St. Louis Cemetery # 1 ~ Power Beyond the Grave

St. Louis Cemetery # 1 in Real Life New Orleans

One of the most popular visitor attractions in New Orleans are cemeteries.  Visitors come for various reasons.  Some to satisfy curiosity, others to pay homage to the dead, others in fascination of the mystery and beauty of the historic spots.

One Quarter French in Second Life is proud to be home to a replica of New Orleans oldest and most famed cemetery: St. Louis Cemetery #1.  Once St. Peter Cemetery, the burial grounds were redesigned and renamed after a 1788 fire.

In Real Life New Orleans, the St. Louis Cemetery #1 is a popular place.  Save Our Cemeteries (a nonprofit group) and several other commercial businesses provide tours (for a fee of course) and tourists and locals often frequent the cemetery specifically to pay a visit to renowned voodoo priestess Marie Laveau who is thought to be resting in the Glapion family crypt.  Small tokens that people have left in passing and etchings on the gravestones are proof of the small (and large) wishes that have been made at these gravestones by individuals hoping that this voodoo priestess has some power even beyond the grave...

In addition to Marie Laveau, the cemetery is also the final resting place of Etienne de Boré (the first mayor of New Orleans), Homer Plessy (the plaintiff from the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court civil rights case), and Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial (the first African-American New Orleans Mayor).  Also buried within the walls of the cemetery are Bernard de Marigny (he introduced the game of craps to the U.S.), Barthelemy Lafon (one of Jean Lafitte's alleged pirates), Paul Morphy (world champion chess player), and even Delphine LaLaurie.

Thought the cemetery itself is relatively small, being only one square block in size, it is the final burial site of over 100,000 people.

St. Louis Cemetery # 1 in Second Life, New Orleans, One Quarter French

As our Second Life version of the St. Louis Cemetery # 1 evolves, you will find that certain graves will become clickable, where you will be able to obtain the biographies of the famous dead interred within the walls of this well-known and celebrated historic cemetery.