Place:Oakland Cemetery, Shreveport, Caddo, Louisiana, United States

NameOakland Cemetery
Alt namesCity Cemeterysource: Historic marker
TypeCemetery
Coordinates32.50802°N 93.75379°W
Located inShreveport, Caddo, Louisiana, United States
Also located inCaddo, Louisiana, United States    

History

Earliest tombstone dated 1842. Cemetery officially opened 1847. At least 16 mayors are buried here as well as some 1,000 Confederate veterans & soldiers. Fence and walls erected 1905, the same year it began to be officially called "Oakland," rather than "City Cemetery." Listed in National Register of Historic Places, 1977. (Source: Historic marker)

Oakland is typical of historical city cemeteries that have suffered from urban growth. Though it was established just outside the town limits, the neighborhood in which it is now located is close to the expanded downtown area, which has decayed considerably in the past century. During the 1950s to 1970s, it became rundown and was not properly maintained by the city, and many markers and tombs were allowed to fall apart or were vandalized. There are numerous places where a square brick paving surrounded by grass is the only indication that a family tomb once stood there.

About 1980, local historian Eric J. Brock, in an effort to preserve what information still remained, began gathering inscriptions from the markers still standing at Oakland and supplemented this with research in city records and by reading obituaries. This resulted in the publication in 1988 of A Necrology of Graves at the Old Oakland Cemetery of Shreveport, Louisiana. Note that one of his principal secondary sources of information was a large map of family plots at Oakland which was compiled c.1905. The original locations of a number of now-disappeared tombs may be determined by comparing this map with surviving markers at the site, and then "triangulating." A copy of the map may be consulted in the Genealogy Collection at the Broadmoor Branch of the Shreveport Public Library. Brock's book is available there, also.

Resources