THE HISTORY

Chloe Cemetery, also known as Saint Mary Cemetery, is a historic African American, Native, and Creole burial ground located along English Bayou near the rural community of Chloe in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana.

Historical evidence reveals that the cemetery served the Chloe colored community prior to its formal public dedication in 1904, when one acre of land was conveyed by Eulalie St. Mary “to the inhabitants of Chloe” for use as a public cemetery. In local records and oral history, the burial ground was at times referred to as the “Negro cemetery,” reflecting the segregated realities of the era and its longstanding role as a resting place for generations of Black families connected to Chloe and the surrounding English Bayou community. Over time, the burial ground came to be known both as Chloe Cemetery and Saint Mary Cemetery.

​

Eulalie St. Mary, born Eulalie Pujo, later married Joseph D. St. Mary, whose family name became associated with the cemetery over the years. One of the earliest currently identified tombstones belongs to Joseph St. Mary, who died in 1888.

​

The cemetery became the resting place for generations of African American, Native, and Creole families connected to the farms and settlements surrounding English Bayou. Among those buried there is James Alphonse, remembered in a 1943 Lake Charles American Press article as the last surviving enslaved man of Major J. C. LeBleu. The article noted that he was buried “in the negro cemetery at Chloe,” preserving one of the clearest surviving historical references tying the cemetery to the Black Chloe community.

​

James Alphonse and his wife Josephine Roberts Alphonse raised a large family on the Settlement after emancipation, and many of their children and descendants are buried at Chloe Cemetery, including their sons Walter and Ferrin Alphonse, daughters Cornelia Hunt and Lucy Alphonse Taylor, and multiple generations of the Alphonse, Hunt, Taylor, Miller, and Tillman families whose lives remained deeply connected to the community along English Bayou.

​

Louise May LeBleu Tillman, granddaughter of James and Josephine Alphonse, died in 1920 during the closing years of the Spanish Flu era and was buried at Chloe Cemetery at only twenty-five years old. Family records show that after her death, her young son George Lee Tillman was raised by his grandmother Cornelia Hunt in the Chloe community.

​

The Chloe community developed within the region historically associated with the LeBleu Settlement near present-day Lake Charles. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Southwest Louisiana became part of the state’s growing rice belt, and families living along English Bayou worked the rice fields and prairie farms that shaped daily life throughout the region.

​

After emancipation, African American families who had lived and worked in the area continued building lives there—raising children, cultivating land, forming churches and communities, and burying loved ones near the bayou. For many years, the cemetery was cared for by the families who lived nearby.

​

As descendants moved away over generations, the burial ground gradually became overgrown, and many grave markers were damaged or lost. Hurricane Laura brought additional destruction in 2020, toppling trees and obscuring portions of the cemetery beneath debris and heavy vegetation.

​

In 2026, descendant-led restoration and documentation efforts began to carefully clear the grounds, identify burial locations, preserve historical records, and restore dignity to the cemetery. Volunteers continue uncovering visible grave sites and documenting burial locations hidden beneath decades of overgrowth.

​

Among the latest known burials identified at the cemetery is Debbie L. Randle, who passed away in January 1990, reflecting the cemetery’s continued connection to Chloe families well into the late twentieth century.

​

Today, Chloe Cemetery remains one of the few surviving physical links to the families who lived, worked, worshipped, and were laid to rest along English Bayou—a lasting record of the Chloe community itself.