Informer: Cemeteries continued source of confusion
Last Modified: Saturday, October 13, 2012 8:50 PM
By Andrew Perzo / American Press
The Informer on Wednesday fielded a question from a reader who sought information on a nameless burial ground that lies outside Goos Cemetery in Goosport.
The column offered what little that city officials could find among their records and suggested to the reader various resources to use in her search.
The graveyard the reader referred to sits just outside the northeast section of Goos Cemetery and was, according to an American Press story from 2000, “reportedly used for the employees of Goos family enterprises.”
The only other reference to the nameless graveyard that The Informer could find in the newspaper’s archives was in a March 16, 1937, edition of the American Press. But it’s a source of confusion.
“As with the Bilbo Cemetery, there is a separate burial ground for negroes who have been in the employ of the Goos family,” reads the story. “This graveyard is located on the opposite, or west, side of the road that circles the fenced enclosure.”
That compass reckoning doesn’t lead to the nameless burial ground but instead to Huff and Thomas Cemetery, an L-shaped graveyard that runs the length of Carl Street, from See to Katherine streets.
“It was an African-American burial site,” Carla Clark, a member of the Huff and Thomas Cemetery board, told The Informer. “There weren’t many places for African-Americans to be buried. That land was given to them to do that.”
Clark said most of the burials done at Huff and Thomas Cemetery were conducted in the 1920s and 1930s by Gilmore Funeral Home, which went out of business in the mid- to late 1970s. Most of the records were subsequently lost, she said.
Many members of her family are buried in the cemetery, which was once overseen by her mother, Clark said.
A final note: The reader who submitted the original query said that the obituary for her grandmother, who’s interred in the unnamed graveyard, identifies the burial site as Goos Cemetery.
A list of those buried in the nameless graveyard is available at http://files.usgwarchives.net/la/calcasieu/cemeteries/goos2.txt.
A list of those buried in Huff and Thomas Cemetery can be viewed at http://files.usgwarchives.net/la/calcasieu/cemeteries/hufftho.txt.
Online: www.accessgenealogy.com/cemetery/louisiana.htm.
Federal law allows ‘reasonable’ changes
If a person is handicapped and wants to rent a house or an apartment, does the landlord have to install a wheelchair ramp?
No.
The Federal Housing Act gives disabled people the right to make “reasonable modifications” to rented living spaces to improve accessibility. But the law doesn’t require landlords to pay for the changes.
Online: www.ada.gov.
25 minimum age for designation
What age does a car or truck have to be before it is considered to be an antique?
Louisiana law sets 25 years as the minimum age for antique-car title purposes.
Online: www.legis.state.la.us.
The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email informer@americanpress.com
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