October 2009. In Highland Cemetery, the greats of early Baton Rouge rest peacefully.

Among all the encroaching concrete and rapid-paced development of Baton Rouge, there’s a place that has remained tranquil, still and green. Unbeknownst to most of them, thousands of LSU’s young people bee-bop past one of the city’s most sacred sites on their way to the game, the bar, or class. But the old souls who occupy this serene space are not disturbed. Since its plantation beginnings, the piece of land in question has been called Penny Graveyard, Terre Haute Cemetery or, most commonly, Highland Cemetery. The first known interment in this ground happened in 1813, making it the oldest existing cemetery in Baton Rouge.

When plantation owner George Garig donated a small piece of his property to the Roman Catholic Church “for divers good causes and reasons now thereunto moving,” he could not have expected that the ground would go on to collect many of the area’s most illustrious and well-respected figures. Upon the death of one of the cemetery’s residents, Captain Bouvier Favrot, the Capitolian read, “He was in reality a ‘landmark’ of Baton Rouge, a perfect type of those French and Spanish cavaliers whose names have thrown a glamour around the history of those colonial days.” The same can be said of many people buried here, including the Germans who settled the Dutch Highlands overlooking the Mississippi flood plain. Leave the Favrot plot only to come across the Kleinpeter family. Just over there in the corner are Armand Duplantier and his friends and family. It’s a veritable gallery of the earliest actors in our region’s history as you tread lightly past the Randolph, Davis, Thomas, Neilson, and Penny families. It’s also a reminder of the inhospitable conditions of those early days; roughly half of those buried here died before they reached twenty-one years.

Garig also could not have imagined the abuse that future citizens would go on to inflict on the hallowed ground. Thanks to grave robbers and inquisitive (to put it nicely) college students, tombstones and memorials have been moved around quite a bit. City and church neglect allowed trees and vines to crush and entangle the monuments there, but let’s not dwell on past transgressions. Two preservation efforts occurred last century; and Kenny Kleinpeter, chairman of the cemetery’s trustees, is at the helm of major restoration that incorporates archaeological technology. The hope is that when Kleinpeter and his team are through analyzing every bit of broken marble and stone, and probing every inch of the remaining plot, the cemetery will more closely resemble its former self. And the cemetery’s occupants are in great hands. Kleinpeter, who fully grasps the historical and social significance of the graveyard, views the daunting project as a duty, a responsibility, and an honor. When thanked for my recent personal tour, Kleinpeter replied, “I never feel closer to heaven than when talking Highland.”

http://historichighlandcemetery.org

Add Comment