Person:Aristide Weeks (1)

NOTES FOR ARISTIDE JEROME WEEKS: Aristide was orphaned at the very young age when both of his parents died closely following each other in 1868 from the effects of yellow fever which was sweeping the Gulf Coast at the time. Aristide and his year-old baby sister Anna Corinna went to live with relatives Jerome Barnard and Mary Delphi Weeks. Anna died two years later, also of yellow fever. Aristide once owned large tracts of river front property but sold most of it off and died nearly broke doing odd jobs. cause of death was believed to be prostate cancer. After the death of his wife Mary Cecelia in 1958, the house was occupied by the unmarried son Oscar until his death of colon cancer in 1971. The family home which Aristide built for his family across from Claude and Bennie Laurendine on Magnolia Springs Highway eventually passed on to his grandson Orville Eslava who sold it before is death. The mighty Oak Tree which shaded the homestead for many years still stands, the old reminder of the many flowering bushes she was known to love, particularly her high-fragranted magnolia frescati, red roses and a huge pomegranate tree which bore fruit for many years. Their grandson, Aristide, says "I still recall the old swing on their screened-in front porch where grandma Cecile used to scare me with her eerie ghost stories when I was a small child. I sometimes dreamed of playing in her front yard and remember vividly the dark night someone tapped on our window to tell us Grandma Cecile had passed away"