When heirs of Louis Fayard deeded the cemetery land to Biloxi in 1844 for a town "burying ground," it already had graves.

"The date of the first burial there is gray matter," said Murella H. Powell, who spent years studying and recording Mississippi Coast cemeteries. "Putting it there was logical. It was the highest point in Biloxi and near the fort site.

"There is a strong argument for an early cemetery there."

Powell, now the city's historian emeritus, explains that in addition to the cemetery bordering the proposed Fort Louis, there had been pockets of people living nearby since the French first landed. Some would be buried on their honesties, but others might seek the high ground that is today's Old Biloxi Cemetery.

There is also the question of where the Mississippi Bubble people were buried. The infamous John Law Concessions dropped hundreds of starving, sick speculators from Germany and other European countries here who thought they were coming to the promised land. Instead, they faced no food and little development, and hundreds, maybe even thousands, died from 1719 to 1721.

A book published 35 years later referred to Biloxi as "this is the place where 500 died." Powell and others suspect the burials were near the French encampment planned as Fort Louis, thus Old Biloxi Cemetery.

"There is not one document that says this is a fact," Powell said. "You have to gather the evidence and draw conclusions."

Another time when mass graves are suspected at the site is the 1853 yellow fever epidemic.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, with no native stones for headstones, graves were often marked with wood or with lighter, the hardened knots of pine trees. Even those marked with something longer-lived could well have been claimed by storms, vandals or time.

The oldest surviving headstone in Old Biloxi is for Michel Batet, a native of France who died in May 1811 at age 34, and whose headstone is written in French.

"There are older burials in the cemetery, we just don't know where they are," said Charles L. Sullivan, history professor emeritus at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.

For years Sullivan challenged his students to find proof of older dates of death in South Mississippi and he promised to award 100 extra credits. Several found older dates of death but they were on newer, replacement headstones.

The headstone of Biloxi's Michel Batet remains the oldest known surviving stone in the region, and it is partially embedded in a now-dead tree stump.

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