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Parishs oldest cemetery faces threats |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Tuesday, 02 November 2004 |
Site with burials from early 1800s has suffered recent damage.
November 1, 2004
By John Andrew Prime
A cemetery that holds the remains of many notable pioneer Caddo Parish families, long swallowed up by dense woods just west of Greenwood, has been revealed by nearby logging, and that exposure has historians and archaeologists worried.
The Whitworth-Forest Park Cemetery "is very important for several different reasons," said cartographer Gary Joiner, who visited the site on behalf of state archaeologists last week and plans at least one more visit before submitting his report. "This is a family cemetery from the very early 1800s. This is a pioneering family cemetery -- these people were out on the west edge of Louisiana, before Shreveport was even a town, and when this was the western boundary of the United States. At the time it was established, this was perhaps the westernmost cemetery in the United States."
The family names on its stones are like a map of Shreveport and surrounding countryside: Whitworth, Flournoy, Howell, Agurs, Dickson. And the descendants of these people today remain influential in culture, law and business, ranging from Caddo District Judge Eugene Bryson and historian-author Mary Margaret Richard to businessmen Barrow Peacock and J. Harman Chandler.
Bryson, who has a keen interest in the cemetery, helped with some cleanup there a few years ago, but the dense woods made that difficult.
The woods have also largely erased other history at the site, including traces of the Whitworth House, made from bricks made on the site and acknowledged to be the first brick structure built in the parish.
"The first settlers in this area came in 1830s and built that big home," Bryson said, noting it was even featured in a "Ripley's Believe it or Not!" column.
Joiner said the cemetery is historic in another sense, in that surrounding it are burials of many of the families servants, and that at least one of these is a marked grave with a full name and inscription.
"My initial inspection revealed two confirmed slave graves with markers or marker bases, one with a well-intact tombstone," said Joiner, who will report his findings to the state Division of Archaeology. "So not only are there several prominent pioneering families of northwest Louisiana buried there, there are also some of the first African-Americans who lived in northwest Louisiana, and there's a name of at least one. So for the purposes of history, this is a very important cemetery."
Though small, the cemetery is substantial and once mirrored the prestige its inhabitants enjoyed in life. A wrought iron fence still surrounds the property, though large portions have been knocked down.
A large tree has grown up around parts of one corner, its trunk gently arcing out along the black metal in what appears to be a ghostly, timeless embrace. Large stone edifices loom like sentinels, the heavy top of the Agurs marker fallen but intact, as though lifted by a crane or a winch.
"We are going to try to make an effort to right the tombstones that have been turned over," Chandler said. "We're going to try to rehabilitate it as much as we can."
Family members also are trying to determine what damage to the site and its fence is recent and possibly caused by loggers, as opposed to older damage by vandals in the 1970s and 1980s.
Joiner said his work there will add the cemetery to the state archaeological database and provide a basis for determining what protections it can secure from the state in conjunction with efforts by the family.
"The reason for creating this entry into the state archaeology database is to record its significance so if any future work is done out there, it must be recognized and protected," he said. "In the long term that is the important thing, to protect the area from long-term destruction."
Eric Brock, local historian and author, said Louisiana law offers pretty strong protection for cemeteries, and he noted it is a criminal act to knowingly destroy such sites.
"You cannot knowingly build or develop, in this state, on land that has been used as a cemetery," he said.
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041101/NEWS01/411010328/1002 |
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