St. John's Historic Cemetery

Once part of Ridgefield Plantation, the land for St. John's Church and Cemetery fronted on the Terrebonne Road, now Jackson Street, connecting Bayous Lafourche and Terrebonne. George Seth and Caroline Lucretia Winder Guion donated an entire block in the early 1840s after moving from Natchez to Lafourche Parish following their marriage in 1831. Guion's grandfather Issac Guion fought in the American Revolution and later in the Indian Wars in the Old Northwest Territory in the 1790s. The Winders were Kentuckians, and Caroline's brother Van Winder settled at Ducros Plantation near present-day Schriever. After its creation, the cemetery was divided into plots roughly twenty feet square, with eight sections in each plot designated as burial sites. Narrow streets separate the rows of burial plots and are named for some of the founders and several Episcopal priests who served at St. John's. A wrought iron fence and gates donated by Minnie Roberta Williams were erected in 1916, and the lawn crypt was built in the west corner of the cemetery in the 1960s. Live oaks surrounding the cemetery were planted in the 1850s by Thomas R.B. Trader of Maryland, rector from 1854 to 1869. The cemetery has served people of all faiths, including many influential in state and local history such as Governor Francis Tillou Nicholls, and it contains veterans of American wars from the War of 1812 through the Vietnam War.

Thibodaux, Louisiana · United States