm, don't know if that would be a fun time or not.....

4 comments:

  1. Interesting facts. I think that living at or below sea level, they would require cremation.
    Strange that they put more than one person in each monument. A few years ago there was a big investigation here (Cook County, IL) because a cemetery was doubling up on bodies and moving them around illegally.

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  2. Interesting, but rather gruesome details. Ugh!

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  3. Very interesting indeed. Thanks for sharing with us.

    Travel Safe
    Dawn & Denise

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  4. Very interesting facts. This is one thing I would have liked to see on our trip, but we didn't even pass through New Orleans, and didn't have the time to detour to it anyway. Maybe one day we'll get back down that direction.

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