Chloe Historic Cemetery

Jun 29

Site Brief:

Founded: ca. 1850s

Location: Chloe, LA

Additional name(s): N/A

Affiliate group(s): Chloe African American Cemetery Preservation Association

History:

Chloe Historic Cemetery is a historic African American burial ground located along English Bayou in the Chloe community of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. The cemetery was formally dedicated in 1904 when Eulalie St. Mary conveyed one acre of land "to the inhabitants of Chloe" for use as a public cemetery. Historical records, oral histories, and ongoing genealogical research indicate the site served Black families prior to the formal dedication, following Emancipation. The cemetery contains the graves of formerly enslaved people, federal homesteaders, landowners, military veterans, church leaders, and generations of African American families whose lives helped shape the history of Calcasieu Parish and Southwest Louisiana.

The cemetery is part of the historic English Bayou community, where African American, Creole, Indigenous (Atakapas), Cajun, French, and Spanish families lived, worked, worshipped, and built interconnected communities over generations. It is closely associated with the descendants of James Alphonse, remembered in a 1943 newspaper as "the last living slave of Major J.C. LeBleu," but whose legacy also includes becoming a federal homesteader, husband, father, and patriarch. After decades of neglect, overgrowth, and hurricane damage, the Chloe African American Cemetery Preservation Association (CAACPA) is leading a descendant-driven effort to restore, document, preserve, and protect the cemetery through volunteer restoration and clean-ups, archaeological documentation, genealogical research, oral history collection, and community partnerships, including local preservationists and forensic specialists.. The project seeks not only to preserve a historic Black cemetery, but also to recover and honor the history of the families and community it represents.