Holt Cemetery

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Holt Cemetery
Holt Cemetery, New Orleans, Louisiana.jpg
Holt Cemetery
Details
Established1879;146 years ago (1879)
Location
4901 Rosedale Drive, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Coordinates 29°59′06″N90°06′22″W / 29.98498°N 90.10613°W / 29.98498; -90.10613
TypePotter's Field
Owned byCity of New Orleans
Size7 acres
No. of graves2391
Find a Grave Holt Cemetery

Holt Cemetery is a potter's field cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is located next to Delgado Community College, behind the right field fence of the college's baseball facility, Kirsch-Rooney Stadium. The cemetery is named after Dr. Joseph Holt, an official of the New Orleans Board of Health (famously involved with city health issues concerning Storyville, the Red-light district of New Orleans) who officially established the cemetery in the 19th century. Holt Cemetery is one of the Historic Cemeteries of New Orleans.

The cemetery was established in 1879 to inter the bodies of poor or indigent residents of the city. Funeral processions to Holt Cemetery were generally around, rather than through, the city. The original cemetery was 5.5 acres, and it was expanded in 1909 to 7 acres. Nearly all of the tombs are in-ground burials. [1] [2] As established, ownership of the graves at Holt Cemetery were given to the families of the deceased for the cost of digging the grave and subsequent maintenance of the plot. [3]

Most of the graves and tombs at Holt Cemetery were not commercially or professionally produced but were instead fabricated by families of the deceased, giving the cemetery a strong personal touch. [4]

The cemetery contains the remains of early blues and jazz musicians including Babe Stovall, Jessie Hill [5] and Charles "Buddy" Bolden. The battered remains of Robert Charles, at the center of the 1900 New Orleans race riot were briefly interred there, then dug up, and incinerated.[ citation needed ] Later, in 1973, four victims of the UpStairs Lounge arson attack, Ferris LeBlanc and three unidentified males, were buried in a mass grave at the cemetery. [6]

Over the years, Holt Cemetery has been a destination of ghost hunters, with frequent incidents of grave-robbing and reports of Voodoo and Santería rituals. [2] In one notable case, a neopagan witch named Ender Darling took bones from Holt Cemetery for use in magic, posting an offer on a Facebook group for neopagan witches to sell the bones for the cost of shipping. The post quickly attracted controversy on Facebook and Tumblr, leading to Darling's investigation and arrest, the collapse of the Facebook group the offer was posted on, and a new state law strengthening penalties for trafficking in human remains. [7] [8]

The city of New Orleans conducted $450,000 in repairs and upgrades to Holt Cemetery in 2013 and 2014. [2] However, the graves and tombs themselves remain in a state of significant neglect, with human remains being evident. New burials continue at Holt Cemetery, and the graves show evidence for frequent visits and various cultural materials. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Funeral</span> Ceremony for a person who has died

A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect the dead, from interment, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honour. Customs vary between cultures and religious groups. Funerals have both normative and legal components. Common secular motivations for funerals include mourning the deceased, celebrating their life, and offering support and sympathy to the bereaved; additionally, funerals may have religious aspects that are intended to help the soul of the deceased reach the afterlife, resurrection or reincarnation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tomb</span> Repository for the remains of the dead

A tomb or sepulchre is a repository for the remains of the dead. It is generally any structurally enclosed interment space or burial chamber, of varying sizes. Placing a corpse into a tomb can be called immurement, although this word mainly means entombing people alive, and is a method of final disposition, as an alternative to cremation or burial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act</span> 1990 US law protecting Native American remains and artifacts

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub. L. 101-601, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq., 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law enacted on November 16, 1990.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ossuary</span> Container for dead remains

An ossuary is a chest, box, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary. The greatly reduced space taken up by an ossuary means that it is possible to store the remains of many more people in a single tomb than possible in coffins. The practice is sometimes known as grave recycling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burial</span> The ritual act of placing a dead person or animal into the ground

Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objects in it, and covering it over. A funeral is a ceremony that accompanies the final disposition. Evidence suggests that some archaic and early modern humans buried their dead. Burial is often seen as indicating respect for the dead. It has been used to prevent the odor of decay, to give family members closure and prevent them from witnessing the decomposition of their loved ones, and in many cultures it has been seen as a necessary step for the deceased to enter the afterlife or to give back to the cycle of life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Potter's field</span> Burial place for unknown or indigent people

A potter's field, paupers' grave or common grave is a place for the burial of unknown, unclaimed or indigent people. "Potter's field" is of Biblical origin, referring to Akeldama, stated to have been purchased after Judas Iscariot's suicide by the chief priests of Jerusalem with the coins that had been paid to Judas for his identification of Jesus. The priests are stated to have acquired it for the burial of strangers, criminals, and the poor, the coins paid to Judas being considered blood money. Prior to Akeldama's use as a burial ground, it had been a site where potters collected high-quality, deeply red clay for the production of ceramics, thus the name potters' field.

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Roman funerary practices include the Ancient Romans' religious rituals concerning funerals, cremations, and burials. They were part of time-hallowed tradition, the unwritten code from which Romans derived their social norms. Elite funeral rites, especially processions and public eulogies, gave the family opportunity to publicly celebrate the life and deeds of the deceased, their ancestors, and the family's standing in the community. Sometimes the political elite gave costly public feasts, games and popular entertainments after family funerals, to honour the departed and to maintain their own public profile and reputation for generosity. The Roman gladiator games began as funeral gifts for the deceased in high status families.

The disposal of human corpses, also called final disposition, is the practice and process of dealing with the remains of a deceased human being. Disposal methods may need to account for the fact that soft tissue will decompose relatively rapidly, while the skeleton will remain intact for thousands of years under certain conditions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Girod Street Cemetery</span> Defunct and covered-up cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana

The Girod Street Cemetery, was a large above-ground cemetery that resided in central New Orleans, Louisiana, established in 1822 for Protestant residents of the Faubourg St. Mary and was closed down in the 1940s. The cemetery then remained unused, until it was officially torn down on January 4, 1957.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Funerary art</span> Art associated with a repository for the remains of the dead

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Secondary burial</span> Feature of certain prehistoric grave sites

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grave desecration</span> Act of vandalism to dishonour the dead

The desecration of graves involves intentional acts of vandalism, theft, or destruction in places where humans are interred, such as body snatching or grave robbing. It has long been considered taboo to desecrate or otherwise violate graves or grave markers of the deceased, and in modern times it has been prohibited by law. Desecration is defined as violating something that is sacred.

Mary Huffman Manhein is an American forensic anthropologist. Nicknamed The Bone Lady, she was the founding director of the Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES) laboratory at Louisiana State University (LSU) in 1990, and of the Louisiana Repository for Unidentified and Missing Persons Information Program in 2006. The repository is considered the "most comprehensive statewide database of its kind".

In 2015 and 2016, a controversy occurred on Facebook and Tumblr concerning Ender Darling, a neopagan witch who took human bones from a cemetery in New Orleans for use in rituals. Darling posted to the Facebook group Queer Witch Collective in December 2015, saying they had been collecting bones for use in witchcraft from a "poor man's graveyard" where bones often rose to the surface, and offering to sell bones to others for the cost of shipping. Some fellow witches accused Darling of desecrating graves and took issue with the bones' apparent source, Holt Cemetery—a potter's field where most burials are of poor people of color. Screenshots of the argument were posted elsewhere on Facebook, making their way to local news and then to Tumblr, where one user made a call-out post that garnered over 31,000 notes and led to discourse about racism and classism, which was dubbed Boneghazi or bones discourse. Meta-commentary on Tumblr included both humorous memes and criticism of the discourse's focus on identity politics.

References

  1. "New Orleans Cemeteries". www.nolacemeteries.com. Archived from the original on 17 November 2007. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 Whirty, Ryan (September 6, 2017). "Holt Cemetery: How the Other Half Dies in New Orleans". Georges Media Group. New Orleans Times-Picayune. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
  3. Huber, Leonard V.; McDowell, Peggy; Christovich, Mary Louise (1974). New Orleans Architecture (Vol. III): The Cemeteries. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing. p. 60. ISBN   0-88289-020-4.
  4. "Holt Cemetery". saveourcemeteries.org. Save Our Cemeteries. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
  5. Jeff Hannusch (1 February 2002). "Masters Of Louisiana Music: Jessie Hill". OffBeat magazine website. Retrieved 2 November 2015.
  6. The Upstairs Fire – June 24, 1973 – 25th Anniversary Memorial Service
  7. Tourjée, Diana (October 31, 2016). "Boneghazi: how a grave-robbing controversy tore an online witch community apart". Vice . Retrieved December 5, 2024.
  8. Crisp, Elizabeth (April 6, 2016). "After raid of witch's New Orleans home uncovers bones, teeth, state lawmakers eye stiffer penalties for trafficking human remains". The New Orleans Advocate . Retrieved December 5, 2024.
  9. Krummel, Jordon Andréa (2013). Holt Cemetery: An Anthropological Analysis of an Urban Potter's Field (Masters Dissertation). Tulane University. Retrieved March 26, 2020.