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Mowing Magnolia Cemetery

No, this isn’t about mowing the lawn at Magnolia, although I have undying respect for the people that regularly do this daunting chore.

Findagrave.com is the undisputed king of online cemetery websites. Their database has close to a quarter of a billion graves, and the database grows by five to ten thousand every day. It’s a superb example of crowdsourcing, and it can be a genealogist’s best friend.

Joanna Fox Waddill is one of several thousand people resting at Baton Rouge’s Magnolia Cemetery. She’s also kind of famous.

Findagrave can also be a historian’s worst nightmare.

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Cemeteries

The Old American Cemetery

Nestled in the trees at what is currently known as the Louisiana Veterans Memorial Park is the site of what was probably Baton Rouge’s first cemetery. What started as the “Spanish Cemetery,” then called the “Old American Cemetery,” and finally the “Old Protestant Graveyard” was the resting place for many of Baton Rouge’s early notables. And like many other Louisiana cemeteries, it became a lamented eyesore before its ultimate extinction.

A view of the original cemetery grounds that stood behind the present-day arsenal building. The space is now lush and verdant, but it was not always so.
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