NOLA History Guy Podcast 20-June-2020 – Katy Morlas Shannon Part 2

NOLA History Guy Podcast 20-June-2020 – Katy Morlas Shannon Part 2

NOLA History Guy Podcast 20-June-2020 is part two of our interview with Katy Morlas Shannon

Katy Morlas Shannon (Zooming!)

NOLA History Guy Podcast 20-June-2020

Just one segment this week, which is part two of our talk with historian and author Katy Morlas Shannon. We had such a good time talking, and I don’t want to edit any of it!

Buy Katy’s Book!

NOLA History Guy Podcast 16-May-2020

The New Orleans Bee was a French-language newspaper that began in 1827. L’Abeille (its French name) offered New Orleans’ Creole community the news for over a century. So, we spoke with author and historian Katy Morlas Shannon about her background, The Bee, and how she came to curate the selection of articles from the paper’s first year.

NOLA History Guy Podcast 16-May-2020

The New Orleans Bee: Dispatches from the first year of Louisiana’s longest-running French-language newspaper – Kindle Edition

The Plantations

These are the places we talked with Katy about during our chat.

NOLA History Guy Podcast 16-May-2020

The Big House at Whitney Plantation

Whitney Plantation

nola history guy podcast 16-May-2020

Laura Plantation

Laura Plantation

nola history guy podcast 16-May-2020

Evergreen Plantation

Evergreen Plantation

Fleurty Girl on NOLA History Guy Podcast 20-June-2020

NOLA History Guy Podcast 16-May-2020

Crown baseball tee from Fleurty GirlWe did our interview via Zoom, but only used the audio for the podcast. Katy had a really cool t-shirt from Fleurty Girl on!

Katy M. Shannon on Facebook.

I promise, we’ll get back to the Riverfront Streetcar Line in a few weeks! While we’ll be talking to folks, research continues. Therefore, the Riverfront segments offer lots of details.

Locoul Family Tomb, New Orleans, Orleans Parish, LA

Locoul Family Tomb, New Orleans, Orleans Parish, LA

Locoul Family Tomb, in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1

locoul family tomb

Locoul Family Tomb drawing from its HABS survey. (Library of Congress)

Locoul Family Tomb

Locoul Family Tomb

Locoul Family Tomb HABS Survey (Library of Congress)

The Historic American Building Survey (HABS) collection at the Library of Congress contains several surveys of tombs in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, in Faubourg Treme. The Locoul family’s tomb is particularly interesting, because of the family’s links to Laura Plantation.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 draws large numbers of tourists daily to Basin Street. The city opened the cemetery in 1789. St. Louis No. 1 replaced an earlier cemetery, St. Peter’s, in the Vieux Carre. So, the French tradition of above-ground burials in tombs and vaults allowed families a lot of creativity in designing their resting places. Therefore, individual tombs attract study. Catholics and Protestants buried their dead in St. Louis No. 1, until Christ Episcopal opened Girod Cemetery in 1822.

Significance of the tomb

Locoul Family Tomb

Emile Locoul (1822-1879)From the survey entry:

Significance: The Locoul family owned the Laura Plantation on River Road between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The family’s patriarch, George Raymond Locoul, arrived in New Orleans in 1821 and shortly thereafter married Elisabeth Duparc, whose family owned one of the largest sugar plantations in St. James Parish. Raymond himself had a lucrative wine importing business. From 1820 to 1920 the plantation was a main distribution point for French wines and other liquors, with a 10,000 bottle capacity. Raymond died in 1850 from yellow fever, leaving Elisabeth and their two children, Louis Raymond Emile and Mary Elisabeth Aimee.

It was after his death the tomb was built, for the contagiousness of the disease prevented the body from being transported upriver to the family tomb. Elisabeth ran the plantation during the Civil War up until her death in 1882. The plantation later became the focus of a bitter property war between siblings Emile and Aimee. Since Aimee owned the sugar mill on the land, Emile built his own and subsequently named it after his daughter, Laura. Laura Locoul Gore would later go on to write a memoir, “Memories of the Old Plantation Home,” of the Locoul family’s history.

The Locouls were Creole in heritage and one of the wealthiest families in Louisiana at the peak of the plantation’s production. The tomb puts that wealth on display by employing a slate and granite foundation and has some of the cemetery’s finest ironwork surrounding the tomb.

The first image in the survey includes a map of St. Louis No. 1. The map shows the location in the cemetery of the Locoul tomb.

HABS and St. Louis No. 1

Locoul Family Tomb

Map of St. Louis Cemetery No 1 included in the HABS surveys of tombs in the cemetery.

There are a number of HABS surveys on tombs in St. Louis No. 1. So, we’ll look at them as we go forward.

In the meantime, if you’d like to visit St. Louis No. 1 and the Locoul tomb, check out my friends at Two Chicks Walking Tours.