Wednesday Cemetery Blogging

The Seibert family tomb, St. Louis Number Three.

St. Louis Cemetery Number Three was opened in 1854, but most of the tombs date from the 1890s to 1920s. Its location, at Esplanade Avenue near Bayou St. John, illustrates how much the city had grown in the first half of the 19th century. That growth created a need for more cemeteries. The city's ethnicity had expanded as well, to the point where the German and Irish Catholics began to build cemeteries for their own. The original Creoles who founded the city started to outgrow their first two cemeteries (St. Louis #1 and #2), hence the need for a third.

Above-ground tombs in New Orleans are usually constructed of basic brick and mortar. What separates them is what's done on top of that basic structure. Most tombs are covered in plaster at that point and whitewashed, with a marble front tombstone set in place. Pricier tombs will be overlayed with other materials, such as marble, or even metals.

The Seibert family tomb is one of the more expensive type, its bricks having been overlayed with granite, and a granite tombstone set in front. The tomb is a "double," meaning it's got an upper and a lower crypt. This allows for a lot of burials, making the tomb a good family investment. The rules for re-use of an above-ground tomb is that interments must be spaced out by a year and a day. A "double" tomb expands this, allowing for two burials in the same year if necessary.

This particular tomb, while not particularly remarkable in relation to others in St. Louis #3, has personal significance for me, because it's my momma's family's tomb. My mother's mother was Anna Seibert. She's buried there, along with my momma and daddy, along with my mom's brother. This combination of families (Seibert, Finicle, Branley) makes it difficult for those doing geneaological research to hunt down burial locations.

The Seibert tomb is situated on a grassy "lane" in St. Louis Number Three, as opposed to a paved street. This makes access tricky for a burial, since the coffin has to be carried by hand.

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