Our Lady of Sorrows aka The Spanish Cemetery

Additional Cemetery Info...

Also known as The Spanish Cemetery.

Prior to 1792, there was a small cemetery set aside for the chapel that stood near the site where Bayou de Gras emptied into the Mississippi River. In 1792, the church of Our Lady of Sorrows was established by order of the Spanish government and this mandate included the establishment of a formal cemetery (known as the Cemetery of Our Lady of Sorrows or simply The Spanish Cemetery). This cemetery occupied the area now traversed by North Street between what is now N. 4th Street and N. 5th Street.

This was the official Catholic cemetery from 1792 until 1824. In that year, the town fathers of Baton Rouge passed a resolution demanding that the church quit using this area for burials because the "odor" was overpowering the town. The residents of Spanish Town allowed their livestock to roam freely through the cemetery, breaking open graves (apparently they did not bury six feet deep in those days). So a search was made to find a new burying ground away from the town. This resulted in the acquisition of the property on Main St. where the cemetery is located today.

The church issued a directive for people to remove their loved ones from the Spanish cemetery and move them to the new cemetery. This apparently did not work well because in 1854--30 years later--the church entered into an agreement with the town fathers whereby the church would cede the area of North St. between N. 4th and N. 5th to the town if the town would undertake the removal of the remaining graves and move them to the new cemetery.

There are many people who believe many of these graves are still located under North St. and were never moved.there are no existing records to indicate who was moved and who wasn't. The earliest sexton records that are known only go back to 1880 and end at 1928, when the last paid sexton retired.

There are no known burial records prior to 1880. There are funeral records back to 1792 but these don't tell us where the person was buried, only that they received the last rights of the church upon their death. Section 1, of the St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery located on Main Street, the section on the west side next to the railroad tracks was the first part of the "new" cemetery that was opened to receive those remains from the old cemetery but a walk through that section reveals no evidence of these early burials.

It is "assumed" that anyone that died after 1824 is buried in St. Joseph cemetery; anyone who died prior to that date was in the Cemetery of Our Lady of Sorrows [Spanish Cemetery]. And there is no way telling if the Our Lady of Sorrows [The Spanish Cemetery]are under North St. or in the cemetery on Main Street.