Cemetery tour gives new life to prominent figures of St. Landry’s past

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The wife of a prominent plantation owner.

A preeminent St. Landry Parish educator.

A free woman of color who ran a successful businesses in downtown Opelousas.

Two Catholic priests who impacted their congregations.

All spoke from beyond the grave in autobiographical portrayals Sunday, inside the fences of a historic local graveyard.

Groups that were guided among the gravesites in the St. Landry Catholic Church cemetery were entertained and intrigued as the personas of former prominent residents were recounted by reenactors who provided forgotten details of lives that helped shape parish history.

The episodic tales of the former parish residents were part of the 18th annual St. Landry Church Cemetery tour, which concluded with Sunday’s performances.

The tours resemble character recreations similar to those in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Proceeds from each of the annual tours are used to help refurbish the cemetery graves that date back to 1818, said chairperson Yvonne Normand. 

Opelousas resident Bobby Landry, who roamed the graveyard on Sunday with other tour participants, said the firsthand historical enactments were valuable local history lessons that should be made available to parish school-age children.

Marianne Duchesne Donato spoke in front of her family’s graves about her role as the wife of Martin Donato, a free man of color and a successful businessman that at one time owned over 5,000 acres in St. Landry as well as numerous slaves.

Etha Amling, a family descendant who recounted the life of Marianne Donato, revealed that Marianne and Martin owned cotton gins, cattle and were wine merchants as they raised seven of their own children and another seven babies delivered by Martin’s mistress, who lived with the couple on their property between Opelousas and Washington.

Amling noted that the Duchesne and Donato union helped develop many of the Semien, Guillory, Lemelle and Poullard families who still live in St. Landry.

James Douget, who has participated in every cemetery tour since the event’s 2003 inception, stood in front of the grave of Paul Pavy, a World War I aviator, who provided many innovations such as class compartmentalization in parish education.

Pavy, who died in 1961, could be quite a jokester, who once clandestinely set the university clocks back while at Louisiana State University, in order to obtain an extra hour’s sleep, Douget said.

During World War I, Pavy, a former LSU drum major who was 30 years old at the time he was drafted, piloted a bi-winged reconnaissance airplane that charted enemy troop movements. Pavy, Douget recalled, carried a .45 caliber pistol in the plane to return fire if necessary.

Pavy served as principal at what is now Opelousas Middle School. Pavy and 16 other parish educators who did not support Gov. Huey P. Long, were temporarily ousted from their positions by local pro-Long supporters before being reinstated.

Sheryl Ned brought laughter with her tales of Madame Baldwin, a free woman of color and Opelousas entrepreneur who owned a tavern and boarding house that was patronized by both blacks and whites on the corner of Landry and Court streets.

Baldwin was described by Ned as a “liberated, free, Black woman,” who celebrated her status in the community by influencing the lives of other parish African Americans and demonstrating the power of strong women of color who were unafraid of circumventing social barriers.

Kate Kaegan, an Orphan Train agent, who assisted in orchestrating the movement of many orphaned infants into St. Landry during the early 1900’s, was portrayed by Amanda Bouette.

Kaegan, Bouette said, was instrumental on providing annual inspections of the orphans who were integrated into Catholic families in St. Landry and surrounding parishes.

Often the orphans were found hiding from Kaegan during her yearly visits, since the they were scared of being put on trains back to New York City, where most of them were born.

Many of the orphan train riders such as former Opelousas mayor Martin Roy and Freddie Tweedel, an agricultural businessman, are buried in the St. Landry church cemetery that borders the church grounds, Bouette said. 

Charles Roy and Matthew James Aubert adopted the roles of Catholic priests CB Anderson and Father James Aloysius Hyland.

Hyland, Roy explained, was a missionary priest from Ireland, who in 1920 developed the Holy Ghost Catholic Church Parish in Opelousas.

The parish began by Hyland and the Holy Ghost fathers eventually became one of the largest African American parishes nationwide, which also included an all-black Catholic school on two and a half acres of property located about a block away from St. Landry Catholic Church, Roy explained.

“Father Hyland was able to take property that was considered haunted because it was occupied by Union General Nathaniel Banks, who had his headquarters there, into a rewarding effort that created a church for over 750 Catholic families,” Roy said.

Anderson, who is buried in the St. Landry Church cemetery, was a member of a prominent Opelousas family who owned a successful business in the city, Anderson said. 

About 1,000 people attended Anderson’s first mass held in the St. Landry church and for over 20 years he worked for the Archdiocese of New Orleans and was a pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church and a diocesan financial administrator.

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