26-01-2025
Is there a mass grave in Stoner Hill?
The Caddo Parish Civil Rights Heritage Trail project is expanding its scope with a new series designed to help historic villages, towns, neighborhoods, and/or cities in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, investigate three different versions of their communities: the past, the present, and the future. Team members include Dr. Gary Joiner, Mik Barnes, Jaclyn Tripp, Dr. Laura Meiki, Dr. Jolivette Anderson-Douong, Dr. Amy Rosner, Dr. Rolonda Teal, and Brenton Metzler.
This month's focus is the Stoner Hill neighborhood.
In Stoner Hill's origin story may surprise you, Dr. Gary Joiner (Professor of History at LSU Shreveport) taught us that Stoner Hill is older than the city of Shreveport. In part II of our series on Stoner Hill, Was Stoner Hill in Shreveport named after cannabis lovers, we learned where Stoner Hill got its name and how it connected to America's Civil War. Part III of the Stoner Hill series showed what Stoner Hill was like in 1935 vs. what Stoner Hill is like today. Part IV examined how a tornado destroyed much of the Stoner Hill community in 1912.
In Part V of the series, Dr. Gary Joiner answers a question from Cookie Coleman, who was raised in Stoner Hill. Coleman asked the team if rumors about a mass grave located in Stoner Hill were true.
Dr. Gary Joiner took the lead on this article.
SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – A primary indicator of an area's past lies in its cemeteries. Stoner Hill is home to three historic cemeteries, although all are cloaked in mystery.
Eric J. Brock, one of Shreveport's best-known historians, authored an article on Stoner Hill's cemeteries.
But to understand the history of Stoner Hill cemeteries, you must also understand that Stoner Hill has gone by many names, including Coates Bluff and, later, Freewater Hill.
This is but one of the reasons that researching historic cemeteries in Stoner Hill is so difficult.
'A deep gulley on the Freewater side of Bremerton is almost filled with the remnants of houses. A peculiar feature of this section of the wrecked settlement is the position of two houses which stood in this gulley. These houses had been built so that their floors were even with the floor of a bridge which crossed the gulley,' we read in The (Shreveport) Times, Feb. 22, 1912.
Peter Youree, considered to be the father of modern Shreveport, apparently bought one of the stores located in Freewater. A ad in The (Shreveport) Times from 1906 shows Youree trying to rent out the store once run by Mrs. E. E. Thomas.
A little boy, unnamed, appeared in The Shreveport Journal on May 21, 1889, after allegedly stealing cakes from a store in Freewater.
'In the Stoner Hill area there are several cemeteries, though only one of them is clearly evident as being a cemetery. It is the old Hopewell Cemetery, located at the far end of East Merrick Street, just off C.E. Galloway Blvd.,' wrote Brock.
Lost graves in abandoned Shreveport cemetery tell story of South Highlands
Brock explained that although the old cemetery is largely overgrown, it is fairly accessible on foot.
'After Star Cemetery, which opened in 1883 just off of Texas Avenue (stretching back to Lakeshore and visible from I-20), the Hopewell Cemetery is probably the most historically significant black burial ground in the city.'
The Hopewell Cemetery is not the only cemetery in Stoner Hill.
'Not too far away from the Hopewell Cemetery is another old Stoner Hill burial ground,' wrote Brock. 'This one, however, appears at first glance to be merely a vacant lot. Located in the 2300 block of Freewater Street, the lot contains a single intact tombstone – that of Jessie Cook (1875-99).'
But Brock wrote there is evidence of other burials on the site, and that area residents said there once were more tombstones, but only one (Jessie Cook's tombstone) survived.
'There is no physical evidence whatsoever of the third Stoner Hill burial ground, located in the section of that neighborhood known as 'Little Texas' (for its streets all named for Texas cities),' wrote Brock. 'At or near the intersection of Waco and Beaumont Streets is a 19th century cemetery first discovered during city drainage work in 1984. According to older residents of the area, the cemetery contained the graves of 'plague victims.'
Brock wondered if the human remains discovered during city drainage work could have been a burial ground for yellow fever victims during one of the 19th-century epidemics.
'Or perhaps a cemetery for the dead of a local 19th-century hospital? It is not close to any known hospital sites of that era, however, and seems awfully far from the then-city limits of Shreveport,' he wrote.
He also supposed the cemetery extends beneath the levee along Beaumont Street.
'The other side of this same levee faces the intersection of East Kings Highway and Youree Drive,' wrote Brock.
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