Sonya's Blog - Day 230 - Metairie Cemetery and Superbowl 50

Sonya’s Blog - February 7th - Day 230 - Metairie Cemetery and Superbowl

There are many tours that will take you to New Orleans cemeteries, however, the lady that drove our shuttle yesterday told us you can go to Metairie Cemetery and get a free CD guided tour from the main office. Well, we like free as it keeps us in our budget. Off we went to Metairie Cemetery to take the tour. We had a good time finding the entrance because they have built an expressway over the road that runs beside the cemetery. This has resulted in a convoluted entrance, but we eventually found it with help from my phones map system. We found the office and Blake just had to leave his Driver’s License and they gave him two CD’s for the cemetery. One CD was about great families of New Orleans and the other was about soldiers and leaders.

This is a really large cemetery and all the graves are above ground. When New Orleans was first settled, they tried to bury people below ground. As soon as the city floods or gets a lot of rain, the coffins would pop up out of the soil and float around. As that is not great, they decided to build above ground tombs. During the 1800’s, it became quite a prestigious affair and the very wealthy vied to have the greatest tombs. As a result, there are some pretty fancy “mini-houses” that were built to house the deceased. The tour takes through the graveyard, guiding us to certain grave sites. The narrator will then describe the tomb, what materials were used, the style it was built in and the story behind the individuals that are buried there. The only frustrating thing about the CD, is that it used to be on tape and, therefore, we could not fast forward or rewind to each individual story with the press of a button. We had to manually fast-forward or rewind to the spot we thought we were at. Twice we turned off the CD and then had to fast-forward from the beginning.

Originally this land was a famous race track. During the 1850’s the city was a premier racing track city, but the Civil War changed everything. During the heyday of the 1850’s the Metairie Jockey Club was very exclusive and refused membership to many people. One wealthy businessman, Charles Howard, was very put-out by not being allowed into the membership of this most exclusive club. He vowed to get revenge and one day he would by the land and turn it into a cemetery. The Civil War allowed him to do this. The track was closed during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Period following the war did not allow the club to return to it’s former glory. Howard was able to buy the racetrack in 1872 and he turned it into a cemetery, as promised. The original grave sites are built around the oval of the track. This was not to be a commoner’s burial ground, this was going to be for the wealthy. There is a section of very elaborate tombs, that came to be known as “Millionaires Row”. They then sectioned off other areas for less affluent families. Many immigrant families, especially the Italians, would pool their money to purchase land in the cemetery. They then built elaborate mausoleums to lay everyone to rest.

This door was open, so Blake had to go peek inside. It was freaking Isaac out:

There are also two large burial sites that were built by and for the veterans of the Civil War. The Army of Northern Virginia, Louisiana Division built a tumulus on the eastern curve of the race track. On top of this is a large statue of General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. When former Confederate President (there was only one, due to the short nature of the Confederate States), President Jefferson Davis died on December 6th, 1889 while visiting New Orleans he was buried in one of the front vaults. Here is a picture:

Davis was later transferred to a burial place in Richmond, Virginia in 1893, so this vault is now empty. They keep a Confederate Flag hung over the vault to commemorate Davis’ first burial spot.

The other large military tumulus is built where the cemeteries main entrance used to be. This is for the Army of Tennessee, Louisiana Division. The equestrian statue is of General Albert Sidney Johnston, he commanded the army of Tennessee and was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. PGT Beauregard is the highest ranking officer buried in the tumulus. Beauregard was from New Orleans and there is a large equestrian statue of him, in the centre of one of the four traffic circles in New Orleans. Each square has a famous general from the Civil War in it’s centre. Evidently the Mayor and councillors in New Orleans have decided to take down the statues and

their is a lot of controversy about it in the city right now.

On the right of the picture, there is a statue of a Confederate Soldier and he is holding a bayonette. This is now a wooden prop, painted white to match the statue. Originally, it was the same material as the statue and when it was first put up someone stole the bayonette. It was replaced and stolen again. For years the soldier stood there without his weapon because it was too costly to replace. Now he has a cheap substitute.

We spent over an hour touring around the cemetery, but then Isaac was so hungry and we had to leave. We only managed to listen to about 1/2 of the first CD and about 15 minutes of the second CD. The CD’s are each one hour long, but with all our stopping and starting of the CD and driving around to find the different grave sites, that is all we managed to listen to. It was very interesting and neat to hear the different stories.

The only other thing on Blake’s agenda today is Superbowl. We were thinking about heading to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the game, since there is no cable at our campground. However, when Blake was hanging around outside of our RV he started chatting up the neighbours. They invited us over to watch the game as they were going to have some people over. They had the game playing outside and inside the RV, so it was pretty sweet. They even had food. I went over at half time to watch the half time show and then stayed for the rest of the game. The neighbours were super nice. They were from California, but come to New Orleans all the time as that is where the lady is originally from. Her brother, and his wife, were over as well and they still live in New Orleans. They were lots of fun and gave us some good tips for our remaining days in New Orleans.

Denver won, so Blake was super excited. They sure had good defence and were frustrating North Carolina’s QB to no end!

Sonya