Morgan City makes good after discovering cemetery mistake

A family whose roots are linked to the first people buried in the city’s cemetery will accept a proposal by Mayor Lee Dragna to make good on a mistake by a previous manager of the grounds.
Dragna pitched the offer to Clair Guarisco Giordano after a five-year investigation into how the city mistakenly sold three of the family’s plots to another family with no relationship to the St. Clair line.
Giordano, the great-great-granddaughter of Morgan City Mayor Charles Henry St. Clair, said her family will reluctantly accept the city’s offer of three burial vaults that are adjacent to the family St. Clair plot.
“We have no other choice. They kind of got us,” Giordano said.
Dragna told Giordano on Tuesday during the City Council meeting that there was no doubt that the city had made a mistake, and the offer of the three plots adjacent to her family plot was the best offer he could make.
Giordano said during Tuesday’s meeting that roughly five years ago, her aunt, Elaine Mire Hilliard, found the error.
She recalled the story at Tuesday’s meeting, when she was flanked by cousins Charlie and Brenda Youngblood. She said she was back to ask the city to correct the error by asking the unrelated family to move their relatives to another location within the cemetery.
“My Aunt Elaine came down from Texas and found three people that we did not know,” Giordano said. “The city put them there. They were wrongly placed there without our knowledge. Since then, we’ve been asking you all to take them out. We’ve been told it would be done. Well, it’s been four years. …
“My Aunt Elaine is 90 years old, and she’s praying that you all remove these people before she passes away. It’s not right. You all did wrong. Please fix it.”
Giordano asked, “Why didn’t the cemetery manager then sell the family the three smaller plots adjacent to our plot?
“Who was in charge of putting these three bodies in our family plot and not in these empty ones?” she asked.
“Someone who is not here anymore,” Dragna answered.
“Well, it’s the city’s responsibility,” Giordano said.
The mayor said the mistake occurred before his administration.
“Originally, I asked can we just move these individuals?” Dragna said. “I was told, ‘Well, you have to go and speak to the family. But right now they’re still upset about losing their loved ones.’”
Dragna said the manager quit shortly thereafter. But he said after some time had passed, some family members were OK with moving their relatives and some were not.
After much research, the mayor found three adjacent plots that are available.
Charlie Youngblood asked, “Who got the money from the three plots that were sold? How were they sold knowing the city did not own them?”
Dragna said he honestly believed the cemetery manager then did not know.
“The maps are in shambles,” Dragna said. “This area of the cemetery goes back 150 years.”
Youngblood asked, “How would you feel if I buried three of my relatives in your family’s plot?”
Melanie Topham, the current cemetery manager, told Giordano, “You’re not buying the property. What you’re buying is the right to be buried in the cemetery.”
“These people didn’t have the right to be buried there,” Giordano said.
“I’m not telling you that we didn’t mess up. I’m the first to admit when we screw up,” Dragna said. “But we cannot convince these people to move their relatives’ bodies.”
“The only thing we can do is supplement that spot with another spot of equal value. Then transfer the use of the three spots,” Dragna said.
Charlie Solar Jr., city chief operations officer, said the city has a lot of man hours invested in correcting the problem. “We thought we had the other family agreeable to move their relatives, however at that point, our grave diggers backed out,” Solar said.
Giordano further explained that since she alerted the present city administration to the error, the other family has added a large headstone and other features surrounding one of the graves.
“It’s beautiful. But this individual is not a member of my family. He’s not my aunt or uncle or my daddy. It hurts.”
The mayor also pointed out that there are neighboring plots that touch the St. Clair plots that are also not family members.
“We don’t have a choice in this situation,” he said. “We cannot force the people to move them. And if we did move them, we would have a serious problem.”
“The three plots we’re offering to you is the best solution to this matter,” Dragna said. “I hope you can agree to this.”
“I understand that people make mistakes,” Youngblood replied.
Dragna said afterward he has had Topham create a new map, which he said took about a year to complete.
“This will not happen again. And we won’t have a 140-year-old map to contend with either,” he said.
Greig Chauvin, local historian, said the yellow fever epidemic in 1878 prompted the city to purchase land for a cemetery.
She said St. Clair, who was mayor then, borrowed $200 from the Morgan Railroad Co. to purchase the land where the cemetery is now located, although it wasn’t as big then as what it is now.
“One hundred eighty people died the first year, 50 the second. In the beginning we were shipping bodies to the Berwick Cemetery, but they later banned Morgan City from doing so,” Chauvin said.
She believes the current St. Clair plot location is the original one and the first parcel to create the city cemetery.
Additionally, Chauvin said that before 1878, there were a handful of locations in the city where Union soldiers were buried.
“In the 1960s for example, six bodies were found at the corner of Freret and Sixth streets. Two were removed and placed in the cemetery. However, the other four were buried over by the street corner.”